{"id":213,"date":"2011-03-16T07:26:36","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T12:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/2011\/03\/16\/lii-supreme-court-bulletin-a-resource-for-the-courts-past-present-and-future\/"},"modified":"2011-04-20T08:27:11","modified_gmt":"2011-04-20T13:27:11","slug":"lii-supreme-court-bulletin-a-resource-for-the-past-present-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/2011\/03\/16\/lii-supreme-court-bulletin-a-resource-for-the-past-present-and-future\/","title":{"rendered":"LII Supreme Court Bulletin: A resource for the past, present, and future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"U.S.<\/a>When members of the legal community think about legal scholarship, what typically comes to mind is the concept of a print law journal (e.g., the Cornell Law Review<\/a>, the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy<\/a>, the Cornell International Law Journal<\/a>, etc.).\u00a0 These works undoubtedly serve a very important function, but I wanted to write a bit about another relevant legal journal sited at Cornell Law School: the LII Supreme Court Bulletin<\/a>.\u00a0 I am fairly familiar with this Web site, having served as an LII editor during the 2009-10 academic year (my now-outdated biography is viewable here<\/a>).\u00a0 The LII Supreme Court Bulletin (“Liibulletin”) contains previews of cases on the Supreme Court’s (“SCOTUS”) docket.\u00a0 Because the previews are written with recourse to the relevant parties’ submitted briefs (the full versions of which are usually available here<\/a>) and are published before the decisions are handed down, the previews generally reflect a balanced view of the legal issues unaffected by the bias of hindsight.<\/p>\n

Liibulletin is a fantastic resource for people who are interested in keeping abreast of SCOTUS cases, but don’t have tons of free time to do so (e.g., law students who have more than enough assigned reading for courses).\u00a0 But one of the really neat things about LII bulletin is that it is particularly comprehensible and may be utilized by people without legal educations or backgrounds.\u00a0 In order to ensure that LII previews remain accessible to lay persons, all the previews contain hyperlinks to a free legal dictionary and encyclopedia<\/a> called Wex.\u00a0 You will also note, by the way, that this dictionary, although frequently embedded within Liibulletin, is its own free-standing resource.<\/p>\n

Each preview contains the following sections:<\/p>\n

(1) A few key subject areas<\/em> and descriptive terms.\u00a0 These lists of terms are useful since anyone can perform a subject-matter search in Liibulletin across SCOTUS terms.<\/p>\n

(2) An executive summary<\/em>.\u00a0 This section, which is emailed to all Liibulletin subscribers, succinctly identifies the relevant facts, issues, and arguments of the case.\u00a0 It also generally addresses the legal (and, if relevant, nonlegal) significance(s) of the case.<\/p>\n

(3) Itemized questions presented<\/em>. These are copied verbatim as provided on the Supreme Court’s case schedule.<\/p>\n

(4) Itemized issues<\/em>.\u00a0 As I mentioned earlier, Liibulletin is published with the underlying goal of making the law accessible to the public.\u00a0 In this way, this section can be thought of as a simplification of the questions presented section.<\/p>\n

(5) Factual narrative<\/em>.\u00a0 Predictably, this section tells a balanced story of the case and discusses facts pertinent to the controversy before the Court.<\/p>\n

(6) Discussion<\/em>.\u00a0 This is the section that focuses on the greater picture.\u00a0 It calls into question the consequences of the case from largely a policy perspective.\u00a0 This section more or less explains the importance of the case.<\/p>\n

(7) Analysis<\/em>.\u00a0 The analysis section is a detailed and balanced analysis and explanation of the legal issues before the Court.\u00a0 It typically goes beyond summarizing the parties’ briefs and actually synthesizes the lower courts’ opinions and the briefs submitted by amici curiae.<\/p>\n

(8) Conclusion<\/em>.\u00a0 The conclusion essentially restates the executive summary by tying everything together.\u00a0 Once in a while, LII editors will include their own opinions about how the Court should rule.<\/p>\n

(9) Additional Sources<\/em>.\u00a0 Each preview concludes with a list of additional legal sources that discuss the case.<\/p>\n

I absolutely encourage anyone (or better yet, everyone) with an interest in learning about the Supreme Court’s docket to peruse the previews. If you’d like to have the previews sent directly to your email address, you can subscribe to Liibulletin here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Daniel Shatz, Cornell Law School 3L Student<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of dbking’s Flickr stream<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When members of the legal community think about legal scholarship, what typically comes to mind is the concept of a print law journal (e.g., the Cornell Law Review, the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy, the Cornell International Law Journal, etc.).\u00a0 These works undoubtedly serve a very important function, but I wanted to write […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[472,233,191,305],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-courts","tag-research","tag-supreme-court","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}