Have you ever quickly needed the crime statistics of Jamaica?  Need to know whether the USA or Germany has higher car theft rates?  A new website called Nationmaster aggregates this type of data and organizes it into easily understandable charts.   It collects data on a variety of topics ranging from crime statistics and eduation, to terrorism and immigration.

The European Commission is currently considering modifying regulation 1049/2001 which mandates public access to EU documents.  The changes being considered include modifying the section which requires public access for all documents to require only public access to legislative documents.  It would also change the definition of "document" so that only those documents which are officially recorded are required to be available to the public.  According to Statewatch, this proposal would significantly impair the ability of the European public to access EU documents.

Analysis -- Statewatch.org

Openess and access to documents -- European Commission website

(h/t to law.librarians)

The New York Times has an interesting article on the new legal resouce website, JDSupra.com.  The site is a new, and interesting, development in online legal assistance.  The website asks that legal professionals upload their documents onto the site, with their biographic and professional information attached.  Then, if users find a particular documents pertinent to their legal issue, they can contact the lawyer who authored it.

From the article:

It works like this: Lawyers who contribute to JD Supra dip into their hard drives for articles, court papers, legal briefs and other tidbits of their craft. They upload the documents, as well as a profile of themselves that is linked to each document. Site visitors who have a legal problem and are thinking about finding a lawyer can use an easily searchable database to look up, say, "trademark infringement," find related documents and, if they like the author’s experience and approach, perhaps click on his or her profile.

Contributing lawyers get publicity and credit for the socially useful act of adding to a public database, and visitors get free information, said Aviva Cuyler, a former litigator in Marshall, Calif., who founded the business. "People will still need attorneys," Ms. Cuyler said. "We are not encouraging people to do it themselves, but to find the right people to help them."

Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource -- New York Times

Get content, get noticed -- JDSupra.com

(h/t to Sarah Goebel)

The National Law Journal has recently published a study on employment trends within the legal industry.  Interestingly, they found that an increasingly larger percentage of those hired in the nation's 250 largest firms graduated from the top 20 law schools.  They also discovered that many students may wish to weigh their anticipated debt load from law school with their hiring prospects. 

• Law school report -- National Law Journal
• California chart (compares SCU with other CA law schools) -- National Law Journal
• What rankings don't say about costly choices, some students should consider lower-ranked schools that offer more grants, opportunities -- National Law Journal

(h/t to Law Librarian Blog)

The United States Senate unanimously passed H.R. 493, "The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act", on Thursday.  The bill is expected to be taken up quickly by the U.S. House and then passed to the president, who has promised to sign it.  The act bans discrimination based on genetic information in employment or health insurance eligibility.

• Bill text -- THOMAS (Library of Congress)
• Genetic Nondiscrimination Act Passed U.S. Senate -- Science Daily
• Genetics Privacy and Legislation -- Human Genome Project

(h/t to Law Librarian Blog)

Today’s Law Librarian Blog links to parts one and two of Professor Goldman’s comments on the Legal Consequences of Co-Blogging.

All students should have received e-mails from the Lexis and Westlaw representatives about accessing Lexis and Westlaw over the summer. If you will be eligible for Lexis and Westlaw access over the summer, please follow the instructions in those e-mails about how to register for summer access. You will not get full Lexis and Westlaw access if you don't register. Here's a handy summary of what the library has been told about summer access to Lexis and Westlaw.

Dates 

May 31 -- All students will have full access to Lexis and Westlaw through May 31

June 1 - July 31 -- Students must qualify for full access to Lexis and Westlaw, otherwise their use will be restricted

August 1 -- Continuing students will have full access to Lexis and Westlaw restored; graduating students will have their Lexis and Westlaw privileges ended.

Lexis

Graduating students taking a bar review course qualify for full Lexis access through the summer.

Continuing students qualify for full Lexis access through the summer if they are doing one of the following:

• Summer School
• School-Related Research Assignment
• Moot Court Research
• Law Review or Journal Research
• Working as a Professor's Research Assistant
• Non-Profit Externship
• Unpaid Internship/Externship 

Continuing students who don't meet any of those qualifications will be limited to accessing just career materials over the summer.

Westlaw

Graduating students qualify for 10 hours of full Westlaw access during the summer (5 in June and 5 in July).

Continuing students qualify for full Westlaw access through the summer if they are doing one of the following:

• Summer Law School Classes
• Law Review or Journal work
• Project for a Professor/or if you're working as a Research Assistant
• Moot Court
• Unpaid/non-profit public interest internship/externship or pro bono work required for graduation

Continuing students who don't meet these qualifications will get only 4 hours of access during the summer (2 in June and 2 in July).

Spurred on by the recent controvery over missing White House emails, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has recently proposed the Electronic Communications Preservation Act.  This legislation will modernize the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act to include electronic communication.

From the committee's press release:

H.R. 5811 directs the Archivist to issue regulations requiring agencies to preserve electronic communications in an electronic format. These regulations must cover, at a minimum, the capture, management, preservation, and electronic retrieval of electronic communications. In addition, the Archivist would be required to establish testing and certification standards for any electronic records management systems implemented at agencies.

Press Release -- Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Bill Text -- U.S. House

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously today in the case, Virginia v. Moore, that evidence discovered during a police search following an arrest which violated Virginia state law is permissable at trial.  The decision is important in defining the constitutional limits of probable cause.

• Supreme Court broadens police searches -- CNN
• Supreme Court broadens police searches -- Law Librarian Blog
• Court Opinion -- FindLaw

The recent SCOTUS ruling on the legality of lethal injections, Baze v. Rees, was unusual in that a majority of the justices (4 out of 7) cited to Internet websites.  There were a total of 13 references to online materials, with Justice Stevens citing to a law review article appearing only in its electronic format.  The blog, Law School Innovation, discusses how this case may be the court's most "Internet-friendly" and represents an increasing reliance upon electronic resources in the court.  The opinion of the case is available via the SCOTUS website, and this discussion is found on the blog Law School Innovation.