The Scholarly Forum @ Montana Law

This weekend marks the unveiling of the Jameson Library’s newest scholarship venture:  The Scholarly Forum @ Montana Law.  The Scholarly Forum is a digital archive of faculty and student scholarship.   It is a showcase of the various facets of the scholarly life of the law school and will initially collect and provide access to published faculty scholarship and selected student papers.   In the future, we may include faculty presentations and other conference material.   In the next couple weeks, the Scholarly Forum will also provide a new home for the Montana Law Review and Public Land and Resources Law Review.   Both journals will maintain archives of past issues as well as access to articles published in current issues.   We are unveiling the digital archive now with only a small selection of faculty scholarship but we will be collecting content over the next several months so that it will soon fully reflect the rich scholarly life of the law school.

The Scholarly Forum provides free, open access to the scholarship it contains.   The move toward open access is one of the most important developments in the dissemination of scholarship.   Through open access repositories, scholarship is accessible to all researchers– a Google search yields materials housed in open access digital archives.    Also, in addition to being part of the traditional published record, scholarship is now tied to the institutions where it was created.   Two clicks from an article posted in the Scholarly Forum will bring the researcher to the law school website and information about all the law school’s programs and the full life of the UM School of Law community.

The library is pleased to work with Digital Commons and the law faculty to create this dynamic archive and join with a growing number of other law schools in providing access to legal scholarship.  We are proud to add the work of the faculty of The University of Montana School of Law to the universe of legal scholarship.

Especially as we are adding new content, I encourage you to “follow” the Scholarly Forum @ Montana Law by clicking on the follow button — followers will receive email notification of new content as it is added.   Also be sure to check out the Paper of the Day, a daily highlight of Montana legal scholarship.

Another Strike Against Tech Freedom

The last few years have not been good for technological freedom. The last decade has not been good for technological freedom. Going back to the chaos that has ensued from some ill-advised sections of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the various manifestations of DRM (Digital Rights Management) software — none of which worked to prevent illegal copying but worked well to cripple legitimate software and devices — from the grotesquely punitive media company lawsuits against teenagers for minor file-sharing only because they were easy targets, and the abolition of online privacy,  to the more recent absurd proposals for monitoring and regulating ISP’s, legislators, media,  and communication companies have been heavy-handed, clumsy, and clueless in getting a handle on the tech world.

Are you reading this on your cell phone?  If so, remember this name – James H. Billington. He gets to tell you how you can use your cell phone.  He decides if you go to jail for unlocking your cell phone.  Cell phones in the US are generally “locked,” meaning they contain codes that allow them to only work with one carrier.  When your Verizon plan expires, the cell phone you purchased cannot be switched to an AT&T plan and vice versa.  The lock system means that you only think it is your phone.  It really belongs to the phone company forever.  Even such modest proposals as “automatically unlock the phone when the contract is up” have gone down in flames.

In most of the world, cell  phones are unlocked.  The cell phone operates from a sim card that identifies you to the network.  The sim card can be switched from phone to phone at any time.  The only thing the phone company sells you is network time, and the network time you have already bought stays coded on your sim card when you change phones.  You can buy cell phones from the phone company, but you can also buy them in stores, the guy on the street corner, or your friend.  The device is yours and you use it the way you want.

Oh, yeah — James Billington!  He’s the Librarian of Congress.  As such, he is the ultimate authority over copyright in the nation.  The phone companies claim copyright on the codes and software that lock a device to their system.  Before January 26, an exemption to the software “cracking” prohibitions in the DMCA allowed you to legally unlock your cell   phone.  After January 26, doing so would put you in the same company as hackers and crackers with the same severe penalties hanging over your head.  There is a petition on whitehouse.gov to roll back the legislation to allow legal unlocking again, but James Billington, as the one who gets to decide this question, is reluctant to do so and is leaning heavily in favor of the phone companies.  This is also putting him at odds with the White House, which favors allowing legal unlocking.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  There hasn’t been any sane technology legislation for a long time.

Video:  Washington Notebook with Congressman Camp and special guest James Billington, Librarian of Congress (December 26, 2011).

Using PACER to View Federal Court Documents

Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER, is an online service from the federal Judiciary that provides case and docket information from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts.

Law students and faculty have free access to PACER for academic use for the federal district court of Montana.  If you need access to other courts, contact Stacey or Cynthia.

To access PACER for the Montana Federal District Court, go to the law library web page, open the Law Library Databases link, and select PACER.  You will need your UM NetID and password.  (Your UM NetID is the number that begins with the initials of your name followed by numbers and ending with the letter “e.”)

Once at the search page, select Query and enter a case number or party name.  To retrieve the docket for the case, select “Docket Report.”  You can narrow results, if you wish, before clicking “Run Report.”  Documents available to view have a hyperlinked number next to them.  Select the document you are interested in viewing and click “View Document.”  To print a document, select the File tab at the top of your screen or scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the printer icon.

On Not Reinventing the Wheel: Legal Research Guides and Locating What You Don’t Know

I wish I could teach my students everything there is to know, or even everything they need to know.  But as a legal research instructor, that’s not my job– my job is to teach my students how to find what they need to know.  The advice I most often give them is to not reinvent the wheel and to use the resources that already exist to help them.  Some of the best advice I can give them is to use resarch guides.

Research guides come in a variety of flavors: some are collections of resources, others also include explanatory text that discusses legal background and research strategies; some include only online sources, others also add print resources; some are, others are in print.  The following are just a few of my favorite online research guides.

GlobaLex:  NYU Law School, Hauser Global Law School Program, Mirela Roznovschi, ed.  GlobaLex is a collection of legal research guides on comparative and international law topics, and foreign law organized by country.  GlobaLex guides are written by librarians and lawyers from around the world.  Each guide provides detailed explanations of areas of law, political and legal structures, and research considerations as well as links primary and secondary sources.

Electronic Resource Guide and Electronic Information System for International Law: American Society of International Law.  ASIL’s is Electronic Research Guide is an online text of strategies and resources for researching international law online.  The guide is arranged in topical chapters, each chapter discussing sources and methods for online research.  The Electronic Information System for International Law (EISIL) is an authoritative collection of primary source international law documents and websites.

NYU Federal Tax Research LibGuide:  NYU Law Library. This comprehensive research guide covers all aspects of tax law research, providing links and references to primary and secondary legal sources and databases.  Some sources may require passwords.

Gallagher Law Library Legal Research Guides:  University of Washington School of Law.  A collection of 300+ topical and “how to” research guides.  Many are on very specific topics such as “Themis, Goddess of Justice,” and “Brown v. Board of Education Websites,” which makes this collection unique.

LLRX.com:  Sabrina Pacifici, editor and publisher.  Well-known among law librarians, award-winning LLRX (Law Librarians’ Resource Exchange) has been a go-to source for advice and information about legal research and technology since 1997.  LLRX combines qualities of a research guide collection and an expert blog, making it an extremely valuable resource.

Law Scout.  University of Akron School of Law.  Law Scout is an extraordinary finding tool for legal research guides.  Law Scout searches research guides from over 140 law schools and other institutions.  Guides are browseable and searchable using both basic and advanced search features.

Happy Valentine’s Day

                    freestockphotos

It’s Valentine’s Day and you’re looking for a card for that special someone, but perhaps you’ve had some disastrous Valentine Days in the past and you know the whole romance thing can be pretty tricky.  However, now that you’re legally savvy, the solution is clear.  What you need is the Legally Binding Valentine available from Docracy, a free legal document website.  Just go to their site, fill in the appropriate blanks, and select which card design you want your Valentine contract printed on.  Wow! You’ve proven what a romantic devil you are and guaranteed yourself a successful Valentine’s Day!

Mmmmmm, ok……. maybe not.  Anyway, have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Law Review Electronic Submission Services — The New, The Old, The Free

Yes, it is February already!    February is the month when you want to begin thinking about submitting your finished scholarly article to law reviews and journals.   Perhaps a bit of a game changer this year is the announcement by some law reviews that they will accept submissions from only one electronic submission service — Scholastica.

Scholastica, the new kid on the electronic submission services block, was founded by a group of University of Chicago graduate students out of a desire to improve the management and publishing of peer-reviewed journals online.   Unlike ExpressO, which is focused on providing electronic delivery service for legal scholars, Scholastica offers submission service across disciplines in the academic publishing world.   According to Brian Cody, one of the founders, Scholastica’s powerful software “goes beyond ExpressO’s submission/distribution service,” at no additional cost to the law review or journal, making the management of the process much easier.   With Scholastica, law reviews and journals have “flexibility to be part of the standard law review submission pool or they can operate as a stand-alone single/double blind peer reviewed journal.”

Scholastica charges $5/submission for law reviews and $10/submission for peer-reviewed journals, and institutional accounts are available.

The following eight general law reviews now exclusively accept submissions from Scholastica:

Boston College Law Review

California Law Review

Cardozo Law Review

Lewis & Clark Law Review

NYU Law Review

University of California Davis Law Review

University of Chicago Law Review

University of Iowa Law Review

 

Additionally, some law reviews state that they strongly prefer submissions from Scholastica (e.g., Arizona State Law Journal and Southern California Law Review).   Other law reviews will accept submissions from either ExpressO or Scholastica (e.g., UCLA Law Review).

Take note:  some law reviews and journals do not accept submissions from electronic submission services.  Stanford Law Review, for example, will only accept submissions that are emailed to them directly.   Others, such as Arkansas Law Review, have a similar policy, but they will also accept manuscripts that are snail-mailed to the review.   It pretty much goes without saying that you need to check individual law reviews and journals for their particular submission requirements.

ExpressO, from bepress, remains the most well-known electronic submission service, having been around for about ten years, and there are hundreds of law reviews and journals that continue to accept (and prefer) submissions from ExpressO.

Like Scholastica, ExpressO is a fee-based submission service, charging about half what Scholastica does for individual submissions.   For Montana Law faculty the law school has an ExpressO institutional account which covers the cost of submissions.   ExpressO recently revamped their website (and many of their services), so if you have not looked at it in a while, take a few minutes to check out the changes.   Sadly, it looks like the new website (at least at the time of this writing) no longer has a page devoted to law reviews and journals that are currently full.

Did you know?  In addition to fee-based submission services, there are a few free electronic submission services that you can use.

One free submission service is offered by Chase Law at Northern Kentucky University.   Keep in mind that Chase Law’s service is for those law reviews and journals that only accept electronic submissions.   So, if a journal only takes hard copy, you’ll have to submit to that journal separately.   (An fyi: Chase Law’s website was recently completely redesigned and you may still find some link glitches.)

Another free submission service comes from Washington & Lee Law School.   The W&L service is unique in that it is not limited to just U.S. law school reviews and journals, but also includes law journals world-wide.   A nice feature of this site is that you can search for law journals by subject, country, and where available, by journal rank.   W&L offers detailed information on using the service and on the ranking methodology.

One other free submission service is LexOpus, a service of YIJUN Institute of International Law.   As with W&L’s service, you can submit to law reviews and journals globally, as well as to those in the U.S.   LexOpus provides a list of participating journals, journals receiving open to offers notifications, and a list of non-participating journals.   Lists are by country and may be found on the main page and by clicking the About tab.

And a few more resources.   Rostron and Levit’s annual update on submitting articles to law reviews and journals offers a chart of current submission requirements.   Keep in mind, however, that Rostron and Levit address  “general” law reviews and journals only (currently 202).   By the way, if you are interested in law review rankings by various entities, scroll to page 53 of their article.

In addition to “general” law reviews and journals,  there hundreds of  specialized law reviews and journals.  You can find information about them in a few different places.

The Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP), published by Gallagher Law Library has a combined alphabetical list of all general and specialized law reviews and journals in print (currently, the CILP list does not include online-only journals).

LexisNexis provides an online directory of law reviews and journals.  Although last updated in 2006, you may find the directory useful because law reviews and  journals are divided into the following  separate files:  general student-edited law reviews;  special focus student-edited journals;  and non-student edited peer-reviewed and trade journals.   Additionally, files are available in HTML, PDF, and spreadsheet formats.

Last, another pair of lists that may be useful to you come from Findlaw, which maintains both a topical list and an alphabetical list of law reviews and journals.

 

Photo credit (arrow): orangeacid via photopin cc

The 63rd Session of the Montana Legislature: Be a Part of It All

Illustration by Stuart Miles. Used with permission from freedigitalphotos.net

Happy Birthday to us!  This week’s blog marks the beginning of our second year in the blogosphere.

Today also marks Day 23 of the 63rd Session of the Montana Legislature.  As of today, 633 bills have been introduced.  Eight-two of those have been tabled, 92 have been transferred, 6 (in addition to the “feed bill”) have been passed by the legislature.  1131 additional bills are in some stage of the drafting process and could still be introduced.

The Montana Legislature meets biannually for 90 days and over the next 77 days you can follow along with the work they do.  The Montana Legislature’s website allows you to follow bills, contact legislators, see what other events are going on at the Capitiol, even watch or listen to committee meetings and floor debate.

Curious to see what the legislature is considering this session or want to follow a specific bill?  Through the LAWS database you can read bills, check their status, and link to recordings of hearings.  To see a list of all bills, click on the “List All Introduced or Unintroduced Bills” link.  Search options include bill number, drafting number, subject, and keyword.  Information available for each bill includes bill text, committee and hearing information, current bill status, and links to audio and video recordings of committee hearings.

TVMT provides cable-television coverage of both floor sessions and committee meetings.  TVMT is carried across Montana; for the list of cable channels, check the TVMT page on the Legislatures’ website.  In addition to broadcast coverage of legislative activity, the Legislature also provides specific coverage of individual committee meetings and floor sessions that allows you to watch or listen to the debate on bills you are interested in over the Internet.  Recordings are archived so you can watch when you have time.

Make sure your voice is heard this legislative session by contacting your elected representatives.  The Contacting Legislators page provides information for phoning, faxing and mailing legislators, as well as an online message form you can use to send a message to individual legislators or the members of one or more committees.

The Montana Legislature meets only every-other-year for 90 days.  The work they do affects every Montana citizen and it is important that we all participate.  The Legislature’s website is a great place to start.  Enjoy the 63rd Session of the Montana Legislature!