Articles Posted in Legal Research

Friends, lawyers–did you know that the Bluebook is available online? I confess, I did not until a couple weeks ago.

I needed to research citation formats, but my Bluebook was sadly out of date (think law school). I didn’t want to wait for the copy to arrive by mail, so I bought an online subscription. I was kind of skeptical. After all, half the benefit of the book is all the little tabs and notes that you’ve added over the years. I was impressed by the service though, so I thought I would share.

I was researching case law on state court websites recently and surveying what’s out there and who’s publishing what, when I encountered something totally surprising: public domain citation formats. I thought I was pretty up-to-date on free law and access to public information, but I had never heard of this. I turned to my colleague Cicely, the Citation Geek, and asked her if she had heard of it. She was surprised, too.

It turns out that starting in 1996, state courts began creating their own citation systems, adding paragraph numbers to their opinions, and requiring citation to these opinions in their rules.  The formats are called by various names: vendor neutral, universal, media neutral, and public domain. The citations are “vendor neutral” because they do not cite to a commercial reporter. They are “media neutral” because they can be used to cite electronic material (electronic access to public information was just ramping up in the late 90’s). They are “universal” and “public domain” because you do not need to rely on commercial publishers to get the official citation.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) promotes seat belt use across the country through its Click It or Ticket marketing campaign. This program seeks to increase seat belt use rates nationwide both through educational means and enforcement measures to reduce unrestrained passenger vehicle occupant fatalities.

California has one of the higher rates of seat belt use in the nation. With all the out-of-town guests descending on the Golden State during the holiday season, I am not entirely surprised that some visitors may be unfamiliar with our state’s seat belt laws. For example, I recently saw Yogi Bear and his sidekick Boo-Boo cruising down the streets of San José while perched on the trunk of a moving car. Was Yogi Bear serving as a poor role model for his young fans or does some section of the California Vehicle Code excuse Yogi Bear’s oversight in this instance?

Last week marked the formal launch of a new Supreme Court of California resource center, SCOCAL (http://scocal.stanford.edu). SCOCAL is a joint project between Justia and our friends at the Robert Crown Law Library at Stanford and Fastcase. There are lots of cool features in the site and, as ever, I encourage all our readers who are interested in California law to spend some time checking it out. Below is a brief summary of what you’ll find when you visit the site.

California Supreme Court Opinions – Browse through the full text of recent opinions by date, name or issue, or search the entire collection, which includes decisions from 1934 to the present. Click on the tabs located at the top of each individual case to access related information and documents.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but there’s still time to get terrific gifts for lawyers and clients.  Here are some of our favs:

• The Apple iPad —  It’s sleek, small, and über cool. It holds nifty free legal apps like Fastcase to find state and federal statutes and cases and Oyez’s PocketJustice that let’s lawyers listen to Supreme Court oral arguments.  When your attorney friend is done raging at opposing counsel’s latest outrageous offer to their client, the attorney can vent his or her anger by playing Angry Birds or Star Wars Falcon Gunner. Plus, it makes them (and everyone they meet) think that they’re a swell lawyer, right?
• Adopt a Volume of the Federal Reporter — No, we’re not crazy (at least not all the time)!  For $1,200, you can actually make a tax-deductible donation to Public.Resource.Org to support scanning a volume or two of the first series of the Federal Reporter of the United States in the name of your favorite lawyer or law firm.  The donation is to help them “adopt” a volume of federal case law  from 1880 – 1924 that is now in the public domain.

Given that some of our favorite Justia supporters and friends are law librarians and to help get us all into the holiday spirit of the season, we thought it might be fun to put together a list of library and legal-themed gifts for those folks who keep us on track and organized when it comes to legal research and information. (And for those of our readers who practice law, fear not. We have a separate list coming out for you this week as well!)

• Free Law – Justia truly believes that the law belongs to the people. It was created for us, by us. That is why we are thankful for Law.Gov, the brainchild of passionate Government open source advocate Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org.
• Google – We are thankful for Google and its continued support of free law by awarding the non-profit Public.Resource.org a $2 million grant to jump-start the Law.Gov initiative. The grant was one of five awarded to Google Project 10^100 winners, a contest to help as many people in the world as possible.
• Facebook – We are thankful for Facebook because we really like making friends. 🙂
• Twitter – We are thankful for Twitter. We love tweeting about the law like little birdies 🙂

One of the pro bono projects we’ve been able to work on here at Justia is the Stanford Fair Use & Copyright site.  For those of you who may not be familiar with it, the site is a terrific resource for anyone interested in learning more about copyright in general, as well as for researchers more focused on exploring issues related to the fair use of copyrighted materials.  We frequently update the site, so we encourage even those of you who may already be familiar with it to stop by and check it out!

Last week, Tim and I had the chance to attend a panel discussion at Stanford titled, “The Open Government Initiative and the Promise of a Transparent Government.” The panel reviewed various U.S. and international initiatives designed to get citizens more engaged with their government via transparency, collaboration and participation. Of particular interest to us, given Justia’s focus on law.gov, was listening to the panelists share their thoughts on the challenges faced by groups both in and outside government as they work toward collecting and turning raw government data into usable information, processes and systems. The general consensus is that we still have a long way to go, but it was heartening to hear more about some of the exciting things going on related to the transformation of our civic culture. As an added bonus, after the discussion we had dinner with Daniel Schuman, one of panelists and the policy counsel at the Sunlight Foundation, and Stanford friends Vicky Reich and James Jacobs. It was great to sit down and talk about different ways Justia might help in their efforts to bring more transparency to government. Stay tuned. . .

Also, check out the conference proceedings from the International Open Government Data Conference, the first event of its kind, being held right now in Washington, D.C., November 15 -17.

In light of Justia’s commitment to “free law”, we wanted to make sure to note last week’s announcement that Google, in partnership with the USPTO, now provides bulk access to current US patent applications and grants.  As noted by Richard Jefferson in his “Science as Social Enterprise” blog, until recently the bulk data available to users was incomplete in that it did not contain 2010 materials.  However, users can now download comprehensive 2010 “Redbook” format data for free, considered the “gold standard” of patent data (and previously sold for thousands of dollars).  Check what’s available in USPTO bulk downloads on Google yourself or search the entire image database of U.S. patents from 1790s to the present at Google patents.

Related Press Releases / Articles

“USPTO Teams with Google to Provide Bulk Patent and Trademark Data to the Public”