Moritz Legal Information Blog

On this day in 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights .  Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon proclaims : "Let us respond to the cries of the exploited, and uphold the right to human dignity for all." Human rights have been central to much response to yesterday's release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program.  Many have renewed calls for prosecution, including UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Ben Emmerson .  Assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, Tom Malinowski,  avers  “the test for any nation committed to this Convention and to the rule of law is not whether it ever makes mistakes, but whether and how it corrects them.”  If you'd like to think more deeply about this issue, consult recent titles like U.S. Human Rights Conduct and International Legitimacy and Criminal Law and Human Rights  or search for human rig

Fall exam season begins here at Moritz tomorrow.  Last week, we shared tips on studying like a pro . Already feel like you need a study break?  Here are a few ideas to combat stress during the next week. Pause for Paws :  the University Libraries will be hosting animal visits December 10-14. Art Appreciation :  Visit the exclusive Transfigurations exhibit at the Wexner Center now through December 31 -- free for students. Move Your Muscles :  This Wednesday, reading day for the main campus, enjoy activities like sunrise yoga and pilates (or a free movie, if you'd rather conserve energy). Best of luck!

An easy and fun way for you to improve your writing skills is to read good writing.  Below you'll find a list of  recommendations from Moritz professors and links to items included on the Green Bag annual lists of exemplary legal writing .  Stop by the display near the reference desk to select a book to check out or pick up a treat.  Many of the books are also available from libraries around the state.  Use the OhioLink catalog to search for items.  With your Ohio State credentials, you can borrow books from any OhioLink member library and have them delivered to any OhioLink library in the state (including, of course, the law library).  Books Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (2002). Professor Anne Ralph calls this book "[a]n enjoyable, well-written account of the 1787 Constitutional Convention that gave birth to the U.S. Constitution and our American form of government."  James B. Stewart, Den of Thieves (recommended

A professor at Penn State University posed the question “How Many Scholarly Papers are Available on the Web?” and the related question “How many are freely available?” By "the Web," the Penn author means the "public Web" as assessed via Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search . By scholarly documents, they refer to journal and conference papers, dissertations and master’s degree theses, books, technical reports and working papers. Google Scholar is a freely accessible Web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Microsoft Academic Search is a free public search engine for academic papers and literature, developed by Microsoft Research for the purpose of algorithms research in object-level vertical search, data mining , entity linking  and data visualization . So what's the answer? at least 114 million English-language scholarly documents are accessible on the Web,

We often bring you resources to improve your chances of exam success. Today's post is a little different because instead of recommending a book , online resource , or audio study aid, we're bringing you the best of the best: a blog post from noted faculty member Katherine Kelly on how to stay sane during exams. Staying sane isn't just about being happy---it's directly correlated to being successful during exam time.

The Ohio Employer's Law Blog, written by attorney Jon Hyman  has made the ABA Journal Blawg 100 for the fifth consecutive year. If you're looking for a way to stay current on legal trends without adding to your reading load in an unbearable way, law blogs are the way to go. And the ABA's Blawg Hall of Fame is a great place to start to find the most well-written, on-point, erudite posts. Our recommendation from the 100: Supreme Court Haiku Reporter , which brings us this gem: The “first sale” doctrine Allows student to resell Books bought in Thailand

I love my Fitbit. With the click of a button I can see how well I slept (95% efficiently last night!) or if I've been particularly active (my meager 14,209 steps pales in comparison to the  60,000+ steps records of David Sedaris ). The beauty of the device is that I can upload my data and track it in the long term. When did I get that cold? Oh yeah---early May. I can tell by the sharp reduction in my steps for the week and my surge in hours slept. So Fitbit knows a ton of information about me and thousands of other users. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that data being shared. Fitbit's Privacy Policy, the terms of which you accept presumably just by using the device, say your data is shared only with you and not sold...unless that data has been "de-identified." In other words, Fitbit could aggregate all data related to women aged 30-35 living in Ohio and sell it or do who knows what with it. I suppose I'm okay with that, but I'm not quite convinced