INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
January 22, 2006
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #220 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 visit Inter Alia and fill out the subscription form -- it's free!
West is Podcasting
In another example of the big dogs entering the podcasting arena, West announced WestCast, a law-themed podcast. The first episode features Judge Joe Lee and attorney Hugh Ray discussing the impacts of recent bankruptcy reform legislation. You can find both this podcast as well as an RSS feed at the West News Room.Blawgs of the Week
One thing I HAVE been keeping track of is the world of law-related weblogs, and this week there's another set for you. First up, Paul Maharg is a law professor in the Law School at Strathclyde University in Scotland, and at Zeugma he's discussing legal education, technology, rhetoric, and legal theory. John Lambert of Huddersfield, United Kingdom is blogging at nipc IP/it Update, with "news and comment on English, European and overseas intellectual property,technology, media and entertainment and competition law." The blog of the University of Buffalo Law Library has risen from the flames, and become ublaw phoenix -- welcome back! PR Law, Inc. is a company offering podcasting and audio interviews/speeches by lawyers across the country. It has a companion blog, Lawyers and Business Executives in the News, which features "Exclusive interviews with some of America's preeminent lawyers and business executives." Nick Salazar is a first-year law student at University of Arizona College of Law, and he's writing about the Grokster case and file sharing in general at No Sharing Allowed. The Foreign Collection Development Blog occupies an interesting niche; it's focusing on new titles and current issues in collection development for law librarians who collect foreign and international law at their institutions. A 1L at Texas Tech Law School comments on his days and his take on life at Moonlighting in Misery.
Your PC uses "ports" to communicate with the outside world -- your e-mail and other Internet activity all pass through these ports, and it's possible for hackers to gain control of them, if your computer is not properly secured. If you want to see if any of your ports are exposing your computer to hackers, visit Shields Up!, a great site that will test your computer for free.
Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me an e-mail 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
FBI
I've been profiling various federal agencies lately, and it's time for theFBI. As you may know, the mission of the FBI is "to protect and defend theUnited States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats and to enforce the criminal laws of the United States." You can learn more aboutthat mission under the "Learn About Us" section. The more interesting information can be found under the "Be Crime Smart" and "Use Our Resources" tabs. Unfortunately, if you're looking for seriously substantial
information here, you'll probably have to submit a Freedom of Information Act request.GalleryWatch ($$)
Based in Austin, GalleryWatch "provides real-time legislative information and innovative tools that empower organizations to achieve their legislative goals." There are a number of subscription services available, including USBudget News Service (daily legislative activity related to the budget), Legislative Research Service (for both federal and Texas legislatures) Committee Transcripts, and much more. You can receive updates by e-mail, or arrange to have reports printed out nightly on your office printer. There's also a Daily Budget Bytes feature that you can receive for free -- it's a daily selection of the USBudget.com service.Hauser Global Law School Program
Each year this program at NYU School of Law brings 20 leading global law professors and judges from around the world to teach on international law issues. At this site you can view the resources of this program, even if you're not an NYU student. Working papers are available, as are reviews of global and European law books. You can also browse the Global Research Tools, which includes GlobaLex, an electronic legal publication dedicated to international and foreign law research.Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
The High Commissioner is the principal UN official with responsibility for human rights. This site is chock full of information on human rights issues around the world. Under the Countries section you can view documents, ratifications, and reservations from the major countries of the world. The Issues tab leads you to a whole bunch of links on Human Rights, frombioethics to women. There are also resources on international law, as well as links to other human rights bodies.JobTracker
JobTracker finds the companies that are "exporting jobs, endangering workers' health or involved in cases of violations under the National Labor Relations Act. You can search by zip code or state, or if you know the name of the company you can search for it directly. A search of my zip code turned up 33 companies that are exporting jobs from the area, 43 companiesthat are laying off workers, 52 companies with OSHA violations, and 12 companies with violations under the NLRA.
Finally, some useful sites to start off your week:
Did you know that Parliament is an anagram of Partial Men? If you used the Anagram Server, you would.
Price Miner is a pricing tool, providing data from eBay and other sources to help price the items you want to sell. It's a subscription-only service.
Well, that’s it for Issue #221 – 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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