Due Process: Georgetown Law Library Blog

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 457 views. Print this entry.

The Georgetown Law Library has launched a new data archiving service, the Georgetown Law Dataverse, to support the empirical research of Law Center faculty members, academic centers and institutes, and legal journals.

"Georgetown Law faculty are increasingly publishing scholarship with empirical data components," said Law Library Director and Professor of Law Michelle Wu. "This trend is reflected in the broader legal academy as well. As a result, free, open and reliable access to source data has become critical to the development of legal scholarship. With an eye towards facilitating such scholarship, the Georgetown Law Library is offering this innovative service to support the preservation and sharing of digital datasets."

The Georgetown Law Dataverse is a repository of digital datasets, collections of statistical information or other related data used in empirical scholarship. This service will allow authors to permanently preserve and publically release data that they have collected. Authors who continue to update their work after publication can upload revised data as it becomes available.

More information about the Dataverse is available here: http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/collections/dataverse.cfm.

This entry was posted on January 12, 2012 at 1:41 PM and has received 778 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 691 views. Print this entry.

The 2011 ABA Journal Blawg 100 is now available.  The Blawg 100 is a list of the top legal blogs, according to popular vote.

To find more legal blogs, see the ABA Blawg Directory, where you can browse blogs by topic, author, geography, or law school affiliation.

For more information on current awareness resources for a particular subject, see the Georgetown Law Library research guide on the subject of interest.

This entry was posted on January 10, 2012 at 12:27 PM and has received 741 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 987 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 2327 views. Print this entry.

The Georgetown Law Library recently updated and expanded our Land Use Law Research Guide.  The new version has increased coverage of treatises and study aids and where to find journal articles on land use, zoning, and planning law.  The guide also includes where to find municipal codes and has a list of current awareness resources that provide information on recent developments in this area of law.

This entry was posted on December 9, 2011 at 1:04 PM and has received 2608 views. Print this entry.

The library's new Consumer Law Research Guide outlines the major statutory guidance for current consumer laws and regulations, as well as secondary sources to supplement your research. As regulations arising from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Pub. L. 111-5)  are being implemented throughout the federal government, this guide identifies resources to monitor. Additionally, treatises, journal indexes and government web sites full of reports, statistics and studies, such as the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Consumer Product Safety Commission are featured.

This entry was posted on November 9, 2011 at 9:59 AM and has received 4227 views. Print this entry.

Eight times a year, the Federal Reserve publishes commentary on the current economic conditions throughout its regional districts and the nation as a whole. Their compilation, the Beige Book, is just one of the many publications produced by the Fed and made available on their web site. To assist researchers, FedinPrint is their comprehensive search engine which provides access to all of the Fed's reports, working papers, statistics and surveys.  It's an invaluable resource for any researcher tracking economic trends, following the financial crises throughout the world or monitoring the areas of securities law or banking.

This entry was posted on November 3, 2011 at 2:08 PM and has received 4414 views. Print this entry.

Did you know that our neighbors on H Street produce policy reports for Congress on a daily basis? The U.S. Government Accountability Office bills itself as the "congressional watchdog" since they monitor and investigate how the federal government spends its budget. In this capacity, they produce indepth analysis of government programs and their reports can often serve as a wealth of background knowledge for seminar papers or other scholarly writing.

The newly released reports are highlighted on their home page and on their Facebook site. They are also searchable by keyword or report number. Some recent topics investigated by the GAO include:

• National Preparedness, Improvements Needed for Acquiring Medical Countermeasures to Threats from Terrorism and other Sources, GAO 12-121
• Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Actions Needed to Reduce Evolving but Uncertain Federal Financial Risks, GAO 12-86
• The Federal Government's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook, Fall 2011 Update, GAO 12-28SP

If you have any questions about how to access GAO reports or other sources for seminar paper topics, feel free to consult a reference librarian.

This entry was posted on October 27, 2011 at 1:47 PM and has received 4750 views. Print this entry.