Just posted in Scholarship@Cornell Law is “Unborn Communities,” a working paper by Gregory S. Alexander, A. Robert Noll Professor of Law at Cornell. From the abstract:

Do property owners owe obligations to members of future generations? Although the question can be reframed in rights-terms so that it faces rights-oriented theories of property, it seems to pose a greater challenge to those theories of property that directly focus on the obligations that property owners owe to others rather than (or, better, along with) the rights of owner. The challenge is compounded where such theories emphasize the relationships between individual property owners and the various communities to which they belong. Do those communities include members of future generations? This paper addresses these questions as they apply to a property theory that I have developed in recent work, a theory that we can call the human-flourishing theory of property.

If you’re not familiar with Scholarship@Cornell Law, it’s Cornell Law Library’s digital repository of 1,000 scholarly articles, papers, and presentations, all available online, for free.  Scholarship@Cornell Law is part of bePress’s Law Commons, where Cornell Law Library has one of the top five most popular repositories.

While both published and working papers by Cornell law faculty make up the bulk of Scholarship@Cornell Law, we also have papers by students, including winners of the Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student ResearchPapers from many different law school centers and programs, the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence and the Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative are also found at Scholarship@Cornell Law.

With These HandsIn 1950, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) sponsored a documentary, With These Hands, to celebrate its first fifty years.  While previous labor films had not been successful, With These Hands used Hollywood professionals—the director was Jack Arnold, who would go on to direct 1950s cult classics such as Creature from the Black Lagoon and television episodes of popular shows—and was much more popular with audiences.  Ultimately, it was nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar in 1951.

Tonight, the Catherwood Library and the Kheel Center, part of the Cornell ILR School, are sponsoring the first public showing of With These Hands in almost fifty years.  The film will screen at 5:00 pm in 105 Ives Hall.

For more information about the film and its history, see the Kheel Center’s February 22 announcement, with a bibliography of archival materials in Kheel Center collections, written and compiled by Katie Dowgiewicz, ILGWU Project Archivist.

 

We’ve just acquired a new book that should be of interest to many of our students.  In Chambers: A Guide for Judicial Clerks and Externs by Jennifer L. Sheppard, Associate Professor of Law, Mercer University, is now available on reserve in the Law Library Reading Room (ask at the circulation desk during normal library hours). 

Professor Sheppard offers guidance on everything from attire to court organization and process to drafting an opinion. A sample bench memorandum is included, as are chapters on standards of review and drafting jury instructions.

Students looking ahead to obtaining a clerkship will also find the book useful, as it includes a chapter explaining the application process as well as sample resumes and cover letters.

While this book may be used only in the Reading Room, other books on this topic are available for checkout. Search our library catalog for the subject heading “law clerks United States”.  We also have Law Clerk Handbook: A Handbook for Law Clerks to Federal Judges, edited by Sylvan A. Sobel, available online through HeinOnline.

Cornell law students interested in speaking with a reference librarian about legal research for an upcoming externship or clerkship may request a research consultation at the circulation desk.

We have two new Hein databases available for use by all Cornell faculty, students, and staff.

This database includes reports, decisions, and records of several of the most important federal agencies, including the  Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  Complete collections of case reports from these and other agencies are included.  The documents are images of the originals.

This database includes the entirety of Cheryl Nyberg and Carol Boast Robertson’s Subject Compilations Bibliography Series, previously available at Cornell Law Library in print only.  Users can now search the full text and link directly to articles in HeinOnline and many freely available web resources.  The database also includes many other multistate surveys of law.

If you have any questions about using these databases, please contact Cornell Law Library Reference.  For information about other new databases at Cornell Law Library, see Update on law library databases.

Happy new year — welcome to 2013!

We’ve made a few changes in the law library’s database offerings:

  • We now subscribe to Oxford Bibliographies: International Law.  This database includes 48 articles guiding researchers to the best scholarship available in international law.  Examples of topics include Genocide, International Criminal Law, and International Organizations.  This database is available for use both on and off campus for the entire Cornell community.
  • While we’ve subscribed to PKULaw for quite some time, until now it has been available only at the law school.  We’re pleased to announce that it is now available for use by the entire Cornell community, both on and off campus, in its English and Chinese versions.  PKULaw is a comprehensive and authoritative database of Chinese legal information, which contains all the laws, regulations, and cases in Chinese since 1949. It also includes all issues of 35 domestic law journals, with over 100,000 full-text articles in Chinese.  (Note that not all Chinese-language materials are available in the English database.)
  • We have expanded our holdings in Oxford Reports in International Law to include decisions not only on International Law in Domestic Courts but also International Criminal Law and International Human Rights Law.  This database is available only using law school computers.
  • We no longer have a separate subscription to Getting the Deal Through.  The resources in that database are now available via Bloomberg Law.  Members of the law school community who would like a Bloomberg Law password should contact Cornell Law Library Reference.

The Law Library is pleased to welcome Priya Rai, Deputy Librarian in Charge at the Justice T.P.S. Chawla Library, National Law University in Delhi, to Cornell Law School.

Ms. Rai’s visit is made possible through the Bitner Research Fellows Fund.  This endowment is designed to provide foreign law librarians with exposure to Cornell Law Library’s excellent resources and the expertise of its professional librarians, while learning about advanced legal research in a global context.

Ms. Rai will present at the faculty workshop on Wednesday, July 25, 12:00 Noon, in the Weiss Faculty Lounge.  Entitled “Access to Legal Information in the Digital Age: A Comparative Study of Electronic Commercial Databases and Public Domain Resource in Law,” her presentation will include the results of her research involving law students and faculty from leading law schools in India. In addition to comparing open access and commercial legal databases, she will discuss initiatives to promote access to legal information to all Indian citizens.

Ms. Rai is the 2012 recipient of the FCIL-SIS Schaffer Grant.   This grant provides financial assistance for a foreign law librarian to attend the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting, which she will do immediately prior to visiting Cornell.

The Cornell Law School Library has purchased two additional HeinOnline databases, Congress & the Courts and the History of International Law Collection, for use by the Cornell University community.

Congress & the Courts is a collection focusing on the organization, structure, and legislative history of the federal  courts and judiciary.  It includes William H. Manz’s Congress and the Courts: A Legislative History 1787-2010, covering the U.S. Congress’s approaches since 1789 to the composition and structure of Article III Courts.  It also includes Federal Judicial Center publications and scholarly articles about the federal courts.

The History of International Law Collection includes more than 700 titles going back to 1690.  These titles include classic books by authors such as Hugo Grotius and William Douglas, serials such as Studies in Transnational Legal Policy and Judicial Settlement of International Disputes, scholarly articles, and bibliographies.

You can explore the contents of these databases here.

If you’re studying, working on, or interested in foreign and international business, labor, or regulatory matters, you should be familiar with Getting the Deal Through (GTDT).  Purchased by the Cornell Law Library, and available for use by the entire Cornell community, GTDT is a current awareness service that provides guides to law and regulations in 48 practice areas and more than 150 countries worldwide.

GTDT’s current awareness guides address numerous questions about law and regulation in countries around the world.  For example, in the new guide Foreign Investment Review 2012, some of the questions answered are:

  1. What, in general terms, are your government’s policies and practices regarding oversight and review of foreign investment?
  2. What are the main laws that directly or indirectly regulate acquisitions and investments by foreign nationals on the basis of the national interest?
  3. How is a foreign investor or foreign investment defined in the applicable law?
  4. Are there special rules for investments made by foreign state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)? How is an SOE or SWF defined?

These questions, and 19 more, are answered for each of 26 jurisdictions worldwide.   GTDT also recently added 2012 guides to telecom, gas regulation, banking regulation, mergers and acquisitions, labor and employment, anti-corruption regulation, and merger control.

Cornell students, faculty, and staff may access GTDT here or through the Cornell University Library Catalog.

Bloomberg:  Your academic account remains active during the summer and there are no restrictions on its use.  It can be used for both academic and commercial purposes.  For graduates, your BLAW account remains active through December 2012.

 

Lexis:  You will have full access to Lexis Advance during the summer without special registration.  If you do not have a Lexis Advance account, contact our Lexis rep, Aaron Eberle, aaron.eberle@lexisnexis.com Academic use only, commercial use is prohibited.

Academic use includes:

  • Summer course preparation and assignments
  • Journal and Moot Court research
  • Research associated with pursuing a grant or scholarship
  • Working as a faculty research assistant
  • An internship, externship, or clinic position for school credit or graduation requirement
  • Bar exam preparation
  • Research skill improvement

For summer access to Lexis.com, you will need to register at www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/ at which a registration form will be available by the end of April.  Register before the end of May.  Same restrictions on academic use apply as above.

 

Westlaw:  You will have full access to both Westlaw.com and Westlaw Next for the summer without special registration.  NOTE: West is placing a per month limit on the use of each; however, the hour limit is significantly higher than the maximum number of hours used by any student during the school year.  If you exceed the limitation, you will be able to register for additional hours at https://lawschool.westlaw.com Academic use only, commercial use is prohibited.

Academic use includes:

  • Law school coursework
  • Journal or Moot Court research
  • Working as a faculty research assistant
  • Unpaid, non-profit public interest positions, excluding government and court positions
  • Pro bono work for academic credit
  • Bar exam preparation

If you have questions, contact Matt Morrison.

CALI is the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, and Cornell Law School is a member, providing you access to over 800 interactive tutorials on narrow topics of law. Also, CALI has many lessons keyed to specific casebooks. Check here to see if your casebook is included. Some sample lessons include:

  • Basic Future Interests / Property
  • Summary Judgment / Civil Procedure
  • Liquidated Damages / Contracts
  • Capital Gain Mechanics / Federal Income Taxation
  • Authority of Partners to Bind the Partnership / Business Associations
  • Best Evidence Rule / Evidence

If you do not have a CALI account, stop by the Reference Desk or email Matt Morrison for the registration password.

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