As the Georgetown Hoyas advance in their last Big East tournament, as we know it, you can bet that there are hundreds of lawyers out there not only watching the conference tournament games, but also negotiating the athletic contracts of their NCAA clients, the basketball officials, the arena owners, etc. A simple search for NCAA in FeeFieFoeFirm, the legal search engine, locates thousands of legal guidance memos, law firm profiles and practitioner work product in the area of college sports law.
Georgetown Law Library maintains a Sports Law Research Guide for those looking to do more than just watch the games this weekend and strategize about their upcoming March Madness bracket. If you have any questions about researching in this practice area, feel free to ask a reference librarian for assistance and good luck with those brackets! Hoyas all the way!
If you are interested in New York City's much-discussed plan to block the sale of large sugary drinks by restaurants and other establishments, make sure to read Georgetown Law Professor Lawrence Gostin's March 13th CNN opinion piece Banning Large Sodas is Legal and Smart
For more on the background of the ban, check out NYC's Department of Health & Mental Hygiene Sugary Drinks web site, which includes links to selected relevant documents, and the Wall Street Journal Law Blog's A Legal Guide to the Soda Ban Ruling, a short explanation with links to New York State Supreme Court documents, including the March 11 ruling.
In a recent discussion with Georgetown law graduates working in a D.C. law firm, many commented that they wish they had become more familiar with databases other than Westlaw and Lexis. A bulk of their research has turned out to be interdisciplinary in nature. ScienceDirect is one of those databases provided by the library, which supports interdisciplinary research in both the physical sciences and the social sciences.
Now, there is even a mobile app available for researchers using ScienceDirect. Once members of the Georgetown Law community connect to ScienceDirect, look in the QuickLinks box for a link to the ScienceDirect Info Site.
On this site, there is a direct link to Go Mobile!
You will then be able to select the appropriate mobile app for your device.
Use ScienceDirect to access journal articles on psychology, decision making, business management, as well as pharmacology and environmental science.
On Monday, March 18th, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in the Gideon v. Wainwright case. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that state courts are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to provide counsel for defendants who are unable to afford an attorney. By highlighting the responsibility of the government to provide legal counsel to low-income Americans, Gideon was a landmark case in the equal justice movement in the United States. In acknowledgement of this significant anniversary, we will show the 1980 movie Gideon's Trumpet, starring Henry Fonda as Clarence Earl Gideon, Jose Ferrer as Abe Fortas and John Houseman as Chief Justice Earl Warren. The movie will be followed by a panel discussion with Georgetown Law Center faculty members Prof. Malia Brink, Prof. John Copacino, and Prof. Abbe Smith. The movie will kick-off the 2013 Equal Justice Film Festival, a series of films and discussion on the ideals and realities of equal justice under law.
The Cayman Islands are making it easier for legal researchers to access statutes and case law. Westlaw currently has the unannotated code updated through June 2012, while the Cayman Islands Judicial Authority is making cases available at http://www.judicial.ky/.You do have to register on the website to get access to case law.
While this is great news for those of us who are glued to our computers, others may be sad to know that they've lost an excuse to take a Caribbean vacation to get the cases and statutes they need.
The electronic version of the Official Journal of the European Union has heretofore not been legally valid; a status reserved for the print version. A proposal was drafted to "ensure better access to the law by enabling everyone to rely on the electronic version [] as being official, authentic, up-to-date, and complete." The Council has been formally invited to adopt the proposal, and "the Regulation shall enter into force on the first day of the fourth calendar month following its adoption." So, we look forward to the e-version of the Official Journal of the EU to be legally valid in the near future.
The answer to this, and many other questions you might have about the upcoming process for selecting a new pope, can be found in the Papal Election Research Guide. This guide contains information on recent changes to the rules that guide the conclave, as well as a look at some of the top contenders for the position.
Additionally, the guide includes resources that are available to you both here at the Law Center and on the Main Campus, as well as electronic resources that may be helpful.
Please feel free to consult a reference librarian for more information on using any of the resources identified in the Papal Election Research Guide!
Professor Rosa Brooks has written an "unofficial" guide to getting a political job in the Obama administration in the latest issue of Foreign Policy. Of course, her tips on networking are important for obtaining a great job, whether you dream of working on 16th and Pennsylvania or 16th and K Street.
For more job-searching resources available in the Library, please consult the Library's Job-Searching Research Guide.
Preparing your own taxes? Several resources in the Bloomberg Law Tax Practice Center that may be of particular interest for your own return preparation are "BNA Bloomberg Fast Answers: Federal Tax" and the "Tax Practice Series." Fast Answers provides quick, brief, explanations of common tax issues, and the Tax Practice Series provides additional detail in an easy-to-use format.
If you get audited, Bloomberg Law also has the "IRS Practice Adviser" with helpful instructions on the audit and appeals process, calculating interest and penalties, and collection.
All three resources are in the "BNA Portfolios and Analysis" section of the Tax Practice Center.
Although some of these same materials are available in the Bloomberg BNA Library database, the interface is significantly easier to use on Bloomberg Law.
Students and faculty interested in requesting an account on Bloomberg Law may obtain one by following the instructions available in the Library's catalog.
