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Free federal court records are now one step closer:  The federal judiciary’s policymaking body has endorsed a proposal to make federal court records searches via the PACER electronic database free to non-commercial users.  According to a newly released report, the Judicial Conference of the United States has endorsed “making all searches free of charge for all non-commercial users of any future new modernized case management, electronic filing, and public access systems implemented by the judiciary.”

According to Reuters and…
Continue Reading Judicial Conference Endorses Making PACER Searching Free to All Non-commercial Users

Twenty-five years after his death, the Wisconsin Law Review has published a long-lost manuscript by Professor J. Willard Hurst, beloved UW Law School professor, renowned scholar, and one of the great originators of modern legal history and law and society scholarship.  It is believed that the work entitled, “Technology and the Law: The Automobile,” was written in the early 1950s as one of several chapters intended as a supplement to his successful book, The Growth of American Law.   …
Continue Reading UW Law Publishes Long-Lost “Technology & the Law: The Automobile” Manuscript by J. Willard Hurst, the Father of Modern Legal History

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently approved an amendment to Supreme Court Rule (SCR) 31.01 (11) to allow tribal courts to appoint attorneys to provide pro bono legal services, and to permit the attorney to claim continuing legal education credits in lieu of monetary payments. Effective April 20, 2022, Wisconsin attorneys who accept appointments from state, federal, and now tribal courts without fee or expectation of a fee for persons of limited means can request CLE credit for their service.
Continue Reading WI Attorneys Can Now Earn CLE Credit for Tribal Court Pro Bono Appointments

Here is the latest faculty scholarship appearing in the University of Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Papers series found on SSRN.

This Article analyzes the rise and persistence of the U.S.-based nature rights movement and its engagement with social movements in the Global South and with Indigenous ideas. The story told here of…
Continue Reading Recent UW Law Faculty Scholarship: The Legal Struggle for Rights of Nature in the United States; More

Looking for a blast from the past?  Oldestsearch.com will retrieve Google results in reverse chronological order.  beSpacific notes that “this is useful for many subjects including medical illnesses which return search results back to the 1070’s allowing you to build a more complete perspective on an illness over time.”
 
Continue Reading Oldestsearch.com Retrieves Google results in Reverse Chronological Order

I recently discovered that Wisconsin Tax Appeals Commission Rulings and Orders are now available in full text on Wisconsin.gov.  The Tax Appeals Commission (TAC) is an independent state agency that was created by the Wisconsin State Legislature to hear and determine disputes between taxpayers and the Wisconsin Department of Revenue and, in some limited instances, the Department of Transportation. The TAC also resolves tax disputes in the areas of individual income, corporate income, county sales tax, cigarette use, homestead…
Continue Reading WI Tax Index & Appeals Commission Decisions Available on Wisconsin.gov

In an opinion issued earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit placed a limitation on the use of content archived by the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” without additional authentication.  The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library that seeks to maintain an archive of publicly accessible web pages at various points in time.

Law.com reports on the opinion, Weinhoffer v. Davie Shoring:
The Fifth Circuit reversed, finding that the evidence [a snapshot of…
Continue Reading 5th Circuit Limits Use of “Wayback Machine” Archived Content without Additional Authentication

WI Law in Action podcastOn the latest episode of the WI Law in Action podcast from the UW Law Library, host Kris Turner interviews UW Law School’s Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs, Mark Sidel on recent trends in China and elsewhere to restrict foreign investments, grants, and donations to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
Our conversation focuses on two recent articles by Prof. Sidel: “Overseas NGOs and Foundations and Covid in China” published in EURICS, July 2021 and “Securitizing Overseas …
Continue Reading WI Law In Action Podcast: Mark Sidel on Governmental Restrictions of NGOs in China

Here is the latest faculty scholarship appearing in the University of Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Papers series found on SSRN.

In June of 2021, a group of agricultural economists delivered a set of papers concerning the market for beef cattle. This project undertaken…
Continue Reading U.W. Law Faculty Scholarship: The Analytical Failures of the U.S. Beef Supply Chain, Corporate Board Gatekeepers, and More

In her recent article, Ashley Ahlbrand offers great advice for legal scholars and law librarians on Capturing Impact: Telling the Story of Your Scholarship Beyond the Citation Count.  She explores the shortcomings of citation metrics in evaluating scholarly impact, then broadly examines the various forms scholarship can take, and ends with a discussion of other measures, tools, and strategies for “painting a more holistic picture of scholarly impact.”

I especially appreciated her discussion on “why we write” in…
Continue Reading New Work Offers Great Advice for Legal Scholars and Law Librarians: Telling the Story of Your Scholarship

Lift Wisconsin (Legal Intervention for Transforming Wisconsin) just announced the launching of a new tool to help Wisconsinites with common legal needs.

The tool is called Legal Tune Up and it is “a mobile first web-based application that uses publicly available data (driver’s license, criminal, eviction, court, and child support records) to help people identify and address legal needs.”

Legal Tune Up is designed to help Wisconsinites identify and clear civil legal problems on their own or with help…
Continue Reading Legal Tune Up- Free Help for Wisconsinites with Common Legal Needs

Mobile screenshot of Google results with article labeled highly citedGoogle has announced that it’s adding a new “highly cited” label to search results frequently linked to by other publications.  Such labels will appear on “anything from an investigative article, to an interview, an announcement, a press release or a local news story, as long as other publishers indicate its relevance by linking to it.”  The highly cited label is launching soon on mobile in English for the U.S. and will roll out globally in the coming weeks.  For…
Continue Reading Google to Label Search Results as “Highly Cited”

Here is the latest faculty scholarship appearing in the University of Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Papers series found on SSRN.

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Continue Reading Recent UW Law Faculty Scholarship, including Ending Manner-of-Death Testimony

“Lawyers whose attorney trust accounts are cleaned out by cybercriminals should be prepared to answer to attorney-disciplinary authorities. And such a theft could result in disciplinary action for a lawyer who is careless about safeguarding client funds, ” warns the New Jersey Law Journal.
On Friday, a suit was removed to federal court in Trenton, New Jersey, in the case of an East Brunswick law firm that had more than $200,000 stolen from its trust account. It’s…
Continue Reading Getting Hacked Could Lead to Ethics Violations – Use LastPass to Secure Passwords

WI Law in Action podcastOn the latest episode of the WI Law in Action podcast from the UW Law Library, host Kris Turner interviews UW Law School’s William Voss-Bascom Professor Anuj Desai. Prof. Desai teaches courses in cyberlaw, the First Amendment, intellectual freedom, statutory interpretation, legislation and regulation, and copyright at both the Law School and the iSchool (Information School).

Our conversation focuses on Prof. Desai’s article “Text is Not Enough,” recently published in the Colorado Law Review. The article examines how…
Continue Reading WI Law In Action Podcast: Anuj Desai on Why “Text is Not Enough” in Statutory Interpretation