Legal Research News and Information with an Emphasis on Wisconsin
Deputy Revisor of Statutes Bruce Hoesly dropped me a line today letting me know that he’ll be transferring over to the Legislative Reference Bureau. He’ll be in charge of statute and administrative code and register production as the responsibility for those functions is transferred there in January. [See my previous post about the change] He …
Did you notice the announcement on the top of the Revisor of Statutes Bureau’s pages: On January 1, 2008 the Revisor of Statutes Bureau will cease to exist and the Legislative Reference Bureau will assume responsibility for the Revisor’s duties. This web page will continue to exist after January 1, 2008. See my earlier post …
Weirdest Cases: The Times (of London) Online is kicking off it’s new column, Weird Cases, with a list of the columnist’s top twenty “favourite bizarre disputes, prosecutions and lawsuits.” Number one? Right here in Wisconsin, a Fond du Lac man “sued a television company for making his wife fat and transforming his children into ‘lazy …
“A pending bill in the Legislature could have a broad silencing effect on Wisconsin open records law,” says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Assembly Bill 522 would shield from all open records requests certain law-enforcement records not “in the custody of an authority that performed the service or conducted the investigation” – wording that the head …
According to a Wisconsin Department of Administration press release, WisconsinEye announced on Monday that it has reached agreement with the department to launch the WisconsinEye channel on the BadgerNet video network serving education and government sites throughout the state’s 72 counties. The partnership with BadgerNet will bring WisconsinEye into over 255 schools and 54 college …
I’ve been given the green light to announce that Wisconsin Legislative Drafting Records are now available online at the Wisconsin State Legislature Web site. Records from the 1999 through 2005 sessions are available. At this time, it seems that only the browsing function is working. My test keyword searches have produced no results. I’m told …
The Wisconsin State Journal reports on Assembly Bill 418 which would stop ordinary citizens from viewing Wisconsin court records online (CCAP). From the LRB Analysis: This bill restricts public access to the CCAP system from the Internet while permitting unlimited access to information in the CCAP system to Wisconsin judges or other court officials, law …
With their newly redesigned Web site, the Law Library of Congress is introducing several new products, including Congressional Hearings. Here’s a blub from their Web site: As part of the Law Library’s transition to the digital future, a collaborative pilot project was undertaken with Google, Inc. to digitize the entire collection and make it freely …
Update: The corresponding Senate bill is 214. ————— My Wisconsin Legislative Notifications account picked up this bill, AB-433, relating to the disclosure of library records to law enforcement officers. LRB synopsis: Under current law, public library records may not be disclosed to any person except in certain specified circumstances. This bill requires a public library …
Here’s one from Law Librarian Blog: Check out twitter.com/HouseFloor which distributes live updates from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, updated every five minutes with any new information from The Office of the Clerk of the House. [What’s Twitter?]