Month: September 2021

Hein Completes Indexing of WI Sessions Laws from Inception (1836-2019)

As a legal historian, I’m a big fan of Hein’s Session Law Library which contains the session laws of all 50 U.S. states as well as Canada, Australia, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and the D.C. Register. All states are current within 60 days of the printed publication, and all states are available back to inception.  This …

New Database of Federal Judicial Financial Disclosures Reveals Conflicts of Interest

Update 10/15/21 from the Free Law Project:  The financial disclosure database is now available to all. Included in the database are: Over 250,000 pages of financial records dating from 2003-2020, with complete coverage of every judge, justice, and magistrate between 2011 and 2018. Over 1.5 million investment records. Around 12,000 sources of income outside of …

Recent UW Law Faculty Scholarship: Gerrylaundering, Indian Legal History, Injustice in the Child Welfare System, and the Development of Comparative Sociology of Law and Critical Legal Studies

Here is the latest faculty scholarship appearing in the University of Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Papers series found on SSRN. Gerrylaundering by Robert Yablon, UW Law School This Article introduces the concept of “gerrylaundering” to describe mapmakers’ efforts to lock-in their favorable position by preserving key elements of the existing map. Gerrylaundering and gerrymandering …

Newly Updated ALWD Guide to Legal Citation Complements, Illuminates the Bluebook

If you’re a legal practitioner or scholar, you’re almost certainly familiar with The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.  But you may not have heard of the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation. ALWD, from the Association of Legal Writing Directors, is designed to complement the Bluebook.  Whenever I have a  legal citation question that the Bluebook …

LSA Statement on US News’ Rejection of Scholarly Impact Metric

Earlier today, the Law & Society Association has issued a statement on U.S. News’ decision not to proceed with its proposal to add a measure of “scholarly impact” to its law school rankings.  LSA is pleased that the measure will not proceed. The Law & Society Association was concerned with the implications for our members, …

Convert Text to Speech & Download as MP3 with FreeTTS

So many interesting articles, so little time to read them.  Enter FreeTTS, a free online tool that creates an audio version of any text as a downloadable MP3 file so I can listen as I go about my day – on my commute, walking the dogs, doing the dishes, etc. It’s very easy to use.  …

2021 Release of the WI Criminal Jury Instructions Now Available

From the Wisconsin State Law Library: The Wisconsin Criminal Jury Instructions have recently been updated, with a 2021 release approved by the Wisconsin Judicial Conference’s Criminal Jury Instructions Committee. The fifty-ninth supplement to the Criminal Jury Instructions updates the publication on legislative actions and judicial decisions through August 2021. The update includes revisions of twenty-nine existing jury instructions, as …

State Street Adult Coloring Book Captures Life on UW Campus, Downtown Madison, 2020-21

If you’re an art enthusiast, a history buff, or simply a lover of Madison, head to the Goodman South Branch of the Madison Public Library this Thursday, Sept 9th from 6-7:30 for a talk by Doug Haynes, local artist, and creator of the State Street Adult Coloring Book. This coloring book depicts a central intersection …

In Response to Rising Need, UW Law School Launches New Eviction Defense Clinic

In response to the rising need for eviction defense, the University of Wisconsin Law School is launching a new Eviction Defense Clinic this fall.  This new clinic will join five other civil, anti-poverty clinical programs (listed below) as part of the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Economic Justice Institute (EJI).  The funding for the program …