English Legal History Research

Abstract

Questions about English law that require some historical research are not uncommon.This article will discuss the sources that can be found in a typical U.S.academic law library to answer these queries.     

Citation Abuse and Legal Writing: A Note on the Treaty of Fort Laramie with Sioux,etc., 1851 and 11 Stat. 749

The Treaty of Fort Laramie with Sioux, etc., 1851 was an important transaction between a number of American Indian tribes and the federal government. However, because of administrative mishandling by the latter, there has been sustained but unwarranted confusion over whether the treaty was a valid one. Uncertainty led to the use of a brief note in the Statutes at Large, at 11 Stat. 749, instead of the treaty's full text as the law of the land. The Statutes cue, however, has been misused frequently in the opinions of various jurisdictions, even to the point of deploying it to reference specific quotations from the full document—that is, to material certainly taken from an alternative source. This article investigates the most significant citation errors to 11 Stat. 749, and uses them to discuss improvements to applications of legal writing.     

Legal Research Boot Camp: One Approach to Meeting the Research Needs of Law Students

This article describes the legal research boot camp offered at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. It is an intensive, one-week course offered the first week of the summer break to prepare students for their summer clerkships. It is also a vehicle to teach law librarianship students how to teach legal research.     

Research Guide to Mexican Law*

ABSTRACT

Carrying out effective and efficient research on Mexican law presents special challenges. Some of these are structural because they condition the entire research process. This guide covers all aspects of Mexican legal research, providing a contextualized overview of the subject. The guide is organized into three main sections: Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, and Online Resources. The reader of this guide will gain a solid foundation in how to do research on Mexican law.     

BIBLIOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW OF SECURITIES MATERIALS

No abstract available for this article.     

The Challenges of Researching African High Court Opinions: Ten Lessons Learned from a Four-Country Retrievability Survey

This article reveals ten lessons learned from a four-country print-versus-Internet resource retrievability survey of African high court opinions from Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, and South Africa for 1990–2010. The lessons draw upon empirical findings about the courts themselves and the challenges of conducting foreign case law research. This article contributes a new perspective to the conversation about how researchers ought to be equipped for evolving foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) work.     

Testing the Limits of WestlawNext

Law students in Advanced Legal Research courses at two law schools completed a series of exercises designed to explore several discrete aspects of WestlawNext. Professor Peoples reports the results of this study concerning the impact of WestlawNext's pricing model, user interface, and search algorithm on research results. The article concludes with suggestions for improvement to WestlawNext and a call for librarians to become more involved in training students to use WestlawNext.     

Teaching Cost-Effective Research Skills: Have We Overemphasized Its Importance?

Surveys of law librarians show concern with the lack of cost-effective research skills of law students and new associates. Some commentators call for greater emphasis on the subject in legal research classes. To explore whether the subject merits increased instructional attention, the author surveyed second- and third-year law students at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law about their summer research experiences. The purpose of the survey was to find out how much importance summer employers placed on containing online research costs. The student survey results contradict the commonly expressed view that employers are greatly concerned with containing online research costs. The author posits that law library surveys generally reflect the experiences of large firm librarians, whereas the great majority of students and practicing attorneys do not work at these organizations. The concerns of these librarians might not be as relevant for students who work at smaller firms and government organizations. The author notes that the survey results suggest that there is no need for increased emphasis on cost-effective research at schools that do not have a large percentage of students who go on to work at large firms.     

The Way We Were and What We “B”

Abstract

This article describes the changes over the past 20 years in the job of reference librarian. Using typical reference questions and quotes from leading law librarians in the early '80s, the author compares current practice and explains the differences in the time, place, and manner of legal reference. Although answering questions may be done today more quickly and efficiently than 20 years ago, the increase in demand and expectations make the job more challenging than ever.     

Fostering the Profession of Law: The Lifetime Achievements of Harry Bitner

This article describes the life of Harry Bitner, one of the giants of academic law librarianship. His career serves as a model for professionalism and service to the academy. This article was the winner of the annual Earl Borgeson Award at the University of Washington's Information School, a writing competition for students in the law librarianship program.     

Influences of the Digest Classification System: What Can We Know?

Robert C. Berring has called West Publishing Company's American Digest System “the key aspect of the new form of legal literature” that West and other publishers developed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Berring argued that West's digests provided practicing lawyers not only the means for locating precedential cases, but a “paradigm for thinking about the law itself” that influenced American lawyers until the development of online legal research systems in the 1970s. This article discusses questions raised by Berring's scholarship, and examines the late nineteenth and early twentieth century legal environment in which the West digests were created and became essential research tools for American lawyers.     

Zoned Out Courts

Abstract

A unique American judiciary for the Panama Canal Zone existed in various forms from 1904 to 1982. The following is a bibliographic essay concentrating on the courts as they existed prior to 1914.