Feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of legal articles and treatises to read, take a look at Jotwell.com (The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)). This brand new electronic publication, sponsored by the University of Miami School of Law, provides brief reviews of recent legal scholarship that the academic and practicing attorney-reviewers find worthy of greater dissemination. The site hopes to "celebrate works that make an original contribution" to legal scholarship.

The major areas of law currently featured include:

• Administrative Law
• Constitutional Law
• Corporate Law
• Criminal Law
• Cyberlaw
• Intellectual Property Law
• Legal Profession
• Tax Law

The 20th anniversary edition of the University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation, a competitor to the Bluebook, is now available for free online.

In order to help scholarly journals provide open, free, immediate, and online access to scholarly research, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, know as SPARC, has issued a new guide, “Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice, by Raym Crow. The guide provides information about both supply-side and demand-side income models and identifies publishers that use each.

Law at the Movies
Hart Auditorium
Thursday, October 1 @ 6:00 pm

The Friends of the Georgetown University Law Library invites you to join Georgetown Law Professors Naomi Mezey and Randy Barnett as they introduce and discuss The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In this film classic Jimmy Stewart is the big-city lawyer determined to bring the rule of law to the untamed West. John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and Vera Miles also star.

This is the inaugural event in the Law Library’s series of popular feature films that illustrate legal themes. Each screening will start with a discussion led by members of the Georgetown Law Faculty. Future events will include movies like Anatomy of a Murder, A Few Good Men, and many more.

This Thursday, September 17th is Constitution Day, a day to commemorate the 1787 signing of the U.S. Constitution. Georgetown Law Library has compiled a Research Guide featuring resources available on the Web for the study of the Constitution. One such resource is the Interactive Constitution, available from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Both the Williams and Wolff libraries have put up displays to observe this significant day for the legal community.  You can stop by the Robert Oakley Reading Room of the Williams library and pick up a handout detailing the legislative history of Constitution Day, as well as fun facts on the Constitutional Convention. While you're there, help yourself to a pocket copy of the Constitution too!

In the Wolff library, check out the display which supports the Law Center’s Constitution Day Panel discussion on “Defining Human Rights: What Role Does International Law Play in Our Constitutional System?” Included are relevant cases, such as the Supreme Court’s Paquette Habana decision (175 U.S. 677 (1900)), as well as books by law professors, David Cole, of Georgetown Law and Jordan Paust, of University of Houston Law Center.

Westlaw is moving away from the use of lengthy, alphanumeric passwords that don't require user names, to the new "OnePass" system of custom user names and passwords. A timeline for this transition is available at http://lawschool.westlaw.com/shared/marketinfodisplay.asp?code=MI&id=327.
Alphanumeric Westlaw passwords will no longer be active after September 29, 2009. If you now log in to Westlaw with your Westlaw password, please create a OnePass username and password or update your exisiting OnePass accounts prior to September 29.

Our Supreme Court Nominations Research Guide has been undated to provide links to background material on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who was nominated to the Supreme Court today by President Obama.We link to previous key decisions of Sotomayor on SCOTUSBlog, as well as many biographical resources and her previous confirmation hearings when nominated to the Circuit Court and District Court.

Additionally, we link to the Supreme Court records and briefs for her recent opinion, Ricci v. DeStefano, which is currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. As her confirmation process proceeds, we will continue to update this guide on a regular basis.

Legal records from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp are being collected by New York University's Tamiment Library and Seton Hall University's Center for Policy and Research with the expectation that public access will be available in the fall of this year. The institutions are making plans to provide remote access to oral histories and other digitized materials they acquire.

Read the full release from NYU and the American Libraries Online article.

On May 14, at 2:00 P.M. E.T., Judge Richard Posner will speak for 20 minutes about his new book, A Failure of Capitalism. After his presentation, he will spend 10 minutes answering questions posed by webinar participants in real time. For more information and to register for the webinar, go to http://tinyurl.com/curyh8.

In response to the current influenza outbreak, the library has updated the Pandemic Flu Research Guide to provide access to the sources of both International and U.S. legal authority, Federal and State emergency preparedness and response plans, as well as Secondary Sources and web sites of interest.

We've referenced the most current government reports available on the topic and provide a link to the World Health Organization's H1N1's update page with RSS feed. You can also check out the Top 10 Epidemiology and Flu Blogs from our guide.