Cornell Law Library staff Janet Gillespie and Elizabeth Teskey celebrate with members of the Cornell men’s basketball team at the welcome home party outside Day Hall today. Congratulations on reaching the Sweet 16!
Mar 262010
A blog can be a great place to dip into a new topic. Take the Snitching Blog, for example–an excellent resource for news and information about criminal informants, how they operate, and how they affect the U.S. criminal justice system. The blog has entries about cases in which an informant played a critical role, a heads-up about a recent NPR series on a confidential informant and the House of Death murders, and legislative reform efforts. You can find links to reports, data, and government hearings in the blog’s sidebar.
Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School, authors the blog. She recently published a book entitled Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, Cornell Law Library call number KF9665 .N38x 2009. You also may want to check out Ethan Brown’s Snitch: Informants, Cooperators & the Corruption of Justice, Cornell’s Olin Library call number HV8141 .B74 2007. Ancient history buffs should try Imperial Inquisitions: Prosecutors and Informants from Tiberius to Domitian by Steven H. Rutledge, Olin Library call number JC89 .R87x 2001.
iPhone, iPod touch, and now iPad apps for legal research have been picking up steam, and a small variety of apps are currently available. Of course, none of these are useful to you if you have a Droid, a Blackberry, or a Palm Pre. Also how useful these are depends on how mobile you are and whether you want/need/like access to resources that your laptop with Wi-Fi can’t provide.
One prominent app is Black’s Law Dictionary, which West released in April 2009. The upsides include:
- Speed-it’s fast
- Auto-complete feature helps you find the words you’re looking for
- Audio pronunciation for 7,000 words, so you will never embarrass yourself again by mispronouncing a term
- You don’t need the Internet to access
- Links to other words and resources in Westlaw (e.g., Corpus Juris Secundum) if you have an account (but you may have to pay to use them, depending on your plan)
- Portability, of course!
The downsides:
- The price is steep for an app–$49.99–which won’t be worth it for many who already have access to Black’s through Westlaw or in print
- App is for the 8th edition of Black’s, but West published the 9th edition last summer (no word yet on if and when West will release an app for the 9th edition)
- Text does not resize itself when you zoom in
- No browsing words alphabetically
By the way, don’t confuse the iPhone app with Black’s Law Dictionary Digital. The Digital version consists of a toolbar you download to your computer to use in Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox. The toolbar links you to the online version of Black’s in Westlaw, and will provide spell-checking of legal terms in Word. This tool is not something I find useful since I can add legal terms to the spell checker the first time it finds them and the toolbar does not make it much faster or easier to retrieve Black’s in Westlaw or from my bookshelf.
For a more detailed review of the Black’s app, see Jeff Richardson’s Review: Black’s Law Dictionary for iPhone on iphonejd.com; also see the reviews from users in iTunes.
If you don’t want to pony up $50 for Black’s Dictionary, never fear: free law dictionary apps are also available and will be the subject of a future post.
Feb 172010
Are you writing a paper for a class or a journal this semester? Whether you are in the advanced stages of your research or just getting started, the Law Library offers Research Consultations tailored to your personal needs. Don’t know where to start? Need ideas on choosing a topic? Want to know what databases to use or how to construct a search strategy? Looking for treatises, data sets, or articles? Research attorneys can answer those questions and more.
Fill out and submit the online form, and we will set up an appointment to meet with you one-on-one. You can request to meet with a specific research attorney if you like. Consultations can last up to an hour but may be shorter depending on your needs. Give us as much information as you can on where you are in your project. We’re here to help!
The World Trade Organization (WTO) regulates trade between 153 member nations and provides a framework for the settlement of trade disputes between nations. The Cornell Law Library has recently acquired a subscription to TradeLawGuide, providing students and faculty with enhanced access to WTO law.
Use TradeLawGuide to search WTO agreements, instruments, jurisprudence, and Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) minutes. TradeLawGuide includes article and jurisprudence citators that allow you to update WTO law, and a Subject Navigator tool that indexes materials by subject. Training videos are available here.
Access TradeLawGuide from either the Trade Law or the International Law subject pages of our Online Legal Resources list, or search the library’s catalog for “TradeLawGuide.”
For more information on WTO law, check out this research guide or these articles by Cornell Law School Professor John Barceló.
Bloomberg L.P.,, a provider of real-time business news and intelligence for more than twenty-five years, is launching a new legal research platform called Bloomberg Law (makes sense–the name I mean) to compete with Lexis and Westlaw. I have test driven Bloomberg Law, and it has some nice features, including the ability to take notes on a case and save them indefinitely and the ability to collaborate with other researchers within the system. Bloomberg Law provides access to Bloomberg Law Reports, Bloomberg Law Digest, keyword searching, a legal citator/updater, and points of law summaries. Company and market information are also available, just as you would expect from Bloomberg. The system is operational, but it is still a work in progress; you may encounter a bug or two.
If you plan on performing business or business law research in the near future, I recommend you try out Bloomberg Law. Even if you aren’t involved in business, you are welcome to use Bloomberg Law and see what this system offers you. Law school is the best time to become familiar with as many research tools as possible.
If you would like a Bloomberg password, please contact your legal research instructor, Research Attorney Jean Callihan, or visit the research desk in the Reading Room during reference hours.
We also have a Bloomberg terminal available to students in the Reading Room. Contact the research desk for help.
Welcome to The Competitive Edge, the blog of the Cornell Law Library! Here
you can find musings from the expert researchers of the Cornell Law Library
staff on topics like:
- Library resources, including databases and rare books
- Research tips
- News
- InSITE annotations on valuable Web tools
- Cornell Law scholarship
- Research contests with prizes
We also welcome contributions from members of the Cornell Law community,
including students, on topics such as:
- Research experiences
- Research advice and tips
- Helpful resources
Please contact Iantha Haight if you are interested in contributing. All contributions are subject to Law Library approval.
Look for our first research contest, coming this month!
