Law School News Brief Great Way to Track Law School Developments

St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami provides "Web users [with] a centralized gateway to monitor law schools’ activities as they occur with its U.S. Law School News Brief. It uses specialized proprietary software to scan the Web for information regarding law schools and law school faculty in the United States. The information is posted in a continuously updated stream of links to the relevant news release and the law school’s Web site. The 90-day archive is searchable by topic, geographic region, school or personal name, or various combinations. It’s an easy way to stay abreast of current events in other law schools and the law school community as a whole.

Rules for Effective Writing

Beginning with her first rule—"write honestly"—Diane Sandford offers eight Rhetorical Comments, or "guideposts to non-distracting communication" in the latest installment of her regular "Wisdom from the Grammar Goddess" column on LLRX.com. Others include "proofread, revise, and proofread once again"; "avoid affectations and fancy words"; and "state your strongest arguments first." She concludes by warning that her rules "do not guarantee intelligibility; when applied, they do not confer the attribute ‘fine writing.’ Even ‘acceptable’ writing comes at the price of inordinate effort. Nothing is simple."

New Election Law Website

The Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University has launched a new election law Web site designed to educate the public on the legal issues surrounding elections.

The site is an extensive resource on the laws governing federal, state, and local elections. It contains an e-book on Election Law covering such topics as voter eligibility, candidate eligibility, campaigns, voting equipment & procedures, voting districts, and types of elections. The site will be updated frequently, as current issues in election law emerge. Also, it will feature a weekly editorial on a timely topic by a Moritz Law faculty member.

Attorney Blawgs - "Second Opinions"

Second Opinions is a blog by attorney Sanford Hausler of the firm Cox Padmore Skolnik & Shakarchy LLP. It has news primarily about the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and its opinions. Anyone interested in the 2nd Circuit should check it out.

Shortage of Lawyers Held to Be Violation of Rights

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held today that a shortage of attorneys for incarcerated indigent defendants, resulting from chronic state budget limitations, violated their right to counsel under Article XII of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. Lavallee v. Justices in the Hampden Superior Court, SJC-09268 (July 28, 2004).

Lawyers Blog the DNC

Bloggers will be covering the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this year for the first time. At least four lawyers are among those granted press credentials for the Democratic National Convention: Tom Burka, Allen Larson, Jeralyn Merrit, and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga. View a complete list of DNC Convention Bloggers.

Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

The 9-11 Commission's Final Report is available on GPO Access in its entirety as a single PDF file, and is also available as a collection of smaller PDFs arranged in a browse table based on the document's table of contents. The report will also be available on the Commission's site.

Finding Good Blawgs

As the number of blawgs (law-related weblogs) has grown, so has the number of ways to find good blawgs in your areas of interest. Here are some of the sites you can use to discover these helpful tools:

The Blawg Channel is a group weblog or “blog” with contributions from several prominent legal bloggers. Currently you can sample postings from Dennis Kennedy, whose blog DennisKennedy.blog focuses on Legal Technology, Technology Law and Other Musings; Ernest Svenson, who blogs as Ernie the Attorney; Marty Schwimmer, who operates The Trademark Blog; and Tom Mighell, who provides Internet Legal Research and other tips at Inter Alia. Other prominent legal bloggers will be added.

The EDDix 50, a list of fifty favorite bLAWgs from EDD Information Exchange.

Blawg.org "Your Source for Law & Legal Related Weblogs."

Legal Alerts and Current Awareness Services from The Virtual Chase.

GAO name change

The GAO Human Capital Reform Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-271; 118 Stat. 811), enacted on July 7, 2004, has renamed the "General Accounting Office" the "Government Accountability Office." The GAO URL remains the same. Thanks to beSpacific and Rick McKinney, Assistant Law Librarian, Federal Reserve Board, for this item.

bepress Legal Repository Launched

The Berkeley Electronic Press announced the launch of the bepress Legal Repository, a network of law-related working papers and research materials. Law schools, research units, institutes, centers, think tanks, conferences, and learned societies are posting high-quality papers that may be downloaded without charge. The repository has three dozen collections at present, including not only general law (e.g., Cornell Law School Working Papers Series) but also many specialized subject areas (e.g., health law and policy, intellectual property law, labor law, law and economics, public law and legal theory, and taxation).
 
You can browse by subject area or search the entire repository by keyword.

Select Committee Report on Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq Published

The Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (S. Rept. 108-301) is now available from the U.S. Government Printing Office. The unclassified report is intended to provide the Senate and the American public with a substantial record of the facts underlying the conclusions of the Committee regarding the intelligence community's prewar assessments of Iraq's programs for weapons of mass destruction and its ties to terrorism.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence oversees and makes continuing studies of the intelligence activities and programs of the United States Government, and reports to the Senate about those activities. Pursuant to this duty, for the past year the Committee has undertaken an in-depth examination of the matters described in the report.

Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay indicted, turns self in

Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday and turned himself in to the FBI Thursday morning. He was scheduled to appear before a magistrate in Houston at 11:30 am CDT on Thursday. JURIST's Paper Chase coverage.

British appeals court to consider whether torture taints evidence

Lawyers for 10 foreign terrorism suspects have asked a British appeals court to throw out evidence gathered at U.S. prison camps, on the basis of new evidence they say shows "the commission of torture ... in U.S.-controlled camps."

The 10 are among 17 foreigners declared "suspected international terrorists" by the British government and held indefinitely without charge under emergency powers passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. A secret tribunal has ruled that the British government can use evidence to justify holding them even if it was obtained by torture.

UK Terror Suspects Say Torture Taints U.S. Evidence on Reuters.

Boston Ordinance

A Boston, Mass., ordinance states: "A lodger shall not be lodged for more than seven consecutive nights unless he shall have taken a bath." (Presumed Ignorant!, page 23)

Florida "felons" list strikes eligible voters

On Thursday, a Florida state judge ordered the Florida Division of Elections to make copies available of the list of 47,000 purported felons who are potentially ineligible to vote in November's election. The list had been sent to county elections supervisors, who are expected to determine who should be removed from the rolls.

The Miami Herald compared the Division of Elections list to Florida corrections records and reported that at least 2,119 people on the list had received clemency and had their voting rights restored.

On Friday, the civil rights group People for the American Way set up a Web site to search for names on the list.

Salon.com News. People For the American Way's Potential Felon Match List.

Florida Board of Elections Must Release List

A Florida state court judge yesterday ordered the Board of Elections to release the list of nearly 48,000 Florida citizens to be purged from the voter rolls because they had been identified as possible felons. In 2000 state officials admitted after the election that a similar list had purged thousands of eligible voters in error. CNN coverage. ACLU coverage.

Abraham Lincoln's Notes for a Law Lecture

Robert Ambrogi's LawSites excerpts some advice from Lincoln to young lawyers and law students. For example: "There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. ... Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief -- resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer."

Click on the link above to go to the LawSites posting or view Abraham Lincoln's Notes for a Law Lecture at Abraham Lincoln Online.

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