2008 – LII News

Spanish Content on WEX

Wex has gone bilingual! Thanks to our collaboration with GetLegal, over one hundred new Spanish language content pages covering a range of practice areas have been added to Wex. Employment Law (Derecho Laboral), Family Law (Derecho de Familia), Immigration Law (Derecho de Inmigración), Criminal Law (El Derecho Penal), Commercial Contracts (Contratos Comerciales), Medical Malpractice (Negligencia Medica), Copyright (Derechos de Autor), and Juvenile Justice (Justicia Juvenile) represent a small sample of LII’s collaboratively developed Spanish dictionary and encyclopedia entries.

The LII doesn’t just make law available — we also make it accessible. Our legal dictionary and encyclopedia make the LII uniquely useful among open source online legal information providers, and its new Spanish content will extend and deepen its reach. Viva lengua legal!

Free, Worldwide Access to Legal Information

The LII’s Director Tom Bruce attended the Hague Conference on Private International Law to participate in an October 20th discussion about how to provide judges with clear, useful information related to transnational litigation issues. The Hague Conference is a global inter-governmental organization with 68 member states. Its mission is to build bridges between legal systems — for example, civil law and common law or religious law and secular law. The agenda of the October meeting was to work toward a multinational convention, which, if approved, will become a binding instrument for countries that ratify it.

Tom’s participation is a result of his years of experience — besides directing one of the world’s foremost providers of free legal information, he (with Peter Martin) developed the world’s first web site that provided free access to legal information, and he has written extensively about information policy. Claire Germain, Cornell’s Law Librarian also attended the meeting, along with representatives from the LII’s sister organizations CanLII and AustLII; legal librarians including the Library of Congress; commercial litigators, academics and judges specializing in transnational commercial litigation; and people who design transnational legal information systems.

The meetings concluded with a draft convention that will be further developed by The Hague Conference. The convention calls for free access to law worldwide, encouraging national governments to provide authoritative versions of their digital law documents, legislation, court decisions, and regulations. Principles of the convention also included providing translation of the materials, adopting internationally consistent and medium-neutral citation methods, and encouraging other parties to reproduce their legal materials for free public access.

LII Supreme Court Bulletin: November previews

Today the Supreme Court begins its November argument session. As it did in October, the high court will hear arguments in fourteen cases. Once again, the LII Supreme Court Bulletin has prepared oral argument previews for all of the month’s cases. A few topics on the Court’s agenda: obscenity on the airwaves, criteria a government may use to select which donated monuments to display, immunity for prosecutorial misconduct, and asylum for refugees who have been compelled to collaborate with their persecutors. (To receive these previews two weeks in advance, please subscribe to the LIIBULLETIN email service.)

Supreme Court’s new term

Today the Supreme Court begins its new term. Its first month will be busy this year: the Court will be hearing arguments in fourteen cases (more than half again as many as it heard last October). Fortunately, the intrepid LII Supreme Court Bulletin crew has prepared oral argument previews for all of the October cases. Read all about the cases — and don’t forget to subscribe to the LIIBULLETIN email, which will bring you the previews approximately two weeks before the cases are argued. We hope you’ll join us.

Stare decisis: decision of the day

Latin for “to stand by things decided.” Stare decisis is essentially the doctrine of precedent. Courts cite to stare decisis when an issue has been previously brought to the court and a ruling already issued. Generally, courts will adhere to the previous ruling, though this is not universally true. See, e.g., Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 US 833 (1992). See also Jurisprudence.

Cornell study about free online academic articles

The findings of a new Cornell study challenge the widely held belief that open access academic articles — those published free online — get cited more often in academic literature. The study concluded that open access publishing reaches more readers than subscription publishing, but found no evidence of a citation advantage the first year after publication. The findings are particularly relevant to academic researchers, because the frequency with which a researcher’s work is cited can be a factor in tenure and promotion decisions.

Our favorite quotes: Bertolt Brecht

The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don’t understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), German dramatist, poet. Peachum, in The Threepenny Opera, act 3, sc. 7.

Per curiam: definition of the day

A “per curiam” decision is issued in the name of the Court rather than specific justices. Most decisions on the merits by the Supreme Court (and other appellate courts in the US) take the form of one or more opinions signed by individual justices (and joined in by others). Even when such signed opinions are unanimous, they are not termed “per curiam.” “Per curiam” decisions are given that label by the Court itself and tend to be short. Usually, though not always, they deal with issues the Court views as relatively non-controversial.

For examples, see, e.g., Wood v. Bartholomew, 516 U.S. 1 (1995) and Kimberlin v. Quinlin, 515 U.S. 321(1995). However, they are not necessarily unanimous. Indeed, some per curiam decisions are accompanied by dissenting opinions. See, e.g., Bush v. Gore, 531 US 98 (2000).

The top appellate courts of most states (including, e.g., Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina) use the same terminology.

Our favorite quotes: Douglas MacArthur

Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.

General Douglas MacArthur (1880 – 1964): MacArthur Close-Up, William A. Ganoe, p. 137 (1962).

Making the Law Work for Everyone

The United Nations Development Programme‘s Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor recently released the first volume of its final report Making the Law Work for Everyone. The Commission notes that four billion people – the majority of the global population – are excluded from the protection and opportunities provided by the rule of law; and that this exclusion from the rule of law has serious consequences, both for those who are excluded and for society as a whole. The report discusses the Commission’s agenda for legal empowerment for the poor and challenges states to expand their reach to benefit the poor. The Commission is co-chaired by former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright and Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto. It is the first global initiative to focus specifically on the link between legal exclusion, poverty and law.