When you are doing serious legislative history on Massachusetts law, or need an obscure Massachusetts government document, there is one place to go: the State Library of Massachusetts. Since 1826, the State Library has collected a wide variety of legal and historical documents, and holds the most world’s comprehensive collection of Massachusetts government documents. Yes, even better than Harvard’s! The library is an invaluable resource not just to lawyers, but to historians, scholars, and citizens as well.

This is why it was worrying to read that Governor Patrick last week included the possibility of closing the State Library in his attempt to close the state’s budget gap.

If you agree that closing the State Library is a bad idea, please sign the petition to support keeping it open. For even more impact, take a few minutes to contact Governor Patrick directly to remind him what an important resource the library is.

Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami School of Law has launched a new online journal called Jotwell, where academics and practitioners will comment on recent scholarship.  According to the website:

"Jotwell is a cross between a law review and a blog: like a blog we invite your comments, and hope that some of our reviews will spark a conversation. Unlike a blog, however, on the Jotwell main page you should expect new content only once or twice a week, although as we add more sections contributions may become more frequent. The subject-specific sections may have new content only once a month, although some will be more active. In any case, every time a new review appears in any of the subject-specific sections, an excerpt with a link to the full text will also appear on our front page at http://www.jotwell.com.”

The website has sections on Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Corporate Law, Cyberlaw, Intellectual Property Law, Legal Profession and Tax Law.

Hat tip, Persuasive Authorities.

More interesting experiments in law school law reviews…

The Faculty Lounge blog recently posted about a Florida Law Review article that included audio clips from Oyez.  An increasing number of multimedia formats/files are being published with traditional journal articles (such as embedded multimedia files in electronic journals) in other disciplines such as the sciences and humanities.  It will be interesting to see if this type of publishing will be become a trend in law journals, especially with so many journals experimenting with new formats.

The Vanderbilt Law Review has added a new feature to its recently developed online companion EnBanc.  Its Roundtable “will host debates among legal academics and practitioners on notable cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.” The introductory essay is about Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.  See the Supreme Court website’s docket, SCOTUSWiki and the ABA’s Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases website for the latest activity and documents related to the case, such as the brief filed by the Respondent United States , by Solicitor General, former HLS Dean Elena Kagan.  Oral arguments are slated for December 7th.  Hat tip, PrawfsBlawg.

Please join us for our final Open Access Week event at the law school.  Three speakers will discuss the significance of open access to research from a variety of perspectives.

The Significance of Open Access to Research

Carolina Rossini, Berkman Center

John Wilbanks, Science Commons

Stefan Gruber, HLS Visiting Researcher

Friday, October 23rd, noon-1:30pm

Harvard Law School, Pound 108

RSVP requested, but not required:  http://tinyurl.com/yzp956o

The Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review has launched a new online companion called Amicus.  The website will strive to “create a dynamic online forum for debate surrounding these important issues, and to develop a resource to which practitioners, policy makers, and scholars can both look and contribute.” There are currently three sections: Recent Developments (addressing recent significant legislation and judicial decisions); Policy Pieces (presenting current local and national civil rights and civil liberties issues and putting forth policy proposals to address them); and CR-CL Conversations (series of exchanges and dialogues between scholars and practitioners on certain pressing issues).

Among its inaugural articles is New Public Spaces by our own Vice Dean of Library and Information Resources John Palfrey!

Please join the journal tonight 7:30-10:30p.m. in Hark South for its launch party.

Carl Malamud recently announced the creation of Law.Gov ("a proposed registry and repository of all primary legal materials of the United States").  Co-convenors in the project include Harvard Law School’s own Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain, former Harvard Law School Library Director Terry Martin and the Robert Crown Law Library of Stanford Law School.  See Law.Gov: America’s Operating System, Open Source for Carl’s announcement on O’Reilly Radar.

Four schools at Harvard University have adopted open access policies for their scholarly articles.  In celebration of Open Access Week (http://www.openaccessweek.org/), Stuart Shieber (Faculty Director of Harvard University’s Office for Scholarly Communication), Peter Suber (Berkman Fellow and leader in the open access movement) and representatives from the schools with open access policies will be hosting a forum to answer questions you might have about Harvard’s current activities in implementing these policies and issues about open access generally. 

Monday, October 19th, 11:00am-12:30pm
Harvard Law School
Ropes Gray Room (Pound Hall)
RSVP required at http://bit.ly/2AbAfL or e-mail to mpearse@law.harvard.edu (As part of the RSVP form, we encourage you to submit questions before the event.)

A 1910 graduate of the Harvard Law School, Charles Davis received international praise for the relief work he oversaw as Director of the South Eastern Base of the American Red Cross from 1920-1922. Headquartered in Constantinople, the South Eastern Base coordinated humanitarian efforts for Russian refugees fleeing the Russian Revolution.  Another major effort occurred in September 1922 when Turkish armies assaulted the city of Smyrna on Turkey’s Aegean coast, which had been occupied by Greece since 1919.  The ensuing battle (and fire) destroyed the ancient city and left a large number of refugees. Davis received numerous citations for his work.

The collection includes: thank you letters written to Davis, newspaper clippings, a ledger, and American Red Cross Reports. Perhaps the highlights of the collection are the photo scrapbooks that document refugee camps. One of the scrapbooks is an album made by the children of Russian Towns Union Children’s home No. 1 thanking him for his help.

The collection should be of interest to researchers studying refugee camps, orphans, international relief work, and the American Red Cross among others.  Entry to the digital collection can be found here.

“Dining-room, lunch” From Scrapbook number 3, image sequence number 667.
Album is dedicated to Davis from the children of the Russian Towns Union Children’s Home No. 1

From Scrapbook number 6, image sequence number 759.
Scrapbook from the Russian Towns Union Children’s Home No. 1.

Dear Mr. Davis!

In our own land at home we were very happy and it was only from books that we knew about unhappy children who had no food and no clothes.

Then we were brought here and it was our turn to be unhappy children without food and without clothes, but found shelter, food and clothes, as our tutors tell us, from you Dear Mister Davis, and the generous, and kind Americans who took pity on us and once more we are happy.

We are very, very greatefull [sic] and pray you, dear and kind Americans, not to leave us.

Russian Towns Union Children’s Home No. 1

The Harvard Law School Library’s newest digital collection just went live.  Presenting: Digitized Scrolls from the Japanese Manuscript Collection, 1158-1591. 

The Japanese Manuscript Digital Collection is comprised of a set of twenty-two medieval legal manuscripts and annotated facsimiles in scroll form called komonjo. Komonjo—literally “old documents”—are remnants of day-to-day legal transactions. Spanning a nearly 450 year period, these documents frequently focus on land and property issues, though they can also represent edicts and judicial rulings. Part of a large donation presented to the Harvard Law Library in 1936, these komonjo represent one of the finest collections of their type outside Japan.

As a newly minted lawyer in the late nineteenth century, what did you need--and how much did it cost--to set yourself up as a solo practitioner in Boston?  The Library has recently acquired a lawyer’s manuscript expense book that provides an answer.  W. Frederick Kimball (1851 – 1915) practiced law in Boston from 1878 until the beginning of World War I.  After graduating from Harvard College in 1875 and studying briefly with attorney Alfred Hemenway, he enrolled in the recently opened Boston University Law School where he received his LL.B in 1877.  Kimball was admitted to the Suffolk County bar on February 18, 1878 and began his practice a week later.  His accounting ledger records the financial details of the first six years of his practice; in his first year, Kimball generated nearly $624 in fees, and by his fifth year was earning more than $2,500 in fees.

The first two pages of the ledger list Kimball’s expenses incurred in renting and furnishing an office in the Adams Building, 23 Court Street, Boston:

In addition to office supplies, Kimball purchased a used desk (for which he spent $1 for repairs), a subscription to the nearby Social Law Library, the services of a sign painter for the lettering on his door, and five books: Bump’s Law and Practice in Bankruptcy (1877); Buswell’s Practice and Pleading in Personal Actions in the Courts of Massachusetts (1875); Crocker’s Notes on Common Forms: A Book of Massachusetts Laws (1872); Smith’s Practice in Proceedings in the Probate Court (1876), and Curtis’s American Conveyancer (1871).

Exclusive of his $150 annual rent, Kimball spent $64.95 setting up his office and running it for the first month.  According to the website “Measuring Worth: Purchasing Power of Money in the United States, 1774-2008,” Kimball’s expenditure of $64.95 is worth $1446.11 in 2008 dollars.

Post submitted by Dave Warrington
Special Collections Librarian

Just in time for the start of the Supreme Court’s new term this week, C-SPAN is kicking off a weeklong look at the Supreme Court tonight.  It features its original documentary production “The Supreme Court: Home to America’s Highest Court” and a collection of original interviews with all 11 living current and former Supreme Court Justices.  Check out the fabulous website dedicated to the event.

Diigo is a social bookmarking web application that permits users to bookmark, tag, and add “sticky notes” (a feature unique to Diigo) to websites.  With this project we plan to enhance the description of the Law Library’s Modern Manuscript collections, which should lead to increased access and use by researchers.

The primary goal of this project is to learn what “hidden” information the library’s manuscript collections may contain.  Through our finding aids we provide basic information about a collection, enough so that a researcher can determine whether or not to request a certain box. For example, correspondence folders are probably the most requested items from any collection.  Researchers hope to glean insight into an individual’s thought process by reading the letters they wrote to friends and colleagues.  However, a folder of correspondence may only bear the description of the correspondents and date of correspondence (e.g. Frankfurter – Freund, 1936-1942).  Unfortunately, these descriptions do not always provide the most sought after information: the subject of the communication. Researchers can potentially help ameliorate this issue through their work with correspondence and other files; the key is to develop a reasonable way to collect information from patrons.  Diigo – with its ability to facilitate communication among users – is the tool we hope will help us capture and use this knowledge.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Special Collections is using Diigo send us an email at SpecialC@law.harvard.edu or check out diigo.com and become our friend!  Our username is HLSLSC.

When the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom opens in a few hours, no longer will the most senior judges in the realm also be in the business of proposing, revising and amending legislation in Parliament’s House of Lords. Former members of the House’s Appellate Committee, also known as Law Lords, the new Justices will still be House members, but they will no longer sit or vote in the House. According to The Times, the judges will swear themselves in today, there being no judges senior to them to do the honors.

Created by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, the Supreme Court embodies a new, clear statement of judicial independence. It will be the final court of appeal for all civil cases in the United Kingdom, all criminal cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and will also assume the devolution jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. For an introduction to the UK judicial system, click here.

The new Court (SCOTUK?) will film almost all its proceedings and sometimes broadcast them live. Instead of a Chief Justice, the Court has a President, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the former Senior Law Lord.

Perhaps because the name of the new court “inescapably implies the kind of powers enjoyed by other supreme courts around the world,” critics worry that the new court will, American style, assert its power over Parliament and the executive. Press in GMT today reassure that the new Court “is a perfectly English idea . . . [not]another American import” and it “has no power to nullify acts of parliament as unconstitutional.” Concerns about selection of justices continue.

Like the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will begin hearing the new term’s cases on Monday, October 5. May justice be done.

We have the Amazon Kindle DX for you to check out.

You’ve heard the hype.  You know you’ve sneaked a peak over someone’s shoulder while he is reading one on the T.  Well, now you can check out a Kindle at the Circulation Desk. We’ve got a Kindle with current newspapers, (The Independent, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Le Monde, International Herald Tribune) and another with magazines. They are on reserve for three hour loans so you can fully digest the op-ed pages.  Let us know what you think about the Kindle, whether it arouses or inspires you, or not.