Harvard Law School’s faculty has voted unanimously to join the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in implementing an open access publication policy and institutional repository for works published by faculty members.  Incoming Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources John Palfrey’s blog provides details, including the text of the policy.  The Chronicle of Higher Education blogged the decision as well.

What does it mean for you?  Well, in essence, Harvard law faculty members’ new publications will be available for non-profit, research use to anyone who can access the internet.  (Unless the faculty member chooses to opt out of the system, which the policy gives the faculty member the right to do.)

As HLS Dean Elena Kagan says “Our decision to embrace ‘open access’ means that people everywhere can benefit from the ideas generated here at the Law School.” Harvard University Professor and Director of the Library Robert Darnton hailed the vote: “That such a renowned law school should support Open Access so resoundingly is a victory for the democratization of knowledge. Far from turning its back to the outside world, the HLS is sharing its intellectual wealth.”

As Stuart Shieber, a major advocate for the policy has noted,

"Librarians have been very involved with these issues, and with the work on this policy. There was important library representation on the Provost’s Committee on Scholarly Publishing, which developed this proposal, and involvement of librarians at many points, including an open forum with librarians on the motion.”

Mildred Loving, whose 1967 Supreme Court victory brought an end to laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the United States, passed away on Friday at the age of 68.

Much has been written about Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard. Of particular note for legal scholars are last year’s Howard Law Journal symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia and Phyl Newbeck’s 2004 book.

For those students who endured the Ames Competition researching third-party actions involving guns, yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed a case citing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.  Read more in the New York Times.

A genetic propensity to commit murder, mitigating or aggravating factor? Familial DNA searches, open to constitutional challenge?

Genes and Justice, a series of special reports from the Washington Post, explores the growing use of DNA testing in the U.S. legal system. The first article in the series, DNA Tests Offer Deeper Examination Of Accused, Washington Post, April 20, 2008, explores new and expanding uses of DNA testing in the courtroom. The second article, From DNA of Family, a Tool to Make Arrests, Washington Post, April 21, 2008, explores the use of DNA testing in law enforcement.

One of the area’s finest used book stores has just moved to a new location less than one mile from HLS.

The International Organization for Standardization announced today that the Microsoft Office Open XML file format has received the necessary number of votes for approval as an ISO/IEC International Standard.

The Microsoft file format (ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Office Open XML file formats) is now in direct competition with the already approved OpenDocument standard (ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0). Approval of the file format as an open standard makes it easier for Microsoft to market its office products to governments. The ISO voting process has been heavily criticized by the IBM-backed European Committee for Interoperable Systems and the Wall Street Journal reports of an investigation by the European Commission. For more information, see the ISO press release and news coverage in C|Net and today’s New York Times (registration required) and Wall Street Journal (account required). Consider visiting the ISO Café.

The Section 108 study group has released its report to the Librarian of Congress recommending changes to section 108 of the Copyright Act.

Section 108 “permits libraries and archives to make certain uses of copyrighted materials in order to serve the public and ensure the availability of works over time.” The Section 108 study group was “convened under the auspices of the Library of Congress to look at specific changes that might be needed in the copyright law to balance the positions of rights holders and cultural memory organizations such as libraries and archives in the digital world.” See the report, executive summary and press release for more information.

Taiwan has elected Ma Ying-jeou to be its new president.

His 1980 HLS S.J.D. thesis is here in the library.

Feeling like you’re getting a little too much information, lately?  Lots of lawyers feel the same way.  A recent study by LexisNexis reveals that 80% of legal professionals suffer from information overload.  (Even more than the 70% of white collar workers who feel overloaded with information.)

Other findings include:

* 98% of legal professionals agree that the consequences of mismanaging information are extremely serious in the legal profession;
* 90% agree that not being able to access the right information at the right time is a big time-waster;
* 70% say they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information;
* 45% say that research takes up so much of their time that they occasionally omit billing clients for this work.

What’s the solution?  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to “google” all of law with one little box? (Try googling .  Nope, we’re not quite there yet.  Though I did find out that someone thinks Nevada is “tort-plagued.") Can legal research ever be that easy?  Maybe someday… but until then, try asking your librarian… we’ll help you get the information you need, as quickly and as google-like as possible in our imperfect information world.

Hat tip: Bonnie Shucha at WisBlawg.

From the Massachusetts Lawyer’s Weekly:

The Appeals Court announced today that any unpublished opinion issued pursuant to Rule 1:28 after today (February 25, 2008) may be cited for its persuasive value but not as binding precedent.

The long-standing policy that “unpublished decisions of this court are not to be relied upon or cited as authority in unrelated cases” had been established in the case of Lyons v. Labor Relations Comm., 19 Mass. App. Ct. 562, 566 n.7 (1985).

Explaining the reason for permitting limited use of unpublished opinions, Chief Justice Phillip G. Rapoza wrote, “In the nearly twenty-three years since we decided Lyons, however, our [unpublished] decisions have become far more widely available and now routinely appear in the results of electronic research. That widespread availability leads us to announce a modification of the prohibition set out in Lyons.”

The rule amendment was announced in the case of Chace, et al. v. Curran, et al., Lawyers Weekly No. 11-026-08. Click here to read the full opinion. 

The recent decision to have a women-only time at the Quad Gym is now making the rounds of the legal blogosphere. 

Instapundit asks if it violates Massachusetts law.  Volokh responds, and later posts his opinion that it is not illegal under Massachusetts law.  Andrew Sullivan weighs in at The Atlantic.  Of course, Hemenway is still co-ed every day.

JD Supra was launched last week and is generating a lot of interest. 

According to this ABA Journal write up, the free site is “intended to help lawyers share filed pleadings, research memoranda and other materials that allow them to build on each other’s prior work, rather than start every project on a clean slate.”

The site was developed by San Francisco litigator Aviva Cuyler and a “team of Internet and legal marketing professionals.” A search page allows users to find relevant material by jurisdiction, subject matter and document type.  As the number of documents grows, the site could become an important tool for legal researchers.  Top contributors currently include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Morrison & Foerster, the Cato Institute, and Mintz, Levin.  Reportedly, Justia will be uploading a large number of “higher quality briefs and filings” pulled from the federal government’s PACER electronic court filing system. 

Will there prove to be a free rider problem with the site, as lawyers freely download the work product of other lawyers?  Maybe not, when you consider that much of this work product is in fact already shared, just more inefficiently, via contacts between individual lawyers, firm websites, and searches for briefs and other filings on Westlaw, Lexis and PACER.  Will clients complain if lawyers don’t save client money by downloading relevant documents from the site?  We’ll have to wait and see.

The site also provides an opportunity for networking and marketing of lawyers’ services by allowing individuals, firms and organizations to create profiles.

Hat Tip: WisBlawg

Amy Barrett is blogging at PrawfsBlawg this month and has a post on the retroactive sentence reductions proposed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.  Et Seq has already posted links to the documents involved.

An interesting BBC article on the use of YouTube videos as evidence in criminal proceedings appeared today.  [Hat Tip: WisBlawg]

I’ve always had a penchant for dumb criminal stories.  Here’s another from Volokh.

For those of you who have been waiting, the time is finally here.  On February 15, the editors of the Harvard Law Review made the Bluebook available online. For more information, see the Law Review’s press release.  While I’ve grown kind of fond of flipping back and forth through the pages of various rules over the years, I’ll have to try it out and see which version works best for me.  It’s nice to have an option of formats to order, however.