This is a guest post by Janeen Williams, legal reference librarian at the Law Library of Congress. Grammar enthusiasts have long debated the utility of the Oxford comma. In the past, authors have been advised that usage of Oxford commas (also known as serial commas) is an issue of style and will be determined by …
The following is a guest post by Supreetha Sampath Kumar, a foreign law intern at the Law Library of Congress. This blog post is part of our Frequently Asked Legal Questions series. On November 8, 2016, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, announced the “notebandi” initiative, declaring that the use of all Rupees (Rs.) 500 and …
On April 7th, the Law Library of Congress, the National Archives, Wikimedia D.C., the Senate, and the Smithsonian cohosted a Wikipedia Congressional Hearings Committee Edit-a-thon in the Madison Building of the Library of Congress. The purpose of the event was to improve articles in Wikipedia that describe U.S. Congressional Committees. We kicked off the day …
The first “gerrymander” was drawn on a map and signed into law on February 11, 1812. Elbridge Gerry, then governor of Massachusetts, signed into law a redistricting plan designed to keep his political party in power in the upcoming election. Upset that the Federalist Party was critical of James Madison’s foreign policy, Gerry signed the …