This coming Monday, February 15, we will celebrate the federal holiday, Washington’s Birthday. You may be thinking, “my calendar says Monday is ‘Presidents’ Day,’ not ‘Washington’s birthday!’” Interestingly, the federal holiday is officially called Washington’s Birthday (5 US Code 6103) and is observed on the third Monday in February as established by Public Law 90-361 …
This is a guest post by the Law Librarian of Congress, Roberta I. Shaffer, who previously held the position August 2009 through November 2011. Download the PDF format of the 2016 New Year’s Greeting and the FY2015 Law Library Annual Report. As I take down the 2015 calendars and pin the 2016 ones to the …
The following information relies on the recollections and opinions of a retired local jurisdiction law enforcement officer. When Betty wrote her “Legalese” post on terms from legal dictionaries, I mentioned that “mirandize” was one of my favorites. My dad had started his law enforcement career just a few years prior to the Supreme Court’s Miranda …
Looking for a good legal dictionary? Well the Law Library has over 4200 of them, covering countries and languages from Chinese to Estonian to Cameroon. Many of these titles contain more than one language. So you could even draft your motion, translate it to French, and then from French to Portuguese, if you were so …
At the recent American Association of Law Libraries Conference, Jennifer Gonzalez, Jolande Goldberg and I had an opportunity to unveil a new Indigenous Law Portal. The Indigenous Law Portal brings together collection materials from the Law Library of Congress as well as links to tribal websites and primary source materials found on the Web. The …
Although I grew up in an arid western state, my first real awareness of the complicated rules governing water usage came when I saw the movie The Milagro Beanfield War in 1988. The action in the movie centers around the accidental and illegal diversion of water by Joe Mondragon, which brings down the wrath of the state government …
This year I attended my third American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual Meeting. Two years ago in Philadelphia I did a presentation with Christine, Tammie, and Bob on THOMAS. Last year in Boston, I presented with David, Tina, and Emily Feltren on Law.gov. This year, Tammie, Jeanine, and I went to Seattle to talk …
Imagine a court that could force you to incriminate yourself. It might go about its work like this: you are made to stand before a judge who refuses to give you any details about the charge laid against you. You are forced to take an oath before your God to answer truthfully any questions that …
