Despite a line that I once heard in a movie that the United States is the only country in which unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are sighted, the United Kingdom appears to have its fair share of unexplained phenomena across its skies too. The UK’s National Archives has published an extensive array of documents of sightings and policy …
Cynthia informed us about International Plan Language Day and the global movement to improve the use of plain language in government and legal writing. Kelly continued the trend and wrote about New Zealand’s approach to using plain English in the country’s laws. I thought I would continue the series. Despite the last, rather confusing weird …
A number of our Law Library of Congress colleagues retired at the end of October. Stephen Clarke, Mark Strattner, and Alvin Wallace are retiring this month after a long and productive service to the Law Library of Congress (LLC). We hope you enjoy our profiles on them. We are sad to see great friends leave, …
When doing my cool job, I never know what will cross my path. Recently, I happened to discover some items covering early sumptuary laws in England. These laws were prohibitions against what the Monarch at the time considered to be “extravagance,” typically in the form of food or clothing. They were reportedly aimed to preserve the class system …
The other week I was lucky enough to attend an informative Power Lunch, hosted by the Law Library of Congress and presented by one of our legal analysts, Dr. Wendy Zeldin. Dr. Zeldin (who has a very impressive list of credentials, including a Masters and PhD degree from Harvard University) discussed the Norwegian Criminal Justice …
The English are, generally speaking, a fairly genteel group of people. Hunting in England is now relatively uncommon, with fox hunting (very controversially) legislated against in 2007. Even owning a gun is rather unusual and involves a long and highly regulated process. I definitely noticed a huge contrast when I first moved here – during hunting season deer …
This week’s interview is with Róisín Fitzpatrick, one of our interns here for the summer. Describe your background. I am from Ireland and live in a very rural area called Loch Gowna, Cavan. I was lucky enough to be accepted onto the Washington Ireland Program for this summer. This is a leadership program that brings …