According to the SCOTUSblog:

The Court has released the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), on whether the District's firearms regulations  which bar the possession of handguns and require shotguns and rifles to be kept disassembled or under trigger lock  violate the Second Amendment. The ruling below, which struck down the provisions in question, is affirmed...Quoting the syllabus: The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Justice Scalia authored the majority opinion, available via the SCOTUSblog here, and two dissenting opinions were filed, one authored by Justice Stevens (joined by Justices Souter, Ginsberg and Breyer) and one authored by Justice Breyer (joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsberg).

FictionDB, formerly available as a subscription but now free, offers easy access to concise information about works of fiction and their authors. You can search this database to find authors and lists of their titles. You will also find reviews, synopses, other works in the same series, news of upcoming releases, and ways to buy books from booksellers. Create an account and you can track your own collection and wish list.

Look no further than the Williams Reading Room, where we've displayed some of the most recent additions to our "Popular Reading Collection".

Some of the featured titles include:

Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee, a Georgetown Law grad

The Law Clerk: a novel, by Scott D. Gerber

In the Ring: the Trials of a Washington Lawyer, by Robert S. Bennett

Chambermaid: a novel, by Saira Rao


Many more are on display and other popular titles are available in the Loewinger Lounge at the West End of the Williams Reading Room, so stop by and pick up a book to read "just for the fun of it".

The library will be holding a series of RA training sessions over the course of the summer. The classes will cover topics such as social science and statistics research, advanced Lexis and Westlaw techniques and international and foreign law research.

RAs may also schedule individual research consultations with Jen Davitt (jnl8@law.georgetown.edu) or with Thanh Nguyen (nguyent2@law.georgetown.edu).

In addition, we will be providing an orientation to the library's services and policies for all new RAs over lunch on May 22, 2008.

Sign up for classes and the orientation lunch here.

Prof. Robert Oakley has been posthumously named the recipient of the 2008 Marian Gould Gallagher Award. The highest honor of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), it is given to recognize extended and sustained service to law librarianship [and] for exemplary service to the Association.

Prof. Oakley was the Director of the Georgetown University Law Library from 1982 until his unexpected death on September 29, 2007. In announcing the award the AALL President noted that: "Under his visionary leadership, the [Georgetown] ]library became one of the largest academic law libraries in the country, with an outstanding collection and a magnificent physical facility. Always the innovator, Oakley was one of the first law librarians to automate his library, establish an online catalog, and develop a Web page for his law school."

From 2000-2001 Prof. Oakley served as President of AALL. Besides chairing numerous AALL committees, Prof. Oakley also served on the AALL Executive Board and was the the AALL Washington Affairs Representative for 18 years.

The full award announcement is available through the AALL Website.

The Law Library of Congress will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Law Day on May 1st with a panel discussion entitled, "The Rule of Law in Established and Emerging Countries." Georgetown Law Professor Jane Stromseth will be one of the panelists. 

Law Day is a celebration of the appreciation of U.S. liberties and loyalty to the country, as well as a "rededication to the ideals of equality and justice under law with each other and with other countries." 36 U.S.C. 113 (2000).

Here's a list of other commemorative observances you may not know about.

The February 2008 issue of the Stanford Law Review contains the following articles by Georgetown Law Professors Sasha Volokh, Randy Barnett and Neal Katyal (writing with Richard Caplan):

• Randy E. Barnett, Kurt Lash's Majoritarian Difficulty: A Response to A Textual-Historical Theory of the Ninth Amendment, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 937 (2008).
  
  Kurt Lash believes that, in addition to individual natural rights, the Ninth Amendment protects collective or majoritarian rights as well. In this essay I explain why his majoritarian vision is contrary to the antimajoritarianism of the man who devised the Ninth Amendment, James Madison, and those who wrote the Constitution. Not coincidentally, it is contrary to the individualism of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, and to the public meaning of the Ninth Amendment as it was received during its ratification. It is also contrary to the individualist conception of popular sovereignty adopted in the text of the Constitution as interpreted by a four-to-one majority of the Supreme Court in its first major constitutional decision. And it is contrary to the individualist interpretation of the Ninth Amendment by the one source he cites who actually uses the word "collective": St. George Tucker. In sum, the collectivist interpretation of the phrase "others retained by the people" is anachronistic--a projection of contemporary majoritarianism onto a text that is and was most naturally read as referring to the natural rights retained by all individuals, and to these rights alone.

• Neal Katyal & Richard Caplan, The Suprisingly Stronger Case for the Legality of the NSA Surveillance Program: The FDR Precedent, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1023 (2008).
  
  This Article explains why the legal case for the recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance program turns out to be stronger than what the Administration has advanced. In defending its action, the Administration overlooked the details surrounding one of the most important periods of presidentially imposed surveillance in wartime - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wiretapping and his secret end-run around both the wiretapping prohibition enacted by Congress and decisions of the United States Supreme Court. As explored through primary source material, President Roosevelt acted against the interpretations of, among others, his Attorney General and the Supreme Court regarding a law passed by Congress, deciding, in secret, that wiretapping was essentially his prerogative. That Attorney General, Robert Jackson, later remarked that it was "[t]he only case that I recall in which [FDR] declined to abide by a decision of the Supreme Court."
  
  The FDR precedent provides some justification for what is known about President Bush's wiretapping program - more, it would seem, than what has been put forward by the Administration itself. By outlining some of the general conditions under which Executive Branch precedent may justify contemporary national security decisions, we develop a framework for Executive Branch stare decisis and ultimately conclude that the FDR precedent should not be followed today. We recognize, however, that our conclusion is debatable, and believe that the FDR precedent deserves widespread debate, instead of the inattention it has received thus far. We further explain why the past history and present experience with wiretapping reveals the relative frailty of both courts and Congress in national security disputes, and highlights the need to lace the concept of separation of powers into the Executive Branch.
  

• Alexander Volokh, Privatization and the Law and Economics of Political Advocacy, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 1197 (2008).
  
  A common argument against privatization is that private providers will self-interestedly lobby to increase the size of their market. In this Article, I evaluate this argument, using, as a case study, the argument against prison privatization based on the possibility that the private prison industry will distort the criminal law by advocating for incarceration.
  
  I conclude that there is at present no particular reason to credit this argument. Even without privatization, government agents already lobby for changes in substantive law - in the prison context, for example, public corrections officer unions are active advocates of pro-incarceration policy. Against this background, adding the extra voice of the private sector will not necessarily increase either the amount of industry-increasing advocacy or its effectiveness. In fact, privatization may well reduce the industry's political power: Because advocacy is a public good for the industry, as the number of independent actors increases, the largest actor's advocacy decreases (since it no longer captures the full benefit of its advocacy) and the smaller actors free-ride off the largest actor's contribution. Under some plausible assumptions, therefore, privatization may actually decrease advocacy, and under different plausible assumptions, the net effect of privatization on advocacy is ambiguous.
  
  The argument that privatization distorts policy by encouraging lobbying is thus unconvincing without a fuller explanation of the mechanics of advocacy.
  

Legal Ethics and Human Dignity, Professor David Luban's newest book, has recently been published by the Cambridge University Press.

From the Cambridge University Press description: "In this collection of his most significant papers from the past twenty-five years, he ranges over such topics as the moral psychology of organisational evil, the strengths and weaknesses of the adversary system, and jurisprudence from the lawyer's point of view. His discussion combines philosophical argument, legal analysis and many cases drawn from actual law practice, and he defends a theory of legal ethics that focuses on lawyers' role in enhancing human dignity and human rights. In addition to an analytical introduction, the volume includes two major previously unpublished papers, including a detailed critique of the US government lawyers who produced the notorious 'torture memos'. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both philosophy and law."

The Surprisingly Stronger Case for the Legality of the NSA Surveillance Program: The FDR Precedent, an article written by Neal Katyal and Richard Caplan and soon to be published in an upcoming issue of the Stanford Law Review, has just been posted to SSRN and BePress.

Abstract:

This Article explains why the legal case for the recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance program turns out to be stronger than what the Administration has advanced. In defending its action, the Administration overlooked the details surrounding one of the most important periods of presidentially imposed surveillance in wartime: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wiretapping and his secret end-run around both the wiretapping prohibition enacted by Congress and decisions of the United States Supreme Court. As explored through primary source material, President Roosevelt acted against the interpretations of, among others, his Attorney General and the Supreme Court regarding a law passed by Congress, deciding, in secret, that wiretapping was essentially his prerogative. That Attorney General, Robert Jackson, later remarked that it was "[t]he only case that I recall in which [FDR] declined to abide by a decision of the Supreme Court."

The FDR precedent provides some justification for what is known about President Bush's wiretapping program -- more, it would seem, than what has been put forward by the Administration itself. By outlining some of the general conditions under which Executive Branch precedent may justify contemporary national security decisions, we develop a framework for Executive Branch stare decisis and ultimately conclude that the FDR precedent should not be followed today. We recognize, however, that our conclusion is debatable, and believe that the FDR precedent deserves widespread debate, instead of the inattention it has received thus far. We further explain why the past history and present experience with wiretapping reveals the relative frailty of both courts and Congress in national security disputes, and highlights the need to lace the concept of "separation of powers" into the Executive Branch.

Bleached Faith: The Tragic Cost When Religion is Forced Into the Public Square, Professor Steven Goldberg's newest book, has recently been published by the Stanford University Press.

Professor Goldberg "argues that victory is worse than defeat when people of faith seek to force religion into the public square. The Ten Commandments lose their meaning. Frosty the Snowman has to stand guard when the creche is displayed. And intelligent design reduces God to a second-rate engineer. People on both sides of church-state issues should consider that the gravest threat to real faith comes from those who would water down religion in order to win the dubious honor of forcing it into public buildings and classrooms. The values embodied in the Non-Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses are undermined when religion is distorted in these endless confrontations."