Special Collection now has PDFs of select Manuscript Collection Finding Aids available online through our database Eloquent.

 To Access Eloquent:   http://gencat.eloquent-systems.com/georgetown_public.html

To Retrieve a Finding Aid:
1) Go to the above link for Eloquent
2) Search for a Collection in the Main Search Box (Example:  “Adkins”)
3) Click on the paper icon next to the Collection Level record to download the PDF or
4) Click on the Collection Level record to view more about the Collection (this record is highlighted in red) then
5) Scroll down to Documents and click on the paper icon labeled “Finding Aid”

If you have any questions or need further assistance please feel free to contact Special Collections at specl@law.georgetown.edu .

Please join the Friends of the Law Library, National Equal Justice Library, The Innocence Project, Georgetown Criminal Law Association, the Georgetown chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild, and Law Docs at the latest co-sponsored Law at the Movies event, part of the ongoing Georgetown Law Library Equal Justice Film Festival:

Movie: Gideon's Army (2013)
Date: Friday, April 19, 2013
Time: 6:00pm (refreshments & seating), showtime 6:30pm
Location: Hart Auditorium, Georgetown University Law Center

This screening is free and open to the public – map and directions.

A 2013 Sundance award winning documentary by Georgetown Law alumna Dawn Porter, Gideon's Army follows the personal stories of three young public defenders in the Deep South challenging the assumptions that drive a criminal justice system strained to the breaking point. 50 years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling Gideon v. Wainwright that established the right to counsel, can these courageous lawyers and their colleagues revolutionize the way America thinks about indigent defense and make “justice for all” a reality?

After the screening, stay for a discussion of the film and its context, led by:

• Jo-Ann Wallace, President and CEO, National Legal Aid & Defender Association
• Abbe Smith, Director, Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic; Co-Director, E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program; Professor of Law
• Alec Karakatsanis, Attorney, Special Litigation Division, Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia

For information on other upcoming events in the Georgetown Law Library Equal Justice Film Festival, visit www.law.georgetown.edu/library/about/125/filmfestival.cfm.

To learn more about the Friends of the Georgetown Law Library program and the benefits of becoming a member, visit www.law.georgetown.edu/library/visitors/friends.

The FY2014 Budget of the United States was released yesterday and is available through FDSys.gov, but did you know that you can actually review the federal budget back to 1923 through the Federal Reserve archive, known as FRASER? This resource provides a PDF version for each year and is already updated to include the 2014 release.

With summer just around the corner, the Library wants to be sure you’re aware of the options and requirements for continuing to use your student accounts with Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law. A summary of the relevant policies and procedures is below and can also be found at www.law.georgetown.edu/library/about/services-policies/lexis-westlaw.cfm.

Of course, you’ll also want to check with your supervisor or librarian at your place of employment to understand any institutional policies or preferences they may have for using these platforms for your research over the summer.

Westlaw:

Westlaw passwords will automatically remain active over the summer for a limited number of hours of research each month. Students can get full access over the summer if they have a valid educational need under one of the following provisions:

• Summer School
• School-Related Research Assignment
• Moot Court Research
• Law Review or Journal Research
• Working as a Professor's Research Assistant
• Non-Profit Externship (receiving academic credit AND unpaid)
• Unpaid Internship/Externship (receiving academic credit AND unpaid)

If one of the above describes your summer activities, please apply to extend your full access at Westlaw's Password Extension page. If you take no action, your account will remain active but limited in the number of hours for June and July. Live Chat support on WestlawNext will remain active throughout the summer.

Graduating students can extend access while studying for the bar by registering for Westlaw’s Grad Program. Once registered, May graduates will retain access to Westlaw through November 2013. Please note that this extension will be limited in the number of hours allowed. All graduates will automatically retain access to a number of career-related databases for 18 months.

Questions can be directed to our Westlaw account representative, Pedro de Lencastre, at pedro.delencastre@thomsonreuters.com.

Lexis:

For summer 2013, Lexis offers students unlimited use of Lexis Advance for any research purpose, educational or commercial/job related. No additional steps are necessary for access besides registering your Lexis Advance ID (please contact the Reference Desk if you need an ID).

Lexis.com will also remain active over the summer, and may be used to access materials (e.g., international legal materials) that are unavailable on Lexis Advance. To use Lexis.com over the summer, you may log in the same as during the school year at www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool using your Lexis.com ID, until the consolidation of IDs into a single Lexis Advance ID/password and portal in late June or early July. After this, Lexis.com will be accessible by logging onto Lexis Advance and selecting the Lexis.com link in the system.

Questions can be directed to our Lexis account representative, Lori Sorenson, at lori.sorenson@lexisnexis.com.

Bloomberg Law:

Bloomberg Law accounts remain fully active over the summer for registered law students, including access for research conducted during summer employment. For additional information, contact Georgetown's Bloomberg Law representative, Beth Goldfinger, at egoldfinger@bloomberg.net.

“Dear Felix,
About a month ago I wrote Mrs. Florence Kelly giving the reasons for my opposition to the Women’s Party amendment to the Constitution.  I agree with you that it is a dangerous amendment, particularly at this time when the swing of the pendulum is away from legislation like the Minimum Wage Law. 
With Kindest regards and best wishes for the holiday, I am Sincerely yours,
Jesse Adkins ” 

The above is a letter to Felix Frankfurter by Jesse Corcoran Adkins (pictured), on December 19, 1921.  The letter is from the Judge Jesse Corcoran Adkins Papers in Special Collections.  In 1921 Felix Frankfurter was a professor at Harvard Law School and Jesse Adkins was a Georgetown Law faculty member and a member of the DC Minimum Wage Board.  It is unclear from the letter if Jesse Adkins is talking about the 19th Amendment to the Constitution or the Equal Rights Amendment, but what is clear is that both men saw it as taking the focus away from more important matters.   The Equal Rights Amendment was drafted by Alice Paul in or around 1923 and had been tested on the state level early in 1921, but would never make it to Congress until 1972. 

Both Alice Paul and Florence Kelley were very active in the women’s suffrage movement. In 1920 the 19th Amendment to the U.S Constitution passed.  The women’s suffrage movement had finally won women the right to vote.  Following the victory of the 19th Amendment, the National American Woman Suffrage Association transforms into the League of Women Voters and the National Woman’s Party established by Alice Paul.  Paul was able to garner substantial financial support for the National Woman’s Party and established their headquarters in Washington, DC.  She was a graduate of American University, receiving her JD in 1922 and her LLM in 1928.  She was the driving force in the continuation of women’s rights through the ongoing work of the National Woman’s Party and the Equal Rights Amendment. 

Select correspondence from Alice Paul and material on the National Woman’s Party can be found in the George Finch Collection, also available in Special Collections or more information can be found at the Library of Congress in the National Woman's Party Records.  For more information on Felix Frankfurter, Jesse Adkins and Minimum Wage, see this great blog post by Dan Ernst on the Legal History Blog. Or for a closer look at either the George Finch Collection or the Judge Jesse Corcoran Adkins Papers, please contact Special Collections at specl@law.georgetown.edu .

On Tuesday April 9th Georgetown recognizes its 6th annual Denim Day. Denim Day promotes public awareness of sexual violence against women. This year Denim Day is especially noteworthy because of recent rapes that have gathered international notoriety, such as those in India and Brazil.

Denim Day began in 1999 in response to an Italian Supreme Court (Corte de Cassazione) decision that overturned a rape conviction. The case involved a dispute about conset. In the decision on the consent issue, the court found that "it is nearly impossible to slip off the tight jeans even partly without the active collaboration of the person who is wearing them." In response to this decision female legislators appeared on the doorsteps of Parliament wearing jeaning and holding signs that read "Jeans: An Alibi for Rape."

There was a second, similar case in 2008 where the Supreme Court (Corte de Cassazione) reviewed a lower court decision with very similar reasoning which had found that "it was impossible to, with the girl wearing jeans and being seated, put his hand under her pants and touch" her. This time high court overturned the lower court and its own 1999 ruling, finding that "[t]he fact that the girl was wearing jeans was not an obstacle to her intimate parts, because it is possible for him to penetrate with his hand under the garment, which is not comparable to a chastity belt."

This development has "closely aligned the Italian Supreme Court with the European Court of Human Rights' dictates, and ultimately has marked a step forward towards gender equality and women's right to sexual autonomy."

Denim Day endures as a a reminder and as a tool to combat such attitudes.

The Law Library is conducting a survey of all Georgetown law students. Please take about 10 minutes to give us your feedback on the law library's collections, services and a related matters. We promise to read every comment submitted, and we'll do what we can to act on and respond to your feedback.

Take the 2013 Law Library Survey [Georgetown login required]

One lucky student completing the survey will win an 3G Kindle Paperwhite. We will keep the survey open through Sunday, April 21, and plan to announce the student winner by the following Tuesday.

It should only take a few minutes to complete the voluntary survey.  Based on feedback in prior years, we revised the past exam archive, created an online group study reservation system, relocated the reference desk in the Wolff Library and purchased new chairs for the Williams Reading Room and Williams library fifth floor. In addition, we have added book scanners, and we enhanced frequently-used library collections, including our collection of DVD and study aids.

You can review a summary of survey responses from 2007 to 2012 on our website. 

 “For nearly two centuries the lawyers of America have been donating free services to defendants in criminal cases who could not afford lawyers. I submit to you that we have been trying too long in vain to prove the falsity of the old adage ‘you get what you pay for.’ The only way to provide competent representation is to pay for it, and I suggest that the principal source of these funds should be the governmental source.”

(Retired General Charles L. Decker, quoted from handwritten notes for his remarks to the National Defenders Conference, on May 16, 1969.)

The above speech to the National Defenders Conference later prompted testimony to the House Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, which sought to amend the Criminal Justice Act of 1964. General Decker’s testimony highlighted the early disparities in treatment between Federal Public Defenders and Federal Prosecutors under the original Criminal Justice Act of 1964. The Criminal Justice Act of 1964 arose out of the need to provide public defenders which was epitomized in the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright 372 U.S. 335 (1963).The act originally presumed that defense of the indigent would occur out of the generosity of the members of the Federal Bar and all remuneration under the act was considered to be token at best, resulting in widely disproportionate salaries and fees. General Charles Lowman Decker (L’ 1942), as Director of the National Defender Project, testified before congressional committees to the radical concept that if the level of justice was to be equal and fair, that a public defender would need to be offered a salary comparable to that of a prosecutor.

This testimony is part of the General Charles L. Decker Collection, a collection containing papers related to the National Defender Project, which ran from 1963 through 1971. This project was a Ford Foundation grant to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and was intended to improve the quality and quantity of public defender offices and to research best practices in this area. The collection includes original documentation regarding grant inquiries, proposals, reports, presentations, congressional testimony, personal correspondence, research materials, brochures and seminar materials, budgetary documentation, journal and newspaper articles, legislative and regulatory materials, and other documentation. Specific topics include public defenders, student defense clinics, the 1964 Criminal Justice Act, prisoner representation, and other indigent defense topics. This collection was donated by General Decker, a Georgetown law alumnus and adjunct faculty member. The collection is available for research and a display of materials will be coming soon. For more information, please contact Special Collections at specl@law.georgetown.edu.

Prepared by Erin M. Page, Esq.

Follow the daily activities of the President with this recently released mobile app. The Government Printing Office has coordinated with the Office of the Federal Register to create this functional app which allows users to search by keyword, review documents by date or limit results by type of document. Some of the material available include:

• executive orders
• appointments and nominations
• bill signings
• speeches

Feel free to ask at the reference desk if you need any assistance with locating presidential documents.

Interested in learning strategies and techniques for conducting efficient legal research?
Attend a one-hour library session on developing a research plan,  tips for using Westlaw Next and Lexis Advance, free and low-cost legal research resources, and how to select the right resource and method for your research. 

These are the same classes we provide to the first-year JD students in the Legal Research and Writing program. 

Please sign-up for a class online, “Cost Effective Research Class (LL.M. & J.D.).” If you have questions, please stop by the Reference Desk.

Cost Effective Legal Research Class (LL.M. & J.D.)
•    Tuesday April 9, 2013 11:10am
•    Wednesday April 10, 2013 3:30pm

Classes held in the Williams Library Computer Learning Center (CLC).