Due Process: Georgetown Law Library Blog

Member of the Georgetown Law community can now use HeinOnline to access State Attorney General Reports and Opinions for all 50 states, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. This material is searchable by keyword or by Opinion Number. At this time, opinions and reports from 1980 to the present are available online and Hein is adding earlier opinions with the anticipation of making opinions from all years accessible over the next twelve months.

If you have any questions when using the HeinOnline database, feel free to ask a reference librarian.

This entry was posted on April 10, 2012 at 12:22 PM and has received 1302 views. Print this entry.

The library's Securities Law Research Guide was recently updated with the most up-to-date treatises, databases and federal, state and international law material thanks to a "lawyer-future librarian". The library recently hosted 4 students from the University of Michigan's School of Information for an "Alternative Spring Break" internship. These students traveled from Ann Arbor with dozens of their colleagues who spent a week working at various local libraries. One intern with a law degree worked with our Reference Department on updating the guide and learning about the library's collections, assisting with reference services and meeting with mentor-librarians.

This entry was posted on March 8, 2012 at 11:30 AM and has received 4057 views. Print this entry.

Did you know that a large majority of court documents from the PACER system are readily available through the library's Bloomberg Law subscription? PACER is the fee-based online service that provides access to court records and documents for U.S. Appellate, District and Bankruptcy courts, but as a member of the Georgetown Law community, all you need to do is set up your own Bloomberg Law account as outlined on our catalog link. Once you've got access to the Bloomberg Law database, select the DOCKETS tab and begin your search using the template as seen below. Court documents can be downloaded or e-mailed for no cost.  Please feel free to ask a reference librarian if you need assistance searching Bloomberg Law.

This entry was posted on March 2, 2012 at 10:14 AM and has received 4495 views. Print this entry.

"Since its founding in 1974, the Congressional Budget Office has produced independent, nonpartisan, timely analysis of economic and budgetary issues to support the Congressional budget process."  This analysis is now more accessible on the Congressional Budget Office's new website.  Under the "Topics" tab, researchers can search by topics such as health care, finance and national security, by Congress and by publication type such as background paper, testimony, or cost estimate.

The CBO is most known for the cost estimates they produce to show how a proposed Congressional bill would affect spending or revenues in the federal buget. On the new website, the "Cost Estimate" tab allows users to search by topic and Congress, but also by bill number, committee and date.

To monitor the newly released analyses, users can sign up for an RSS feed.  Georgetown Law Library's Policy Research Guide identifies other resources to follow when researching policy issues.

This entry was posted on February 23, 2012 at 9:59 AM and has received 4768 views. Print this entry.

The complete version of President Obama's FY 2013 Budget of the United States Government is available on FDsys.gov.  New this year, is the mobile app featuring the budget message of the President, departmental funding highlights and summary tables.

A previous Due Process post describes how the federal budget process works. Feel free to consult a reference librarian if you have any additional questions.

This entry was posted on February 14, 2012 at 9:54 AM and has received 6005 views. Print this entry.

In September, 2011, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, Pub. L. 112-29, was signed into law. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office has prepared an indepth resource guide on the implementation of this act which is available on their website. The guide includes a complete legislative history of the act, including bills, Senate & House debates and hearings. Over the next couple of months, the USPTO will be traveling throughout the country to discuss proposed rules for implementation of the act and their scheduled presentations are highlighted here as well.

For secondary sources on conducting patent law research, take a look at the library's Patent Law Research Guide,

This entry was posted on January 24, 2012 at 9:19 AM and has received 6181 views. Print this entry.

In collaboration with Georgetown's undergraduate library, the law library provides access to Credo Reference, featuring electronic access to hundreds of encyclopedias, dictionaries, biographical sources and other reference resources from 80 publishers. Some of the ebooks featured include:

• Dictionary of Spanish Law
• Business German Dictionary
• Financial Times World Desk Reference
• Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
• Marquis Who's Who in America
• National Gallery Image Collection

Credo Reference is searchable by keyword, subject, phrase and date. If you need any assistance making use of this resource, please contact a reference librarian.

This entry was posted on January 12, 2012 at 9:23 AM and has received 6373 views. Print this entry.

The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank maintains an extensive library of economic reports, statistics and special collections, known as FRASER. This website has recently undergone a facelift and the material is much easier to access now. Researchers can search the collection, or browse by topic, author or date. Some of the material contained in FRASER includes:

• Federal Reserve Act documents, including bills, hearings & laws from 1913 through the 1970s
• Economic Reports of the President
• Original documents from the formation of the First & Second Banks of the United States
• Banking & Monetary Statistics from 1914 - 1941

If you have any questions about this resource, feel free to contact a  reference librarian for assistance.

This entry was posted on January 6, 2012 at 12:36 PM and has received 6639 views. Print this entry.

The National Archives has announced that the 1940 Census data will be made available free of charge via the Internet on April 2, 2012. While researchers can also access the material at NARA facilities across the country, Internet access will provide all members of the public with instant access to these historical Census records. Interestingly, the National Archives has also released training videos prepared for the 1940 Census takers which give researchers a unique perspective on the decade.

This entry was posted on January 5, 2012 at 9:08 AM and has received 6665 views. Print this entry.

In many states, such as California and Washington, voter approved initiatives are commonplace. There is now a searchable database of these voter approved initiatives which allows researchers to sort by state, subject matter, form of law, ballot number (where available) and year. For example, anyone tracking education initiatives across the states can now easily retrieve this information with the Miller-Rose Institute Initiatives Database. The site claims that this database provides information on all statewide initiatives adopted by voters in the United States from 1904 through 2010.

An additional feature of the Miller-Rose project is that it contains post-election challenges to these initiatives, identifying court cases by case name and citation, legal basis for the challenge, and outcome.

This entry was posted on December 15, 2011 at 9:58 AM and has received 7960 views. Print this entry.