D'Angelo Law Library Blog

Solving the Legal Abbreviations Puzzle

It's difficult to decypher legal abbreviations sometimes, and especially when doing research on historical, foreign, comparative, and international law topics.  For unknown legal abbreviations, you can use Black's Law Dictionary (online on Westlaw) and Prince's Bieber Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations.  But here's a handy free resource that helps with many legal abbreviations you'll encounter - the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations.

For example, if you found a citation to Shelley's Case - 1 Co. Rep. 93b, 76 Eng. Rep. 206 (1581) - you'll see in the Cardiff Index that the abbreviations stand for "Coke's King's Bench Reports" and "English Reports".  The reports of Sir Edward Coke are in Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Early English Books Online (EEBO).  The English Reports are in HeinOnline, LLMC Digital Law Library, and CommonLII (free).

World Trials Library via HeinOnline

  

 

The World Trials Library via HeinOnline includes transcripts and reports for famous trials such as the Nuremberg war crimes trials,Sacco and Vanzetti, and Leopold and Loeb. 

It also contains the following compilations:

• American State Trials
• Howell's State Trials
• Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals
• Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression
• Trial of German Major War Criminals
• Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (IMT, Nuremberg)
• Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernbreg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10

GET Your United Nations Treaties Here...and More!

The United Nations Law Collection (UNLC), located in HeinOnline at http://heinonline.org.proxy.uchicago.edu/HOL/Index?collection=unl&set_as_cursor=clear, includes PDFs of multilateral and bilateral treaties published in the United Nations Treaty Series (U.N.T.S.).  You can retrieve UN treaty PDFs by using the Get Citation feature.

Besides being able to get U.N.T.S. (and L.N.T.S.) treaties by citation, you can also search for treaties by Title, Popular Name, Country/Party, Text, Signature Date, Signature Place, Treaty Description, and "Kavass Subjects".  With this last feature, you can search for all treaties on "piracy", for instance.  Note that not all treaties are tagged with "Kavass Subjects", so use a combination of searches to be thorough.  The UNLC has a separate list of "International Agreements By Popular Name" and links to "Scholarly Writings" of over 50 faculty members.  The UNLC includes an external link to the free United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law (AVL) - another source for UN law publications in PDF.

There is a "Treaties and Agreements Library" in HeinOnline.  This includes sources of treaties and other international agreements to which the U.S. is a party.  It does not include the U.N.T.S.  The U.N.T.S. is an alternate source of treaties to which the U.S. is a party.  It also includes non-U.S. treaties.  To access the U.N.T.S., you need to use the separate United Nations Law Collection in HeinOnline.  

The United Nations Law Collection also includes PDF versions of Multilateral Treaties deposited with the Secretary-General (for status of treaties, texts of declarations and reservations), the League of Nations Treaty Series (L.N.T.S.); ICJ Reports of Judgments, Advisory Opinions and Orders; Reports of International Arbitral Awards (R.I.A.A.); ICJ, International Law Commission (ILC), and UNCITRAL yearbooks; Documents of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (San Francisco, 1945); reports of proceedings of UN conferences; the Treaty Handbook; and other UN law publications.

Forthcoming updates to the United Nations Law Collection will contain ICJ Pleadings and Oral Arguments, the ICJ Bibliography, and Judgements of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal (UNAT).  Stay tuned!

U.S. v. Said: Who Is a Pirate?

Pirate waiting for the CTA bus (photo by Lyonette Louis-Jacques)

U.S. v. Said (E.D. Va., Aug. 17, 2010) has sparked interest in the law of piracy. Alleged Somali pirates in a small skiff fired on the USS Ashland in the Gulf of Aden.  The U.S. Navy ship returned fire, burning the skiff, and killing one of its passengers.  The U.S. crew took into custody the remaining Somali nationals aboard the skiff.  Prosecutors charged the Somalis with piracy under 18 U.S.C. § 1651.  The judge dismissed the piracy charges, citing U.S. v. Smith, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 153 (1820)[Google Scholar] [HeinOnline].  As the Somalis did not rob the USS Ashland or its crew, the government failed to establish that their acts constituted piracy on the high seas as defined under the law of nations as of 1819, when Congress enacted the statute outlawing piracy (ch. 77, 3 Stat. 511)[HeinOnline].  The court reasoned that persons affected by the law could not know of any new definition of piracy, and therefore due process disallowed reference to the current law of nations as the standard for defining piracy. Several charges other than piracy remained viable against the Somalis.

Selected blog posts and news stories that address the Said case and the issue of Who is a pirate?:  

• Piracy Charges Dismissed by Federal Judge (Eugene Kontorovich, The Volokh Conspiracy)
• How to Define Piracy (Cont'd):  U.S. Judge Dismisses Piracy Charges (Julian Ku, Opinio Juris)
• How to Define Piracy (Cont'd):  A Critique of U.S. v. Said (David Glazier, Opinio Juris)
• How to Define Piracy under U.S. Law and the "Law of Nations" (Julian Ku, Opinio Juris)
• Prosecuting Pirates in National Courts:  US v Said and Piracy under US Law (Douglas Guilfoyle, EJIL:  Talk!)
• Who's a Pirate?  In Court, a Duel Over Definitions (Keith Johnson, WSJ)
• Who's a Pirate?  Turns Out, the Answer's Not So Simple (Ashby Jones, Law Blog - WSJ)

Several commentators cite Article 15 of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas as the source for the authoritative definition of "who is a pirate" under the law of nations.  Article 15 states that "any illegal acts of violence, detention or any act of depredation" committed by a crew on ship directed at another ship on the high seas constitutes piracy.  Thus, the Geneva Convention does not require robbery for acts to count as piracy.

For additional information on the law of piracy, check Yvonne M. Dutton's Bringing Pirates to Justice (CJIL, Summer 2010), Eugene Kontorovich's "A Guantanamo on the Sea":  The Difficulty of Prosecuting Pirates and Terrorists,  International Legal Responses to Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (ASIL Insights),  Piracy and International Law and  recent articles, Peter T. Leeson's Rationality, Pirates, and the Law, Alfred P. Rubin's The Law of Piracy (2d ed., 1998), and Ivan Shearer's Piracy article in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law Online.  See also the Law Library of Congress' collection of digitized books on pre-1923 piracy trials from various nations.

Mobile Apps for Law

Can't get enough of Judge Posner?  There's an app for that!  The Little Book of Plagiarism by Richard A. Posner for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (I'm still waiting for The Quotable Judge Posner app).

Flummoxed by "noscitur a sociis", "uberrimae fidei",  "nulla poena sine lege", or writs of "scire facias" or "capias in withernam"*?  There's an app for that!  For a mere $49.99, you can get West's Black's Law Dictionary for iPhone for quick and handy access to legal definitions.

Need the Constitutional provision dealing with quartering of soldiers?  There's an app for that!  The Constitution of the United States for 99 cents.  (But Professor David Currie reading the U.S. Constitution?  Priceless!)

Other law-related apps (mostly for iPhone) include Fastcase for iPhone (the app is free, but you need to register an account), LexisNexis Get Cases and Shepardize, Westlaw, WestlawNext, Sum and Substance study aids for constitutional law, contracts, and criminal law, ABAJournal (FREE), Legal News, Nolo's Plain English Law Dictionary (FREE), LawStack: a legal library in your pocket (FREE), Social Science Research Network (SSRN), including the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN)(FREE), and PocketJustice FULL (U.S. Supreme Court decisions, audio files, voting alignments, biographies of justices, and a FREE version).

Law apps for BlackBerry include the Law Pod's federal rules and BEIKS Bouvier's Law Dictionary.

For Android, there's the DroidLaw legal reference app.

There are mobile apps for federal, state, and local government information, including for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of State, Congress, and the White House.

Additionally, Mobile Applications for Law Students and Lawyers lists apps for productivity, fun (Pandora!), as well as more BlackBerry and Android apps.

iPhoneJD identified 60 iPhone apps for lawyers recently, among them some fun ones like "More Cowbell".

And, if you, like me, have been missing the Vuvuzela sound, there are iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android apps for that!  

Wired reviews four Vuvuzela apps for iPhone with Annoyance ratings included, and links to a video on the history of the Vuvuzela.  Vuvuzela 2010 (has ads) and PocketVuvu both have their charms.  And there's even a way to Vuvuzela-ize websites you visit, so everywhere you go, it's Vuvuzela Time!  See e.g.:

http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk/www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/law/

You can check out our D'Angelo Law Library research guides and feel like you're at a soccer/football game at the same time!

 

*See J. Duncan M. Derrett, "Withernam:  A Legal Practical Joke of Sir Thomas More," 7 Cath. Law. 211 (1961).

The Constitutions of the World, At Your Fingertips! HeinOnline's World Constitutions Illustrated Database

 
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Hirohito_Signing.JPG

World Constitutions Illustrated via HeinOnline!

Check out the new World Constitutions Illustrated library in the HeinOnline database.  It includes current and historical constitutions for all countries in their original languages and in English translation.  The database also includes amending laws, and related texts, scholarly articles, and commentary.  You can browse the database by country and by resource.  Most materials in the database are in English, but there are also a few in French, German, and Spanish. 

The initial launch contains around 800 classic books on constitutions, constitutional history and jurisprudence, such as Amos Peaslee's Constitutions of Nations, works by Max Farrand, Joseph Story, Edward Corwin, etc.  The earliest work dates back to 1583.  The database also includes the historical constitutional hierarchy for the UK, Brazil, Colombia, and France.  More will be added in future updates.

World Constitutions Illustrated also includes the full texts of periodicals such as Constitutional Commentary, the East European Constitutional Review, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law, the Department of State's annual human rights reports from 1976 to present, the British & Foreign State Papers (1812-19680, Library of Congress' country studies, the CIA World Fact Book from 1981 to present, Modern Legal Systems Cyclopedia, John Trone's "Print Sources for Historical Constitutions" article, and links to external websites such as the Comparative Constitutions Project and the ConstitutionMaking.org Resources for Constitutional Design page.

Volokh on "The Future of Books Related to the Law"

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh is publishing an article on this topic for the next Michigan Law Review “Books Related to the Law” issue. He posted the Foreword on his Volokh Conspiracy blog and plans to serialize the rest of the article to generate online discussion. This topic is obviously central to the future of law libraries, so I look forward to reading the entire article when it is published. I’ve excerpted part of the Foreword below.

People have been reading books for over 500 years, in more or less the same format. Book technology has changed in some measure since then. Fonts have become more readable. Books have become more affordable. The indexing of reference works has generally improved. Still, the general form of the book has remained much the same.

But the arrival of e-readers, such as the Kindle 2 and the Sony eBook, offers the possibility of a major change. First, people may shift to reading existing books on those readers, and the shift may lead them to change the way they use books, for instance by letting readers have many reference works at their fingertips. Second, the shift may change the content of books. And, third, the shift may change who publishes books, and in some measure which books are published.

In this Foreword, I will try to briefly sketch how these changes might play out as to books related to the law: textbooks, scholarly books, legal books aimed at laypeople, treatises, other practitioner reference books, and law student study tools. I will also talk about what changes to the technology, and to the structure of the legal book market, are likely to be needed to capture the technology’s possible benefits.

The effects of the change in medium will likely be varied….But many of the effects will point in the direction in which electronic distribution tends to change the media generally: Electronic distribution will reduce cost, increase choice, and increase convenience. And in the process it will not only facilitate access to existing material, but will also promote the production of more material.

Future of Reputation Now Free Online

Late in Autumn Quarter, I had to regrettably inform two harried students that all three of the Library's copies of Daniel Solove's The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet were checked out. If only I had known then that the full text was available for free online! Our helpful library staff have since added a link to our online catalog, so we will be prepared next time.

Professor Solove's book, along with James Boyle's Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, were both published in print by Yale University Press and are now available online for free under a Creative Commons license.

The continued development of open access in academic publishing will certainly be worth monitoring.

[Hat tip to Slaw.]

Try out KluwerArbitration (International Commercial Arbitration database)

KluwerArbitration.com is one of the best resources for researching international commercial arbitration, and we have a trial subscription through December 1st via CCH's "International Business" tab.  If you are interested in checking it out, contact the reference staff.

KluwerArbitration.com has keyword searchable full texts of arbitration conventions, legislation, rules, case law, arbitral awards, and commentary (books and journal articles on international commercial arbitration). 

For example, you can find online in KluwerArbitration, the ICCA Yearbook Commercial Arbitration, Arbitration International, ASA Bulletin, Journal of International Arbitration, Revue de l'arbitrage, Fouchard Gaillard Goldman on International Commercial Arbitration, and Gary Born's International Commercial Arbitration:  Commentary and Materials.

For more information, check the "About" section of KluwerArbitration.com.

3 New United Nations Law Databases

The UN has unfurled three new free databases:

United Nations Treaty Collection (actually a re-launch; including the United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS) and a real-time update of status info via Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General)

http://treaties.un.org/

Yearbook of the United Nations (full-text PDF from 1946-2005; the UN Yearbook is a great research starting point as it references relevant documents on a topic)

http://unyearbook.un.org/

Audiovisual Library of International Law (includes a "Historic Archives" section containing full-text PDF of significant treaties and lists of related preparatory works/"travaux preparatoires" and other documents, a "Lecture Series" with videos, and a "Research Library" with related web-based links)

http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/index.html

Stay tuned as we'll soon have access to HeinOnline's United Nations Law Collection!