Category «Features»

Juror Behavior in the Information Age

Ken Strutin focuses on the impact of social media on jurors who increasingly try to stay connected to work and home while performing their civic duty, and the resulting impact of the power of individual jurors to virtualize a trial by going online. His article collects recent and notable examples of juror online misbehavior and highlights scholarship and practice resources concerning its implications for voir dire, trial management and the administration of justice.

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Subjects: Features

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act: A Brief Legislative History with Links, Reports and Summaries

The “craft” of legislative history construction is practiced with unique and outstanding expertise by law librarian Rick McKinney. This history is designed in a streamlined fashion so as to allow users to more easily check when provisions in the law got into bill and then check for related remarks concerning those provisions. It also has links to earlier legislation related to different titles of the Act, to the Administration’s proposed legislation in 2009, to related CRS reports, and to various summaries and commentaries of the law on the Web.

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Subjects: Congress, Features, Government Resources, Law Librarians, Legal Research, Legislative

Actual Innocence and Freestanding Claims for Relief

Ken Strutin has written extensively for LLRX.com on criminal law issues. He argues that false confessions, bad eyewitness identifications, and faulty forensics, among other problems, have shown that seemingly iron clad adjudications can reach the wrong result. A ‘guilty’ verdict only indicates that the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed each and every element of the crime, and not that the defendant actually committed the crime. A freestanding claim of actual innocence is a potentially powerful tool to assail a verdict that points to the wrong person. Still, courts have made only small gains in recognizing actual innocence generally as a basis for contesting a wrongful conviction. This article collects selected scholarship on “actual innocence” and litigating post-conviction claims that go beyond the procedural metrics of the trial process.

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Subjects: Criminal Law, Features, Legal Research

Using the Kindle in Library Settings – A Survey

Special Librarian Montrese Hamilton shares effective ways an electronic document reader may be used to provide customers on-demand access to new content. Beyond instant access to material, e-readers can: reduce the need for Interlibrary loans, help grow the collection without adding shelf space, and eliminate processing required for physical matter.

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Subjects: Features, Gadgets, Information Management, Mobile Technology

Hunting For A Job? Try the Internet

Barbara Fullerton is our guide to effectively engaging in an activity which has assumed increased importance in the face of the grim economy – searching for positions with a specific company, business or educational facility on the Internet. She details how webmasters have designed ways for prospective employees to sign-up on job-finding websites and create personal alerts concerning their job needs. In many cases, the job hunter can post a resume online, which can be utilized by prospective headhunters and company human resources personnel. Many of these job boards have added value to their websites with information including relocation surveys, job search tips, moving companies, salary comparisons, city data, Fortune 500 information, real estate companies, and assessment resources.

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Subjects: Features
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