Moritz Legal Information Blog

Tips for 1Ls From Around the Blogosphere

Robert Ambrogi's post, Crashing the Wexis Gate , and WSJ Law Blog post, Coming Soon: More Publishers of Court Rulings? , both discuss Carl Malamud's recent letter to West concerning West's control of the country's case law.

WSJ Law Blog has a list of possible candidates for U.S. Attorney General.

UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh has an interesting post on his blog warning law students about the use of commonly misspelled phrases. Professor Volokh mentions "all intensive purposes", "baited breath", "tough road to hoe" and "free reign". I believe I have the right to remain silent as to my participation in these crimes against English. This topic reminded me about Washington State University English Professor Paul Brians' excellent Common Errors in English Usage Website .

Interesting in listening to a court case while on the elliptical machine or driving to school? The Library has subscribed to the AudioCaseFiles service. AudioCaseFiles contains downloadable audio files of court opinions and podcasts from law professors and law students. The website contains cases from many 1L classes along with some 2L and 3L subjects. To use this service, simply go to the AudioCaseFiles website ( http://www.audiocasefiles.com/ ) and "Sign Up for An Account." Just be sure to use your OSU e-mail address(.osu.edu) when you sign up.

Many people have long suspected that corporations, special interest groups and others edit Wikipedia articles anonymously. Now there's proof. WikiScanner "traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations." Read the Wired article about WikiScanner . From TVC .

HeinOnline is going to be adding the Congressional Record , and related documents, to its online library. Via DePaul Law Library blog .

An article from LawFirmInc. (available via Law.com ) discusses its recent survey of law firm librarians. Summary: Jobs Good, Vendors Bad.

The Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law have created a Legal Conference Watch Blog , to help faculty keep aware of upcoming conferences.

1-L's should consider reading George Washington University Law Professor Orin Kerr's How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students .

The European Library is the web project of 47 participating European national libraries. The website , available in 20 languages, allows users to search through the resources of 30 of the 47 national libraries involved in the project. Resources can be both digital or bibliographical (books, posters, maps, sound recordings, videos, etc.). Currently The European Library gives access to 150 million entries across Europe. From beSpacific .

WisBlawg tells us about LOUIS , the New Mega Search Gov Docs Database .

TimesSelect Watch: Yes, No, Maybe Redux: NYP Says Yes (from Forbes.com) Via TVC .

Tonight on C-Span: Justice Alito and Carter Phillips! (from WSJ Law Blog).

Lawyer/author Scott Turrow thinks so . From Concurring Opinions .

The 2007 version of George Washington University Law Professor Daniel Solove's census is now available.

The Ohio Supreme Court issued its decision yesterday in State ex rel. Ohio Gen. Assembly v. Brunner , 2007-Ohio-3780 ( PDF ). The Court determined that Governor Strickland's veto of a bill enacted during the final days of the 2006 Ohio General Assembly session was invalid. The Court's 5-2 decision was unusually contentious. The Court's press release describes the contention: Pointing to past state and federal court decisions that he said have consistently tied the start of a governor's ten-day review period to the date a bill is presented for his approval, Justice Pfeifer wrote: “The majority today allows the General Assembly, through the manipulation of its adjournment, to effectively render a governor's veto power a nullity.... The majority defies common sense, the Ohio Constitution, the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court and the supreme courts of other states, and this court's own prior “unmistakably clear” interpretation of the very same const

LegisStorm's Congressional Travel Database is intended to make government more transparent by providing information about the specifics of privately financed congressional trips. From the site: LegiStorm's congressional travel database provides details on 27,102 privately financed trips costing $57.1 million taken by members of Congress and their staff since the beginning of 2000. This information was obtained from the disclosure forms members of Congress and their staff are required to file after taking a privately-funded trip. From these disclosures you can learn: Who has accepted free travel Where they went and the purpose of the trip How much was spent on transportation, lodging, meals and other expenses And what private organization paid for it all With LegiStorm's congressional travel database you can get even more. Use the icon to get details about any trip. You'll find records of everyone else who went on the trip, a map detailing where they stayed, a breakdown

The American Lawyer Annual Survey results are out. The survey measures "the satisfaction of midlevel associates employed by the nation's top law firm's."