Moritz Legal Information Blog

As perhaps the most famous dissenter, Justice Scalia knows how to craft a barb .   And he’s not alone.   The Columbus Dispatch describes the “pointed language” of dissents written by justices of the Ohio Supreme Court.   The Dispatch reports, for example:   “ In June, [Justice] Pfeifer took issue with a majority opinion that relied on a statute containing a 307-word sentence by writing a one-sentence dissent: 300-plus words to lampoon the ‘24 lines of unrelenting abstruseness.’” Vociferous dissents may be fun to read, but how useful are they?   Here are a few resources for exploring this type of judicial opinion: Justice Ginsberg offers her views on The Role of Dissenting Opinions in a lecture published by the Minnesota Law Review . PBS offers discussion of several “famous dissents,” including dissenting opinions in Korematsu and Dred Scott . Check out some of our titles, like Scalia Dissents and Foreshadows of the Law:   Supreme Court Dissents and Constitutional Developm

Enjoy your holiday break, and we hope you have safe travels. Law students are able to come in to the library using their BuckIDs over the Thanksgiving break. Here are our holiday hours: Wednesday, Nov. 27 7:15am - 5:00pm Thursday, Nov. 28 CLOSED Friday, Nov. 29 10:00am - 5:00pm Saturday, Nov. 30 10:00am - 5:00pm Sunday, Dec. 1 10:00am - midnight No reference service Thursday, Nov. 28 and Friday, Nov. 29.

If you love discount shopping, an overabundance of food, and the opportunity to wear sweat pants for four days straight as you watch football over Thanksgiving weekend, take a minute to give thanks for Sarah Josepha Hale . (The legal connection? She was married to a lawyer; yet another reason to praise Ms. Hale's brilliance!) Ms. Hale was a fervent supporter of Thanksgiving, which wasn't actually a nationally recognized celebration until 1863. She wrote numerous letters to presidents ( including Lincoln ) petitioning them to make Thanksgiving Day a national holiday. Lincoln acquiesced . (According to abrahamlincolnonline.org, "Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states.") Where might you find an actual copy (like a pdf scan) of Lincoln's proclamation? Presidential proclamations are currently found in the Federal Register , but that government publication didn't exis

Cocaine has been in the news quite a bit lately. This left a Slate.com blogger puzzling , "Why is cocaine metric?" Which in turn left me puzzling, how do we quantify drugs for purposes of defining crimes here in Ohio? We all know .08 is the customary blood alcohol limit. Here's what I've found for cocaine: For BUIs (boating under the influence), cocaine in the bloodstream or urine is measured in nanograms per milliliter. For possession generally, Ohio measures severity of the crime in grams. Knowing this, consider the blogger's reasoned thinking: As a fan of powers of two, it seems to me that it would be nice to traffic pounds of cocaine with each pound divided into 128 eight balls. In metric units, a single kilogram of cocaine contains 285.71 eight balls, which is totally ridiculous.

The ABA Journal has released the results of a poll aimed at firms who hired law grads before they pass the bar. Unfortunately, permitting unlicensed attorneys to practice and billing them out to clients as though they have passed the bar presents ethical and legal problems for firms. Anxious about passing the bar? Check out our Bar Exam Research Guide for the resources we have available to you (including past exams).

For your viewing pleasure, here are thirty pieces of art made by people in prison.

Estate planning is really about tax planning because one of the estate planning attorney's goals is to preserve a client's assets (i.e., act in the best interests of the client). With artists, this preservation has a little bit of a twist. The client has physical property (like paintings or manuscripts), but she also has intellectual property (like copyrights and trademarks). And what do you do when a client's wishes and judgment are perhaps clouded by mental illness? In a nutshell, the estate planning attorney must be well versed in all kinds of matters beyond simply drafting wills. It's not merely a qusetion of intestacy; family resentments, mental illness, and bitter history come to the fore when money is at stake. To read about the collision of these issues in the life and death of a famous author, check out For Gore Vidal, a Final Plot Twist from the New York Times . It seems Mr. Vidal bequeathed everything to Harvard University, though he has no prior connect

You've probably noticed the Moritz Law website redesign. Have you given thought to  why the site was redesigned? Think about this: websites for organizations serve a variety of purposes, in particular meeting the needs of the organization's members as well as advertising to the public what the organization does. U.S. government websites are often like any website for an organization. They store historical information to aid that agency in its work, and they provide public-facing content to let the public (often taxpayers) know just what the agency does. In honor of Veteran's Day, here's a great example of the unique content you can find on U.S. government's websites: History of Veterans Day

For an interesting take on the ways law schools should embrace technology, check out this article from the ABA Journal.

The Little Book of Elvis Law has arrived! And who would have thought...the book is published by the American Bar Association . In fact, the ABA has a whole "Little Books of Law" series . Still puzzling over an employment path? Why not try writing for this series?

As a law clerk, National Adoption Day was the best day in court. Everyone looked forward to it, including the two judges who presided most and who were both adoptees themselves. Getting in the spirit a bit early, one judge dressed as a fairy godmother for Halloween to sign off on adoption orders. Though adoptions may sometimes be fraught with conflicting emotion, they are often the happiest reason to be in court. Care to work as an adoption attorney? Brush up with some of our best adoption law books and resources .

Almost six-and-a-half years ago, a student at Virginia Tech showed up on campus and shot numerous people in classrooms and a dorm, leaving thirty-three dead. Litigation ensued, and the university was found liable in a wrongful death suit. On appeal, the verdict was overturned on the basis that the school could not have foreseen the harm. "Last year a Montgomery County Circuit Court jury awarded each family $4 million, an amount that was reduced to $100,000 each by a state cap on damages," according to The Richmond Times-Dispatch .