INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
February 24, 2002
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #60 of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, a newsletter that delivers relevant and timely legal research information, and other fun stuff, to your inbox every Sunday. If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to do the same! To subscribe, all you have to do is send an e-mail to ilrw-subscribe@topica.com. It’s free!
And away we go…..
Notable News
Supremes to Consider Online Sex Offender Registries
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether a law posting identities of sex offenders on the Internet should be applied to retroactively include all sex offenders.MSN Search Tries Out Previews
If you use MSN Search, you may want to check out the new Beta test of Preview, which shows a thumbnail image of the page along with the search results (there are not many thumbnails available now).iLOR Dumps Google? No Way!
In the interest of equal representation, I present this article about nifty web search tool iLOR, which decided to use Teoma instead of Google for its search technology.Iowa Court Records Online
Now here’s something no one else does – put ALL the court records online at the same time! Check out Iowa Courts Online.Speaking of Online Courts…
FindLaw offers this article on the viability of Michigan’s new Cybercourt, a site I previewed a few weeks ago.Enron Investigation Online
If you’re interested in reading the latest news or documents in the Enron scandal, FindLaw has set up a nice page for you here.It’s About Time
I’ve long held the opinion that the best way to search the Internet is to know where you’re going before you need to go there. Turns out more Web surfers agree; 52 percent arrive at sites by direct navigation and not by search engines.CLE on your PDA
LawyersLearn.com allows lawyers to access high quality CLE programs right in the palm of their hand.Discovering Administrative Law on the Internet
When it comes to administrative law, there’s one thing I know: I don’t know anything about administrative law. The concept that administrative law consists of rules about other laws makes my brain a little squirmy. Nevertheless, this area of legal specialization is very important, and is also well-represented on the Internet. If there was ever a medium designed to store large collections of regulations and databases, it’s the Internet. This week I’ll take a look at a few administrative law sites worth keeping in your favorites folder.
Since administrative law involves lots of forms, rules, and bureaucracy, let’s start our search with federal government sites. First we’ll go to the Office of the Federal Register and the Federal Register itself, the daily repository for Federal agency regulations, proposed rules and notices, Executive orders, proclamations and other Presidential documents. Closely related in density and sheer vastness is the Code of Federal Regulations. The most recent regs can be found at e-CFR; This new site (still in beta testing) attempts to provide the most recent regulations and amendments available; when I visited it, the content was current through February 19.
If I tried to explore all of the government agencies with regulations, you’d get tired after the 1st paragraph. Suffice it to say that if you can find an agency online, chances are you’ll find that agency’s regulations somewhere on the website. One site that attempts to provide independent analysis of agency regulations is the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, which was reviewed in this newsletter last August.
What with all these regulations, there have to be courts somewhere making administrative law decisions – and there are. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute has a nice page of selected administrative law cases from the U.S. Supreme Court. The University of Virginia offers a great page with administrative law decisions from the various government agencies. And if you want to know about the rules of practice in proceedings before the Office of Administrative Law Judges, the Department of Labor has set up the OALJ Library, a page of links with the rules and other information on labor-related issues.
Now we’ll head out to administrative law resources for the various states – or, let’s not. Most every state has its register or administrative code online, and I simply can’t list them all here. But there are those who have tried to compile them all in one convenient place; The National Association of Secretaries of State has a page with links to codes, registers, manuals, and more. Again, a word of caution; this site hasn’t been updated since October 2000. Another suggestion is LawResearch.com – although I’m not a fan of this site, because it’s too cumbersome, it does have a long list of state administrative law websites. The ABA Administrative Procedure Database (see below) also has a page with links to State Administrative Procedure Acts (those that are online, anyway).
Many law schools and other legal portals have collections of administrative law information worth investigating. As usual, the Legal Information Institute has a great collection of links, and Jurist, from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, also has some nice resources. And American University’s Washington College of Law features the Administrative Law Review online; you can only get the table of contents here, there are some interesting topics presented.
Finally, the American Bar Association. The ABA has some interesting resources on administrative law, including the Administrative Law Section. Within the section, there’s a page with copies of the Administrative and Regulatory Law News, with issues current to Winter 2001. And Florida State University Law School hosts the ABA Administrative Procedure Database.The site is designed to facilitate the exchange of information about federal and state administrative law among legislators, lawyers, hearing officers, judges, and citizens, and contains links to federal and state Administrative Procedure Acts (APA), reform proposals, and organizational and other resources. It’s a great collection; check it out.
Do any of you use an administrative law resource that I didn’t mention this week? Drop me a line and I’ll mention the site in next week’s issue!
Help Desk
Are you tired of the sound Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express makes when you get new e-mail? You can easily change that sound. Just get to your Control Panel – choose Start, then Settings, then Control Panel. Click on the Sounds icon, and select the New Mail Notification item in the Events list box. To choose a new sound, select one from the Name dropdown list, or click the Browse button to find a sound file elsewhere on your system. You can even preview the sound by clicking the Play button in the Preview area. When you’ve got the sound you want, click OK.
Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me a line at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net – I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!
Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet
Oddens’ Mapping Bookmarks
If you need a mapping resource, this is THE place to find one. Oddens’ was created by members of the faculty of the Cartography Section of Utrecht University, and it contains over 16,250 cartographic links. You can search for maps by entering keywords or names of countries; there’s also a map of the world you can click on to receive maps for that area. If you would rather browse, there are several categories to choose from, such as Maps and Atlases (of course), Sellers of Cartographic Material, Map Collections, Departments of Cartography, Government Cartography, Libraries, Literature, and more. You can also find links to historical maps on here from days gone by. A terrific resource.Reverse Directory Phonebook
This is part of the larger Langenberg.com website, which aggregates search engine and other reference information in one place. The Reverse Directory here will allow you to query SmartPages, Real White Pages, Info USA, AnyWho and Qwest Dex for names and phone numbers of people or businesses. You can also search the Reverse Street Address feature, to find the phone number for that location. There are also links to sites where you can figure out what words can be spelled out from your phone number.The Corporate Library
The Corporate Library is “intended to serve as a central repository for research, study and critical thinking about the nature of the modern global corporation.” You can read business news briefs, do research in the Company Research area, or learn more about corporations in the Study Center. You can receive news briefs by e-mail each week for free, but you’ll have to pay a subscription fee if you want access to the advanced company research section.Accurint ($$)
Tired of your current skip-trace service? Accurint wants to fill the void for you. This company primarily serves debt collection agencies and other related companies, helping them to locate debtors. That same technology and know-how can be used in the legal field to track down witnesses, parties, heirs, asset owners, potential jurors, and more. And the price is too good to be true – between 25 cents and $1 per search. Does anyone use this, and if so, is it any good?Airsafe
Airsafe has been around for a while now – since 1996. Its goal is to provide the aviation community and the general public with timely factual information on events that involve the deaths of airline passengers. You can search by a variety of categories: airline, aircraft model, number of fatalities, region of the world, and more. Unfortunately, the information on each accident is a little skimpy – just a short, general description of how the accident occurred and how many fatalities resulted. You can also find information here on fear of flying and other aviation safety issues.And now some fun and useful stuff:
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, these views from NASA give new meaning to the term “nosebleed section” (they are pretty cool, anyway)
And for those of you who attract disaster like a magnet, you might want to keep Worst Case Scenarios as a bookmark. This site will tell you how to escape from quicksand, ram a car, perform a tracheotomy, fend off a shark, and more.
Well, that’s it for Issue #60– I hope you liked it! If you did, pass this along to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to subscribe. Also, feel free to drop me an e-mail any time if you have questions, or if you have websites or other topics you want included in a future issue.
Tom Mighell
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