Articles Posted in Legal Research

Our Daily Opinion Summary writers have picked some interesting cases to highlight this week, with one in particular cutting close to home.

First up, we leave the lower forty-eight and head up to Alaska with AES Corp. v. Steadfast Ins. Co.. The case involved the village and city of Kivalina, a community located on an Alaskan barrier island, which filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court against AES and other defendants for allegedly damaging the village by causing global warming through the emission of greenhouse gases. AES requested that Steadfast provide a defense and insurance coverage pursuant to the terms of their commercial general liability policy. Steadfast provided AES a defense under a reservation of rights and filed a declaratory judgment action, claiming that it did not owe AES a defense or indemnity regarding the Complaint brought by Kivalina. The circuit court granted Steadfast’s motion for summary judgment, holding that the Complaint filed by Kivalina did not allege property damage caused by an “occurrence” as that term was defined in AES’s contracts of insurance with Steadfast.

Carl Malamud of public.resource.org has a guest post on Boing Boing: Liberating America’s Secret, for-pay Laws. In it, he discusses the problem of laws that incorporate copyrighted technical standards by reference. Because the standards bodies that issue them are in the private sector, anyone who wants to view the standards (to comply with the law) must pay for a copy. Those copies can be very expensive; public.resource.org spent over $7,000 for copies of the corpus.

From our friends over at Google Scholar comes word last week of changes to the “Cited by” function within their legal opinions database.  For those of you not familiar with this feature, “Cited by” appears as a link under items returned in a result set. For example, the first opinion returned after a search for “347 U.S. 483” indicates it is “Cited by” 32,903 sources.

Clicking on the link brings up a separate page which, before last week’s changes, sorted citing documents by their prominence but which are now ranked by the the extent of discussion of the cited case. This means that cases that support, overturn, or clarify an opinion are ranked above those that just mention it.

The selections from our Daily Opinion Summary writers are pretty varied this week covering a World of Warcraft game gone bad, a tug of war between two District Courts over Park Service limits of snowmobilers, a suit alleging negligence in the prescription of medications which led to murder, and the rights of part-owners of a dairy located in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

First up, we have Laurel’s pick, which she aptly labeled, “every mother’s nightmare.”

U.S. v. Lucas
US 7th Cir (Filed 2/29/12)
While playing World of Warcraft online, defendant requested sexual pictures of CG, a minor. CG blocked him, but reinstated him in exchange for online “currency.” Defendant again sent sexual messages; CG again blocked him. Defendant, on release following arrest for possession of large-capacity firearms, paid to obtain CG’s address, told others he planned to kill CG, dug holes in his yard, and removed the release latch from his trunk. He amassed weapons, drove 20 hours to CG’s home, and impersonated an officer to lure CG out of the house and kidnap him.  CG’s mother refused to allow defendant into the house. He pointed a handgun at her face, but she slammed the door and called police.  He was arrested and pled guilty to brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. 924(c). The district court sentenced him to 210 months’ imprisonment.  The Seventh Circuit affirmed. A district court may consider a wide range of conduct at sentencing, including acquitted conduct and dismissed offenses, and the sentencing ranges for those offenses. The court rejected arguments that the court treated defendant’s psychological conditions as an aggravating factor or impermissibly considered rehabilitation.

Here is a rundown of January’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Justia Dockets legal filings and Facebook posts readers viewed the most.

Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for January 2012

1. Jeffrey Moore, 3050 points, 61 answers
2. Brian D. Lerner, 1,395 points, 33 answers
3. Andrew Bresalier, 1,100 points, 36 answers
4. David Philip Shapiro 980 points, 20 answers
5. Don Richardson, 360 points, 8 answers
6. Paula Jeanette McGill, 350 points, 7 answers
7. Scott Charles MacCabe 350 points, 7 answers
8. Terrence Rubino, 325 points, 7 answers
9. Jason F. Barnes, 300 points, 6 answers
10. Kathryn L. Hudson, 200 points, 4 answers

A few years ago, I was visiting Washington, D.C. and stopping by the usual tourist attractions, when I came across this plaque dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Super PACs a/k/a “Independent-expenditure Only Committees” . . . they seem to be all over the news these days, don’t they? These organizations, which came to fame through the 2010 Supreme Court Citizen’s United decision, garnered lots of attention right out of the gate. In 2010 alone, almost 80 super PACs emerged to spend more than $60 million to elect or defeat federal candidates. (Super PACs in Federal Elections: Overview and Issues for Congress, CRS 12/2/11).  Super PACs stand to be an even bigger force this year as we head into the Presidential primaries and the general election so I thought I’d share the small collection of resources I’ve come across lately which might help us all better understand what kind of ride we might be in for in the coming months.

During the holidays, I spent a few days in the great state of Arizona visiting the Grand Canyon. I was awed by the majestic grandeur of the Grand Canyon from when the rays of sunlight first washed over the canyon walls:

to when the last embers of sunlight vanished into the night sky:

But, nothing intrigued me more than the prominent warning decal citing the US Code.

I’m a little behind on this, but in September of this year, the AOC announced revisions to the Federal Rules of Evidence in the form of “re-styling.” The Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules explains:

“The revision is intended to make the Evidence Rules easier to read, and to clarify, simplify, and modernize them without altering their substantive meaning,” said Judge Robert L. Hinkle (N. D. Fla). “There will be no change at all in the meaning or application of any rule. A judge or lawyer would get the right result using either a restyled rule or the old version. However, we think the chance of misunderstanding the rule is much smaller using the restyled version.”

The process began in 2007, and was released for the 2012 version of the FRE. As part of the effort, “Term usage was standardized, and the use of ambiguous words, such as “shall,” minimized along with outdated or archaic terms, intensifiers, and redundant terms and cross references. Rule numbers and citations were preserved to minimize the effects on research, but subdivisions were rearranged in some rules for greater clarity and simplicity. But terms were retained that have acquired special status from years of case law interpretation.”

From the Free Government Information Blog (by way of beSpacific) comes word that the Congressional Research Service issued a report on November 30, 2011, titled “Congressional Lawmaking: A Perspective on Secrecy and Transparency.”  The 19-page report briefly outlines the history of the tension between secrecy and transparency in Congress, reviews the issues that emerged on this front during the formation of the 2011 Joint Select Deficit Reduction Committee, looks at various parts of lawmaking that are typically imbued with closed door activities, and closes with some summary observations.

All well and good, but . . .  is it just me, or does anyone else find it the topic slightly ironic given that the CRS itself seems reluctant to release unclassified and non-confidential (public domain) copies of their reports in any systematic way, and no comprehensive list of these reports is even publicly available?  As the first sentence of the Report notes, “Openness is fundamental to representative government.”  That openness should include access these valuable public policy documents paid for with our tax dollars.

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