Yesterday, Georgetown Law professor Dan Ernst posted an article to the Legal History blog entitled “Frankfurter and DC Minimum Wage Case: The View from the Adkins Papers.”  The article draws on seven letters between Felix Frankfurter and Jesse Corcoran Adkins (L' 1899) that discuss the DC Minimum Wage case.  These seven letters are part of the Jesse Corcoran Adkins Papers, held by the Georgetown Law Library’s Special Collections.

Jesse Corcoran Adkins attend Georgetown’s night law program and received his bachelor of laws degree in 1899 and then in 1900 he received his masters of law.  He was a part of the Georgetown Law faculty from 1908-1944.  His areas of focus were equity, constitutional law and corporations.  From 1905-1908 he was an assistant United States attorney and in 1912 he was elevated to Assistant Attorney General.  He prosecuted anti-trust cases notably Corn Products Refining Co. and the New York, New Haven & Hartford Grand Trunk Railroads.  He became the president of the District Bar Association in 1928.  He was appointed by Herbert Hoover and served as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia from 1930-1946. As a part of the Minimum Wage Board he was active in several cases, notably the Children’s Hospital vs. Jesse C. Adkins with Felix Frankfurter as of counsel.

For further information on the Jesse Corcoran Adkins Papers, including the finding aid, Search Our Collections and type “Adkins”.

For more information on other manuscript collections contact Special Collections at 202/661-6602 or email  htm@law.georgetown.edu.

For those interested in reactions to the Supreme Court's decision on the health care cases, SCOTUSblog is conducting a post-decision "symposium." The symposium features a collection of essays written by practicing attorneys and law professors, including Georgetown professor Randy Barnett.

The Supreme Court has posted its opinion in which it upheld nearly all the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including the individual mandate. The opinion is available here.

In collaboration with the Lauinger undergraduate library, members of the Georgetown Law Library community now have access to the Mergent Archives Annual Report Collection. This collection features the annual reports of both U.S. and International companies. Researchers can search by a corporation's name or address to retrieve the available reports in a PDF format.

Mergent also provides access to over two dozen industry reports covering global industries such as Finance and Real Estate. Reports on the Legal Services industry are available back to 2005.

Irene Berkey, International and Foreign Law Librarian at Northwestern Law, has today posted an announcement of a project that has been in the works and is now launched. It is a free database with superb references to primary law and human rights reports. This will be of great benefit to researchers, both academic and practicing, in the area of international human rights law. See her description below, which nicely details the features of the database:

"The Death Penalty Worldwide (http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org), a research project based at Northwestern University's Center for International Human Rights, provides up-to-date analysis on the law and practice of capital punishment for every country in the world that retains it. The centerpiece of the website is a searchable database which tracks, among other information, the offenses for which the death penalty may be imposed, ratification of relevant international treaties, national and international jurisprudence, methods of execution, death sentence and execution statistics, decisions of international human rights bodies, the availability of legal aid, and recent domestic developments with regard to capital punishment. This extensive data is searchable by country, region, offense, or any combination of the above topics. The website also provides links to research resources and thematic summaries of the main international legal issues relevant to capital punishment. The goal of Death Penalty Worldwide is to provide reliable, current legal analysis and information on the death penalty to scholars, activists, practitioners and journalists around the world."

Going abroad this summer? Interested in learning a new language? The library now subscribes to Mango Languages, an online language learning center, providing basic courses in over 40 languages. Whether you're interested in Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic or others, Mango Languages allows you to create your own account to track your progress. It also includes a translation tool based on Google translate.

Login to Mango and create an account. You'll be able to learn more than one language at a time, use your mobile devices for access and learn at your own pace.