Moritz Legal Information Blog

The Moritz Law Library offers students access to web-based legal tutorials and other resources through the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI), a non-profit consortium. CALI provides law students at member schools access to nearly 1000 interactive, web-based “lessons” in many subject areas including first-year topics like torts, criminal law, and contracts. These lessons, created by law professors and librarians at U.S. law schools, are useful as a supplemental learning tool. CALI also features a growing ebook collection , which now includes casebooks, rules of procedure and evidence, and law-related coloring books. To access CALI lessons, new Moritz users must first click the “Register” link in the upper right corner of the cali.org site and enter the Moritz student code . Use your OSU email address when registering. Please contact a Moritz reference librarian if you need assistance, or if you have questions about additional study aids in print or online.

Do you need a jump start on your seminar paper this semester? The Moritz Law Library has created a list of resources relevant to this process, including books on academic legal writing, scholarly research tools, and more. Here are a few research tips for academic legal writing: Sign up for a research consultation with a reference librarian at any stage, from topic selection to developing background research.   Explore the world beyond Google. The Moritz Law Library and the OSU Libraries offer a wide range of databases, books, and journals.   Keep track of your research process so that you don’t repeat steps and so that you can cite sources properly.   Synthesize sources. Academic legal writing draws on many supporting sources rather than only a few.   As you read law review articles, take note of the range and frequency of citations as a model for your own work.

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum , just a five-minute walk from the law school, is currently exhibiting over 70 works of art by famous American political cartoonists and death row inmates. Political cartoonist Patrick Chappatte and journalist Anne-Frederique Widmann curated the exhibit, Windows on Death Row: Art from Inside and Outside the Prison Walls , which they intend to stimulate conversations around “politics, race, morality, and the question of equality under the law.” What can you expect to see at the exhibit? According to The Political Cartoon , political (also known as editorial) cartoons should demonstrate artistic quality; genuine sentiment; fresh, uncomplicated imagery; and lasting importance. In other words, don’t expect to laugh, but do expect some dry, complex wit and exceptional artistic talent. The inmates’ works are more diverse in form and medium, yet each convey something about daily prison life, the criminal justice system, or the experience of lifel

Do you need to research how U.S. law compares to the law of a foreign jurisdiction? Check out the Moritz Law Library’s foreign law databases , listed alongside the international law databases on the Legal Research Databases page. Two noteworthy offerings in this group are the International Encyclopaedia of Laws and vLex Global. The International Encyclopaedia of Laws offers English explanations of foreign law on various topics including constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, cyber law, energy law, environmental law and more. This resource can be a good starting point for locating relevant primary law in a foreign jurisdiction. vLex Global offers a variety of both primary and secondary sources in foreign jurisdictions, with a particular emphasis on Spanish language materials. Contact a Moritz reference librarian for any assistance using these resources or for more general assistance researching non-U.S. law.

The answer can be found in the Study Break area in the Moritz Law Library, located between the reference desk and the public access computers on the 2nd floor. Turn off your brain for a while. In this area you’ll find materials for a number of activities to help you take a short break from the stress of studying for finals. Activities materials include colored pencils and pages from the coloring book, What Color is Your C.F.R.? , jigsaw puzzles, playing cards, and old looseleaf pages to cut into snowflakes like this: These can get pretty elaborate. A looseleaf service is so called because it is made up of pages or pamphlets filed in looseleaf binders. This format allows current information to be easily added to the existing materials, removing out-of-date pages and replacing them with up-to-date information. The ease of updating the binders allows supplementation to be added frequently, even weekly in some cases. Most looseleafs are now available online. Only out-of date lo

During a recent visit to the Moritz College of Law, Moritz alum Lawrence H. Stotter ’58 presented the Moritz Law Library with a new addition to the Law Library’s Stotter Collection: five volumes comprising the full report of The Trial of Queen Caroline , published in 1820. Title page and frontispiece, the latter depicting the House of Lords during the Queen's Trial The Moritz Law Library’s Stotter Collection originated in 2006 as a donation of over 200 volumes on family and domestic law that Stotter, a prominent trial attorney and family law specialist, had carefully selected and curated over the course of several decades. The Collection contains works ranging from the 17th century to the 20th, serving, as a whole, to depict the historical development of this area of practice. Queen Caroline was the wife of King George IV of the United Kingdom, whose reign began in 1820. Prior to his coronation, George requested that Parliament dissolve their marriage. The newly-gifted volu

As we enter the final months of the semester, consider checking out the print and online study aids available through the Moritz Law Library. West Academic's online Study Aids collection includes over 500 titles, including Nutshells, Hornbooks, and outlines, on subjects ranging from criminal law to trusts and estates. Moritz students and faculty can also search for – and access – West Academic’s e-books through the OSU University Libraries Catalog . Another helpful exam prep tool is the set of online tutorials on the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) site. To access CALI lessons, new Moritz users must first click the “Register” link in the upper right corner of the cali.org site and enter the Moritz student code . Use your OSU email address when registering. The Moritz Law Library also maintains a large collection of print study aids in the Reserve Room on the second floor. For a full description of the library’s study aids collection and other academic succes