The Law Library is losing two of its long-time librarians to the lure of retirement. Associate Law Librarian Pat Court and Head of Research and References Services Jean Callihan, who between them have served the Law School for thirty-three years, are both leaving the library this summer.
Read about their contributions to the Law School and their plans for retirement in the Cornell Law School Spotlight.
Jean Callihan Pat Court
Looking for some lighter reading this summer? The Law Library’s Popular Reading collection is available on reserve at the Circulation Desk. In addition, the library stacks hold a variety of novels and short stories for those interested in lawyers, courtrooms, and the law. Here are a few for you to consider: 
If you want something in the vein of Grisham and Turow, consider Milton Hirsch’s The Shadow of Justice. Hirsch, a former prosecutor and current defense attorney, tells the story of a trial for cocaine possession in a Miami courthouse. The book was the ABA’s first venture into the field of mystery publishing. Another courtroom drama is played out in Alan Dershowitz’s first venture into fiction, The Advocate’s Devil. Fast-paced and entertaining, this celebrity trial novel follows a defense lawyer’s efforts to acquit a famous and charismatic basketball player on rape charges in the face of his increasing suspicion the basketball star is guilty.
Kermit Roosevelt’s In the Shadow of the Law turns from the courtroom to law firm life. Roosevelt (who left the practice of law to become a law professor) is set in Washington, D.C. biglaw. While its plot tracks the resolution of two cases – a murder and a chemical plant explosion – the novel also delves into the inner lives of the firm’s partners and associates.
The short story collection When Tutt Meets Tutt features Ephraim Tutt, a long-running Saturday Evening Post character invented by Arthur Train. The title story of this 1927 collection tells the humorous story of a will contest fought by attorneys whose partnership has temporarily broken up.
If you prefer British courtrooms, step back a few decades into the world of Henry Cecil, one of the most amusing novelists about the British legal system. Typical of Cecil’s style is the Roger Thursby trilogy. In Brothers in Law, Thursby, a newly qualified young barrister, makes his debut in the Old Bailey defending a con artist. Thursby, now a 12-year veteran of the bar, defends a case of police bribery in Friends at Court. Finally, ten or so years later, Sober as a Judge advances Thursby to the rank of high court judge. Also set in British courtrooms, but in the murder mystery genre, is Tragedy at Law by Cyril Hare, in which Mr. Justice Barber – a very nasty judge indeed — travels the circuit in World War II England on his way to being murdered.
Trial and Error: An Oxford Anthology of Legal Stories includes excerpts from novels such Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Anthony Trollope’s Lady Anna. Also included are short stories, for example Philip Roth’s “Eli, the Fanatic.” Still more legal stories are found in Best Legal Stories and Best Legal Stories 2, both edited by John Welcome.
Finally, if you’re interested in pursuing more courtroom fiction, Jon L. Breen’s bibliography Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction provides descriptions of over 400 novels and short story collections published before 1984.
Are you researching something subject-specific? Do you need to find more sources? Check out “What We Have” in terms of both legal and non-legal online resources.
From the Cornell Law Library web site, select “What We Have,” and from the menu at the left, select “Online Legal Resources.”
On the left is a list of online resources arranged by subject. Each resource is accompanied by a symbol (see below) informing you of which sites, if any, require you to either be on campus or to log in. 
Occasionally, Cornell Law Library will review a law-related website and make that review available through InSITE. Where the law library has reviewed a website specific to that subject, those websites and their reviews can be found by selecting a source link ending with “from InSITE” (see below).
Each of these selections will yield another list of web resources relating to that subject that have been analyzed by Cornell law librarians. The analysis will provide you with information about the content and functionality of each resource.
Have you ever come across a great journal article or database for your research, but were denied access? And then you had to practically start your research all over to try to find that article or database through the University Library web site? … Passkey can relieve your frustrations!
Passkey will make you a more efficient researcher, both on and off campus. It allows you to connect to databases and journals licensed to Cornell University without having to go through the University Library web site. Install Passkey and gain access simply by signing in with your NetID!
How do you get Passkey on your computer? From the Cornell University Library homepage, under ‘Library Services,’ select ‘Cool Tools’. Follow the installation instructions from there.
The National Assembly Library of the Republic of Korea hosted the joint GLIN/International Legal Information Conference from September 6-10, 2010 in Seoul, Korea. The theme of the conference was “The Future of Legal Information Service: Promoting the Global Open Access.” Some 22 countries presented reports on how they post laws and court decisions (and sometimes legal literature) online as part of the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), the infrastructure run by the Library of Congress, but with decentralized local workstations. The process is government to government, transferring authenticated official legal information. GLIN has been particularly useful in using technology and a common platform/search engine/thesaurus to help emerging countries in Latin America and Africa make their laws available online. Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Kuwait, and others are major contributors to GLIN. The slides from my presentation at the conference on “Digitizing the World’s Laws: Evolution and Revolution” are available here. For more on the conference, click here.
At the recent International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, access to information was reaffirmed as a basic human right. Many countries now provide online access to legal information such as statutes, codes, regulations, court decisions, and international agreements. The big question is whether the digital version of this information is official like the print version, and whether the digital version has been authenticated through a secure server or digital signature to ensure that the content has not been altered. Another issue that has emerged is the fragility and obsolescence of the digital medium and the need for preservation and long-term access, particularly for born-digital legal information which has no paper equivalent. Why does it matter? In an environment where online sources are replacing official print versions of legal information, citizens need to be able to trust the “official word of the law.” More information at http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/96-germain-en.pdf, and in French at http://ifla2010ulaval.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/seance-1-sur-les-bibliotheques-de-droit-et-les-publications-officielles-ou-gouvernementales/.
The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) just released its new World Report which analyzes freedom of information and freedom of expression in 122 countries, in the form of a country-by-country fully searchable database, complete with graphical map interface. The report includes questions of:
The report was developed by a team at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, led by Professor Theo Bothma and contains details of the library environment in 122 countries. The analysis of the data shows that, on the one hand, there are still many countries where violations of intellectual freedom occur — such incidents were reported in 109 of the 122 countries — while on the other hand, many individual libraries have implemented innovative projects to improve access to information.
HeinOnline’s World Constitutions Illustrated is a great new resource for comparative constitutional law research. It contains the current constitution for every country; past constitutions; substantial constitutional histories for the United Kingdom, France, Brazil and Colombia (among others); more than 800 classic books about constitutional law; more than a dozen legal periodicals focused on constitutional law; links to scholarly articles and online resources, and bibliographies of important works. Every country is linked directly to its primary and secondary resources; for instance, you can go to France and view all the resources related to the constitutional and political development of the country, all in one place. The publisher invites librarians, scholars, and constitutional law experts from all over the world to contribute their works and knowledge to help continue building the constitutional development for every country.
