Print Resource of the Month – State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts: A Compilation of Enacted and Recently Proposed Legislation

This book should be used by anyone with an interest in religious freedom questions, issues in corporate personality, and LGBT rights. This book compiles all current state religious freedom acts. A table of documents lists where legislative intent or other legislative history materials may be found (though admittedly, there are not many). The editor notes where acts failed to pass and provides a bibliography that will be helpful for general research.

  

Recent interest in religious freedom restoration laws has its origins in the early 1990s with the passage of the federal Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. After the Supreme Court in 1997 found that the Act applied only to the federal government in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), states began adopting these types of laws. Interest in this matter has skyrocketed since Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751 (2014), in which the Supreme Court held that a for-profit corporation could hold religious beliefs. More recently, these acts have made headlines in relation to LGBT issues and the inclusion of same-sex couples in the right to marry in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015).

State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts: A Compilation of Enacted and Recently Proposed Legislation (William H. Manz ed., 2015). KF 4783 .Z95 S73

List of Legal Podcasts

Interested in staying up-to-date on legal issues? Check out these podcasts, hosted by a variety of legal professionals on a multitude of topics.

• Case in Point from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, http://caseinpoint.org/: “Case in Point provides smart, informative conversations about the law, society, and culture. By bringing together top scholars with experts on politics, business, health, education, and science, Case in Point gives an in-depth look at how the law touches every part of our lives. Produced by the University of Pennsylvania Law School.”

• Law Librarian Conversations, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lawlibcon: “Richard Leiter and co-hosts Roger Skalbeck and Marcia Dority-Baker explore all issues of concern to law libraries, law librarians, legal bibliography and the profession.”

• Podcasts from the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, http://web.law.columbia.edu/attorneys-general/publications-resources/podcasts: “to hear AGs, AAGs, and others discuss the work of state attorneys general”

• Podcasts of events hosted by the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, http://web.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/speakers-events/podcasts-events: “HRI invites eminent human rights scholars and practitioners to address current issues of interest in the human rights field. Events range from panel discussions on emerging human rights issues, to more informal, intimate discussions with advocates and academicians about the intricacies of practicing human rights law.”

• UCI Law Talks from the University of California, Irvine School of Law, http://www.law.uci.edu/podcast/: “[F]eatures smart conversation analyzing critical legal issues with professors at top-ranked UCI Law.”

• Oral Argument, http://www.hydratext.com/oral-argument/: “A podcast about law, law school, legal theory, and other nerdy things that interest us.”

• Podcasts of events hosted at University of Virginia Law School: http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/news.nsf/PP/PodcastFrontPage

• Collection of multiple podcasts hosted via the American University Washington College of Law: https://www.wcl.american.edu/podcasts/

• The Faculty Podcasts http://www.law.uchicago.edu/audio/podcasts/faculty : “Listen to lectures by—and discussions with—the University of Chicago Law School's eminent faculty, as well as some very special guests.” University of Chicago Law School.

• King County Law Library Podcasts, http://www.kcll.org/podcasts : discusses current legal issues, law librarianship, law school, local legal issues, etc.

• Lawyer2Lawyer, http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/lawyer-2-lawyer/: “Lawyer 2 Lawyer is an award-winning podcast covering relevant, contemporary news from a legal perspective. Hosts Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams invite industry professionals to examine current events and recent rulings in discussions that raise contemplative questions for those involved in the legal industry. Launched in 2005, Lawyer 2 Lawyer is one of the longest-running podcasts on the Internet.”

• MediaBerkman from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School: http://www.legalproductivity.com/practice-management/legal-podcasts/: “[F]eatures conversations with and talks by leading cyber-scholars, entrepreneurs, activists, and policymakers as they explore topics such as the factors that influence knowledge creation and dissemination in the digital age; the character of power as the worlds of governance, business, citizenship and the media meet the internet; and the opportunities, role and limitations of new technologies in learning.”

• Nolo Podcasts, http://www.nolo.com/podcasts/podcasts.html: free legal resources in plain English.

Interested in learning more? Check out this listing of legal podcasts by the Legal Productivity blog that is updated periodically: http://www.legalproductivity.com/practice-management/legal-podcasts/.  

New Legal Research Publications

The following recently published titles provide valuable legal research materials. Each provides background information and further research sources on their subjects: American Indian law and on land grabbing. Published in the Law Library Journal, a publication of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL).

Beth DiFelice, Indian Treaties: A Bibliography, 107 Law Libr. J. 241 (2015).

“This bibliography describes sources for research into treaties between the U.S. government and Indian tribes, focusing on primary sources. The sources are preceded by an overview of the treaty process and the termination of the government’s power to enter into treaties with Indian nations.”

Jootaek Lee, Contemporary Land Grabbing: Research Sources and Bibliography, 107 Law Libr. J. 259 (2015).

“This article investigates land grabbing and identifies the difficulties of research. Next, it delineates various mechanisms and international principles that can be useful in protecting those affected by contemporary land grabs. Finally, it selectively reviews current literature that provides useful starting points for contemporary land grabbing research.”

The Journal is available in the library (K 12 .A9364); on the website of AALL http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Publications/llj; and on HeinOnline, WestlawNext, and Lexis Advance. 

Electronic Resource of the Month: Utilizing ProQuest

Welcome to another new monthly segment, Electronic Resource of the Month! On the second week of each month we’ll be highlighting electronic resources available to Loyola Law students and faculty. We’ll be tagging these posts with appropriate tags at the bottom; you can use these tags throughout the blog to help guide your research.

Loyola Law students and faculty have access via the Law Library and the University Monroe Library to five ProQuest databases: Congressional, Legislative Insight, New York Times Historical, Dissertations and Theses, and Religion. Congressional and Legislative Insight are available via the Law Library’s Online Resources webpage; Dissertations and Theses, New York Times Historical, and Religion are available via Monroe Library’s Databases webpage. You will need to login using your Loyola username and password or use a Loyola networked computer.

Here we will be looking at Congressional and Legislative Insight, great resources for federal legislative research. Using these resources, you can find committee hearing transcripts, House and Senate documents, Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports, and other similar legislative documents.

Congressional is better situated for browsing in order to look at multiple laws/other documents on topics. If you are looking for specific legislation, Legislative Insight may suit you better. Both databases have legislative history information, but Insight will have CRS Reports, Presidential Signing Statements, and other similar documents that are not available on Congressional. To ensure complete coverage of your topic, you may want to look at both resources.

On Congressional, you can also search for news and social media posts related to particular topics. From the homepage, you can search for social media posts including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other blogs written by Senators, Representatives and Federal agencies. When searching documents, a menu on the right-hand side of the document main page will list related news sources that can be accessed, either through recent news or New York Times Historical. Be cautious with these news links as they are not always directly related to the subject you are researching.

Bluebook Rule 12 requires that citations to official session laws include the Public Law Number and the Statute at Large citation. The main page of Legislative Insight has a Citation Checker, which will allow you to enter a Public Law Number, Statute at Large citation, or enacted bill to retrieve the equivalent citations.
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation R. 12, at 121 (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds., 20th ed. 2015).

Print Resource of the Month: Guide to International Legal Research

Welcome to our new monthly segment, Print Resource of the Month! On the first week of each month we’ll be highlighting a print resource available in the Law Library. That’s a lot of books so check back often for new information. We’ll be tagging these posts with appropriate tags at the bottom; you can use these tags throughout the blog to help guide your research.

This month we’re taking a look at Guide to International Legal Research. Produced by the George Washington International Law Review, this book is a must-utilize for research on public international law, private international law, and comparative law. This guide provides a researcher with a comprehensive list of law and law-related sources to help jump-start any research concerning international law.

“[I]t provides sources that address not only relations between States, but also the relations between States and international organizations, subnational actors, and non-state actors.” 

The introduction provides an overview of sources of international law, including the traditional sources like conventions and customs, while introducing the influence of municipal courts and soft law. Chapters are arranged by geographic region – like South Asia and the Middle East – and by subject – like intellectual property and maritime law.

The two biggest strengths of this resource are the annotations providing summaries of the sources listed and the inclusion of official (or at least reputable) websites where available.

Find it in the Reference Section on the second floor of the library, KZ 1234 .G85.

GEORGE WASH. INT’L LAW REVIEW, GUIDE TO INTERNATIONAL LEGAL RESEARCH (2015).