j u s t c r i m

wexis brand preference

Brand preference:  Westlaw / Lexis ... "The law school library respondents preferred Westlaw at a rate of nearly four-to-one, and seventy-eight percent of the federal court/government respondents preferred Westlaw. And, sixty percent of the law firm respondents preferred Westlaw over LexisNexis. Of the library communities of respondents, no single group preferred LexisNexis over Westlaw..."

See, LexisNexis versus Westlaw Survey Results, by J. Paul Lomio and Erika V. Wayne.  Research Paper No. 23 (June 2008) Legal Research Paper Series: Stanford Law School, Robert Crown Law Library @ page 20. [Related Blog post @ Legal Research Plus]

" open access ... not exactly snowballed ... "

Chronicle -- Stanford's Education Department Requires Open Access:  Open-access advocates predicted that the move last February by Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and, later, by its Law School to require free online access to all faculty members’ scholarly articles would prompt other universities to adopt similar policies. The movement has not exactly snowballed, but another institution did just join in.

Last week Stanford University’s School of Education revealed that it would require faculty members to allow the university to place their published articles in a free online database.

The school’s faculty passed a motion unanimously — just as Harvard’s two faculties had — on June 10. A faculty member and open-access advocate, John Willinsky, made the policy public last week at the International Conference on Electronic Publishing, in Toronto. A video of his presentation is available. —Lila Guterman

Chronicle -- Stanford's Education Department Requires Open Access:  Open-access advocates predicted that the move last February by Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and, later, by its Law School to require free online access to all faculty members’ scholarly articles would prompt other universities to adopt similar policies. The movement has not exactly snowballed, but another institution did just join in.

Last week Stanford University’s School of Education revealed that it would require faculty members to allow the university to place their published articles in a free online database.

The school’s faculty passed a motion unanimously — just as Harvard’s two faculties had — on June 10. A faculty member and open-access advocate, John Willinsky, made the policy public last week at the International Conference on Electronic Publishing, in Toronto. A video of his presentation is available. —Lila Guterman

latimes on death penalty report

"California's administration of the death penalty is "close to collapse" and would require massive new state spending or changes in sentencing laws to end decades of delay and dysfunction, a state commission reported Monday.

The findings, by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, grew out of the first comprehensive look at the state's death penalty in the 30 years since capital punishment was restored in California..."

California's death penalty process is 'dysfunctional,' panel finds.  Los  Angeles Times. By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer [July 1, 2008]

drug wars

Tijuana must be number 2 ... "Border Drug Wars Plague Cities in Mexico and U.S.by Jason Beaubien.  All Things Considered, June 29, 2008 · Drug cartels have made Juarez the deadliest city in Mexico. But they also operate just across the border, in El Paso, Texas — one of the safest cities in the U.S. NPR's Jason Beaubien speaks with host Andrea Seabrook about efforts to stop the violence.

fair administration of the death penalty in california?

Administration of the death penalty in California is dysfunctional and close to collapse -- So concludes the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. 

"The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, created by the California State Senate to examine the causes of wrongful convictions and make recommendations and proposals to further insure that the administration of criminal justice in California is just, fair, and accurate, released its tenth and final report, addressing the administration of the death penalty in California, on Monday, June 30, 2008.

The report is available on the Commission’s website, www.ccfaj.org:  Fair Administration of the Death Penalty."  [Via Capital Defense Weekly, "Dysfunctional and close to collapse"]

bradbury on acres of books, long beach

Via LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News -- "The building where the landmark bookstore Acres of Books is located has been acquired by the city for redevelopment and the store must vacate by next May. This fact provoked a stern protest from secondhand bookstore-lover and acclaimed sci-fi author Ray Bradbury:

"If this place could be kept here, if you're going to build a mall, they should build it around here. They should be the center of the mall. They should be a shrine. They should have a crucifix up in front. I will come and bless the goddamn place. And I mean that. I want this store to remain here and they can build a mall around it...It should be surrounded by other fascinating stores. It shouldn't be moved. It shouldn't be changed because it's the best bookstore in Long Beach and one of the best in California."

See, Acres of Books at http://www.acresofbooks.com/

 

 

devolution in "critical thinking"

From the Chronicle Blog:  Louisiana Law Urges 'Critical Thinking' About Evolution

"Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana signed into law a bill that would urge public schools in the state to foster “critical thinking” about evolution, global warming, and other topics, according to the Associated Press. Opponents have called the bill a way to inject discussion of intelligent design into public school science classes. Mr. Jindal had majored in biology at Brown University and he was lobbied by a former professor to veto the bill."

SB733 - 2008 Regular Session (Act 473)

fight the power

A FGI (Free Government Information) blog post reports on the fight for open access rights to GAO authored legislative histories:  "A few weeks ago, we posted a story about GAO selling exclusive access to GAO legislative histories to Thomson West (see "GAO *did* sell exclusive access to legislative history to Thomson West" and GAO subject for all GAO stories). This was a rich historical chunk of GAO information (20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995!!) and it was set to be locked up with T/W claiming exclusive rights and licensing access.

"Well, not so fast. Carl Malamud, tireless hero of the public domain, got wind of the deal, and got the GAO to release 10 DVDs of legislative histories, containing 619,481 PDF files -- the pilot project scans they conducted. He has proposed a joint venture with the Internet Archive to scan the same materials with the same terms as Thomson West, give GAO one full copy of all their data AND put up the data online (presumably the Internet Archive) clearly marked as public domain material available for reuse without restriction. And what's more, Carl says, "If they say yes, we intend to ask Congress to earmark funds to pay the Internet Archive to scan this invaluable resource." !!

Via FGI (Free Government Information): 

obama 4 death ... o well whatever nevermind

Given Senator Obama's cynical support of capital punishment, i guess i'll have to throw my not insubstantial cynical support behind ...
O well, whatever, nevermind(Kurt Cobain,  NIRVANA, Smells like teen spirit).

See, TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime - Obama Disagrees With Supreme Court Ruling Requiring a Death to Invoke the Death Penalty:  "Where is Sen. Barack Obama on the death penalty? With Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas..."

"the supreme court made the right decision"

No Death Penalty for Child Rape: The Supreme Court made the right decision by rejecting execution for nonlethal crimes. Editorial. Los Angeles Times (June 26, 2008): "In concluding that capital punishment can be imposed constitutionally only for the crime of deliberate murder, the Supreme Court wisely has prevented a further expansion of a penalty that is already imposed freakishly and in a discriminatory way. The country, and the court, should be focusing on ending the death penalty, not devising new opportunities to render it... 

kennedy v. louisiana

ACS BLOG -- Kennedy v. Louisiana - "In Kennedy v. Louisiana, a split 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that, under the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty cannot apply to crimes against individuals that to not end with or intend the death of the victim. Specifically, the Court held the Constitution prohibits the death penalty for the crime of child rape where the crime did not, and was not intended to, end in the death of the child. After examining the practice of states and death penalty statistics and finding no support for pro-death penalty arguments, Justice Kennedy, writing for the Court, turned to precedent and the Court’s own judgment..."  

prison inmates @ midyear 2007

Presents data on prisoners under jurisdiction of federal or state correctional authorities on June 30, 2007, collected from the National Prisoner Statistics series. This annual report describes changes in the prison population during the first six months of 2007, compared to changes from yearend 2000 through yearend 2006. It details the incarceration rates for prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year by jurisdiction, the number of incarcerated males and females, and the number of prisoners admitted into and released from federal and state jurisdiction. The bulletin also presents data on the total number of inmates held in custody in prisons or jails on June 30, 2007. It provides estimates of the custody population by gender, race, and age. The custody incarceration rates for these groups are also included. Counts of the number of non-citizens and individuals under age 18 held in custody are included. See also Jail Inmates at Midyear 2007.

Highlights include the following:

• Between January and June 2007, the prison population increased by 1.6% (or 24,919 prisoners), compared to a 2% increase during the first six months of 2006.
• The number of prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year increased 1.7% between December 31, 2006 and June 30, 2007, or at about the same rate as the total number of prisoners under jurisdiction.
• Between 2000 and 2007, the number of inmates in custody in prisons or jails increased by 367,200. Male inmates (315,100) accounted for 86% of the increase to the custody population. Female inmates (52,100) made up the remaining 14%.

06/08    NCJ 221944

Press release | Acrobat file (456K) | ASCII file (31K) | Spreadsheets (zip format 37K)

crs report - boumediene v bush

CRS Report :  Boumediene v. Bush: Guantanamo Detainees’ Right to Habeas Corpus.  June 16, 2008 [Via Open CRS Network]

wordle cloud tag of baze v rees

A wordle cloud tag representation of the Baze v. Rees decision ...

joy division trailer

do users of txt services ... have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their txts?

"Do users of text messaging services ... have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their text messages stored on the service provider’s network? We hold that they do..."  Quon v. Arch Wireless @ p 7018, ¶ 10:

1. Reasonable Expectation of Privacy
[10] The extent to which the Fourth Amendment provides protection for the contents of electronic communications in the Internet age is an open question. The recently minted standard of electronic communication via e-mails, text messages, and other means opens a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that has been little explored. Here, we must first answer the threshold question: Do users of text messaging services such as those provided by Arch Wireless have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their text messages stored on the service provider’s network? We hold that they do.

[Via the Volokh Conspiracy]

for those about to rock

A Google Map for ALA Annual 2008 in Anaheim -- Hotels, Restaurants, Convention Centers, Disneyland!   View Map [Via LITA Blog]

View Larger Map

A Google Map for ALA Annual 2008 in Anaheim -- Hotels, Restaurants, Convention Centers, Disneyland!   View Map [Via LITA Blog]

"time runs out"

Time Runs Out for Execution in Texas, By Adam B. Ellick, New York Times (Published June 19, 2008): HOUSTON — "A day of desperate filings climaxed at midnight on Wednesday when prison officials ran out of time to carry out the execution of a Texas death row inmate who had lost his last-minute bids for a stay..."

"law goes open source"

The Law Goes Open Source: A new breed of online services is putting the law within the reach of everybody By Daniel Fisher, FORBES (06.20.2008): 

"Working in the open-sourcers' favor is the fact that what lawyers do for a living is quite similar to what Google's software algorithms do with Web sites. Lawyers prepare cases by looking through old court decisions to find arguments that will help their cause. Then they rank those cases according to a well-established hierarchy. Decisions that have been cited frequently by other judges are considered more reliable than ones that nobody cites. Appeals courts rank higher than trial courts. Recent decisions trump old, stale ones. Google's servers use similar logic, ranking Web sites according to how many other sites link to them and how lofty the referring sites are in the ranking.

The similarity struck Thomas Smith, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, a few years ago. Thomas got LexisNexis to share data on millions of court citations, and with the help of mathematician Antonio Tomarchio, he showed that citations display a highly skewed distribution, similar to that of links among Web sites or the likelihood that top movie stars will appear in a film together. Out of 4 million cases he studied, 400,000 weren't cited at all, and 773,000 were cited only once. Only 0.3% had been cited more than 500 times.

Smith and Tomarchio used this knowledge to develop a free search engine called PreCydent. In recent tests Smith and others have shown that PreCydent turns up those cases legal experts consider the most authoritative more reliably than any of the existing legal-research services..."

[Via Legal Research Plus]

[Fyi, Professor Smith's SSRN Author Page.  See The Web of Law San Diego Legal Studies Research Paper No. 06-11. Thomas A. Smith.  University of San Diego School of Law Date posted to database: January 5, 2005]

life lectures credits ... one hour increments ...

WIRED CAMPUS -- Education-Technology News from around the Web [The Chronicle of Higher Education] Why Do Lectures Have to Be One Hour?

"The traditional class period lasts about an hour, so many professors design their lectures to be that long, too. But professors who record their lectures for the Web find that students prefer short segments to class-length talks. A free article in this week’s Chronicle describes how some professors are experimenting with short-form lectures in their classrooms as well as online. But some long-time professors worry that cutting up lectures into short pieces will lead to oversimplification..."

7.2 million ...

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New Criminal Record:  7.2 Million - By Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, June 12, 2008 (at A09): "The number of people under supervision in the nation's criminal justice system rose to 7.2 million in 2006, the highest ever, costing states tens of billions of dollars to house and monitor offenders as they go in and out of jails and prisons...

Tim Lynch, director of the criminal justice project for the libertarian Cato Institute, called the numbers "scandalous" ...  "I think these numbers demonstrate that we've lost our way," Lynch said. "We've lost our way when our laws require such a massive scale of incarceration."

Lynch and others said the drug war is destroying American inner cities almost as much as the drug trade. "When you lock up a bank robber, a child molester or a mugger, you're removing a career offender from the street.

"When you lock up a drug dealer, he is immediately replaced," Lynch said. "We tried this with alcohol during Prohibition and it didn't work. We're not reaching the same conclusion with the drug war. It's slowly sinking in, but it will take politicians some time to turn this around."

san quentin death row

COSTS SOAR FOR NEW DEATH ROW AT SAN QUENTIN.  By Michael Rothfeld, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer June 11, 2008: 

"Ground has not yet been broken on a new death row proposed at San Quentin State Prison, but the projected cost of the project has soared by nearly 80% for a compound that could be full only three years after it opens, according to a critical audit released Tuesday... 
 

 

• 
  The entrance to the execution chamber and the lethal injection table at San Quentin State Prison.

"The current projected cost is more than $395 million to build 768 cells instead of the 1,024 first planned. The cost per cell, projected at $515,000, has more than doubled...

"I think this report is a bombshell," said Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), who represents the area and requested the audit...

"Executions in California have been on hold for more than two years and cannot resume until a federal judge reauthorizes the state to use its lethal injection chamber at San Quentin, which was recently renovated for $750,000.  Meanwhile, 12 new condemned inmates arrive at San Quentin annually, on average...

"so what"

LATIMES.com - "Don't judge Kozinski by his porn: An apology from the 9th Circuit judge for his computer collection of porn isn't necessary. He just needs to say, 'So what?' "... Not everyone may like it, but pornography is freely available on the Internet [shocking], whether it be from a commercial site dedicated to adults-only material or from the personal site of the chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Any adult has, and ought to have, the right to view those sites and to download those photos and videos -- subject, of course, to the strictures of copyright law. People who don't want to see such images can, and should, avoid them..."

See also, Lessig Blog, The Kozinski Mess. But see, Feminist Blog, Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Is Running A Misogynist Porn Site.

rights of expression and fair use

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski appears @ page 33 of the Duke Law CSPD (Center for the Study of the Public Domain) Zoomed Comic, Bound by law.  The comic quotes from a key Kozinski dissent in White v. Samsung Elec. Am., Inc.,  989 F.2d 1512, 1513 (1993):  "Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture. .."

lawfac laptop bans -- "boring instructors blame internet"

Andrea L. Foster, "Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class," The Chronicle, Information Technology (From the issue dated June 13, 2008):

Law professors say the Socratic method, the cornerstone of a legal education, in which professors ask students to accept or refute a long series of questions, is under assault by the vast array of amusements available to students on their laptops. The learning method calls for focused interaction between students and professor, as he or she tests their assumptions. Laptops, psychologically and literally, get in the way.

Still, some professors strongly defend using them. They say students' access to the Web can actually enrich class discussions. They accuse professors who ban laptops of being Luddites, paternalistic, or, worse, boring instructors who blame the Internet for their pedagogical shortcomings. 

Ann Althouse, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, is among the laptop proponents. There will always be distracted students, regardless of the Internet, she says. Before the Internet, students gazed out the window, doodled, or simply fidgeted.

"The idea that we're going to somehow save these students from being distracted is a bit absurd," she says.

[Professor Althouse's blog is available at http://althouse.blogspot.com/]

"no more children left behind bars"

No More Children Left Behind Bars: A Briefing on Youth Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention.  The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice Harvard Law School [ACLU BLOG]

fbi crime stats

fbi statistical highlights

Murder: The numbers ranged from a nearly 10 percent drop in cities with a million people or more (the largest decline in any violent crime category)…to a 3.7 percent rise in cities with 50,000 to 99,999 residents.

Regionally speaking: The rates of violent crime and property crime fell in three out of four regions nationwide. The Northeast, Midwest, and West experienced decreases in both categories, while the South saw slight increases in violent crime (0.7 percent) and property crime (1.1 percent), driven by a 2.9 percent rise in murder and a 3.6 percent rise in robbery. The Northeast had the largest drop in violent crime (5.4 percent), including a decrease of 8.6 percent in murders and non-negligent manslaughter.

Big cities: Cities with a million or more residents saw significant decreases in every violent crime category—9.8 percent in murder; 8.0 percent in rape; 2.9 percent in robbery, and 4.0 percent in aggravated assault.

On the rise: Despite the nationwide drop of 1.4 percent, violent crime actually increased 1.8 percent in non-metropolitan counties and 1.9 percent in cities with populations ranging from 10,000 to 24,999.

Forcible Rape: It was the only violent crime category experiencing declines across the board—in all city groups, in both metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, and in every region. 

mexico

AP - Mexico Asks World Court to Stay Executions in US: "Mexico appealed to the U.N.'s highest court Thursday to block the executions of Mexicans in the United States, arguing U.S. officials have failed to comply with a judgment ordering a review of their trials. The International Court of Justice said Mexico asked the court for an "interpretation" of an earlier ruling to clarify its meaning when it asked the U.S. to "review and reconsider" the cases of the condemned prisoners. Until that can be done, Mexico said the United States "must take any and all steps necessary" to ensure that none of its citizens is executed, and asked the court to take urgent measures to intercede. The court, informally known as the World Court, ruled in 2004 that the convictions of some 50 Mexicans on death row around the United States violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad can have access to their home country's consular officials..."

trafficking in persons report 2008

Department of State:  "We are pleased that in the seven years since the creation of the Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, the United States and our friends and allies have made important strides in confronting the reality that human beings continue to be bought and sold in the twenty-first century. It has been gratifying to witness the determined governments, human rights and women’s groups, faith-based organizations, and many brave individuals who are dedicated to advancing human dignity worldwide. Trafficking and exploitation plague all nations, and no country, even ours, is immune."
--Secretary Rice, June 4, 2008

The report is available in PDF format as a single file [PDF: 49 MB]. Due to its large size, the PDF has been separated into sections for easier download: Introduction; Country Narratives: A-G, H-R, S-Z; Special Cases. To view the PDF file, you will need to download, at no cost, the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

open access research - government information

Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1138083

"If the next Presidential administration really wants to embrace the potential of Internet-enabled government transparency, it should follow a counter-intuitive but ultimately compelling strategy: reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to ...  leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large."

[Authors are affiliated with Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy; see also, Open House Project blog post, Government Information and the Invisible Hand]