Members of the BLS Community now have full access to Fastcase, a legal research platform known for providing great content at an affordable price. Fastcase provides comprehensive coverage of state and federal cases, statutes, and regulations, as well as legal forms, select state attorney general opinions, news sources, and court rules. Case law databases are generally updated with new decisions in as little as 24-48 hours.

From Fastcase:

“Known for its mission to democratize the law by making it more accessible to more people, Fastcase has been partnering with bar associations since 2005 and steadily transforming the traditional legal research industry. In addition to bar associations, the company provides smarter legal research tools to lawyers around the world, dozens of AmLaw 250 law firms, in-house counsel, and law schools across the United States. It also provides access to legal research through award-winning free mobile apps on the iPhone and iPad.

Fastcase has gained strong momentum in the legal research market. Fastcase was voted #1 in Law Technology News’s inaugural Customer Satisfaction Survey, finishing first in 7 out of 10 categories over traditional research providers Westlaw and LexisNexis. Fastcase’s free apps for iPhone and iPad have dominated the category, winning the prestigious 2010 American Association of Law Libraries New Product of the Year and was named the 2011 Legal Productivity App of the Year. In 2012, Fastcase was named to the Best of Legal Times list for Online Legal Research, Legal Research (including print), and Legal Research iPad app, as well as being named the Best of Research in the Daily Business Review.”

Users can access Fastcase through the library’s A-Z list, or from this link. For the time being, no username or password is required since users will be logged in via IP Authentication. If using Fastcase outside of the law school, you will need to implement the proxy server instructions (available on the library’s webpage) to gain access. A concise user guide for Fastcase is available here and a library of brief training videos are available here.

If you have any questions about Fastcase, you can speak with a Reference Librarian, or contact Fastcase directly by phone (866.773.2782) or email (support@fastcase.com).

Brooklyn Law School Professor I. Bennett Capers recently posted Defending Life on SSRN. It appears as Chapter 5 in Charles J Ogletree and Austin Sarat’s book Life Without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty? The BLS Library has the book in its Main Collection (KF9750 .L54 2012). The abstract of Defending Life reads:

Bruno Simma, ed., The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (Oxford, 2013)

• This is the third edition of a classic source that provides article-by-article commentary on the UN Charter.  The new edition includes a chapter on UN reform. 

James Crawford, Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law (Oxford, 2012)

• Crawford’s clear writing and substantial revision of this classic treatise make it an excellent starting point for public international law research.  

Treaty Section of the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs, Treaty Handbook (2012)

• Revised in 2012, this publicly-accessible online Handbook highlights many aspects of treaty law and practice.  It provides many cites to relevant articles of  the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.  It also includes a helpful glossary of key treaty terms (such as accession and ratification), which begins on p. 62.

Duncan B. Hollis, ed., The Oxford Guide to Treaties (Oxford, 2012)

• This new source reviews concepts ranging from making to terminating treaties.  It includes a chapter on the Vienna Convention rules about treaty interpretation.

Brooklyn Law School Professor Christopher Serkin recently posted on SSRN an article entitled Affirmative Constitutional Commitments: the State’s Obligations to Property Owners. The article is scheduled for publication later this year in William & Mary Law School’s Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Conference Journal. The abstract for the article reads:

This Essay argues that social obligation theories in property generate previously unrecognized obligations on the State. Leading property scholars, like Hanoch Dagan, Greg Alexander, and Eduardo Peñalver, have argued that the institution of property contains affirmative duties to the community as well as negative rights. This Essay argues that those affirmative duties are two-way streets, and that moral bases for social obligations also generate reciprocal obligations on the State to protect property owners. The social obligation theories rely upon a dynamic not static vision of property rights. The community’s needs change, the conditions of ownership change, and the appropriate allocation of benefits and burdens within a society changes over time. Therefore, a legal obligation that is justified and permissible at the time it is enacted because it is consistent with moral obligations may become impermissible over time, even if the content of the legal obligation does not change. At the extreme, the State’s failure to respond to certain kinds of changes in the world can lead to a regulatory taking.

Brooklyn Law School’s Center for the Study of Business Law and Regulation and the Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial and Commercial Law are sponsoring a symposium on Friday, February 8 on The Growth and Importance of Compliance in Financial Firms: Meaning and Implications.  Attendees must RSVP by Wedesday, February 6. The agenda, available here, includes Opening Remarks by BLS Professor James Fanto who will also be a Panelist along with BLS Professors James Park, Roberta Karmel and Miriam Baer serving as Moderators. They will participate with other academics, practitioners and regulators in securities law. The description of the symposium, which will take place 9:00 am to 3:30 pm at the Subotnick Center, Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY, reads:

Over the past decade, the compliance function in financial firms, in particular broker-dealers and investment advisers, has grown in size and importance. While this phenomenon is an integral part of life for compliance officers and legal practitioners who advise these firms, compliance has received relatively little attention from legal scholars. This symposium will provide the opportunity for financial and securities law scholars to evaluate and criticize, from their respective theoretical perspectives, the growing importance of compliance in financial firms, as well as comment upon particular compliance duties and issues. The conference includes noted legal practitioners, compliance specialists and regulators, who can assist the scholars in their reflection and offer their own perspectives and insights on the compliance phenomenon.

The BLS Library recently added to its collection For Whom the Whistle Blows: Advancing Corporate Compliance and Integrity Efforts in the Era of Dodd-Frank (Call # KF1422.A75 F67 2011) by Michael D. Greenberg. The 62 page item is a conference report on a May 2011 RAND a symposium on he implications of the proposed rules, the role of internal compliance and reporting processes, and steps to strengthen these processes in the era of Dodd-Frank.

The national debate about gun control comes to the US Senate in today’s scheduled hearing What Should America Do About Gun Violence. Gun control advocates argue that Second Amendment is a collective or societal right while gun rights advocates argue that the right to bear arms is an individual right. The Brooklyn Law School Library has in it collection Living with Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment (Call # KF3941 .W4425 2012) by former New York Times correspondent and editor Craig Whitney.

See also the Chronicle of Higher Education article All Guns Are Not Created Equal by Kevin M. Sweeney and Saul Cornell. The article returns to early America to shed light on the meaning of the Second Amendment. The comments section includes some interesting observations about the connection between the Second Amendment and the institution of slavery, particularly its role in allowing state militias to suppress slave insurrections protecting a slave system on which the economics of the South depended.

Brooklyn law School Professor James Park has posted his latest scholarly article Securities Class Actions and Bankrupt Companies on SSRN. The article is scheduled for publication in the February 2013 edition of the Michigan Law Review. The abstract reads:

This is the first extensive empirical study of securities class actions involving bankrupt companies. It examines 1466 securities class actions filed from 1996 to 2004, of which 234 (16%) involved companies that were in bankruptcy proceedings while the securities class action was pending. The study tests the hypothesis that securities class actions involving bankrupt companies (“bankruptcy cases”) are more likely to have merit than securities class actions involving companies that are not in bankruptcy (“non-bankruptcy cases”). It finds that bankruptcy cases were more likely to involve restatements than non-bankruptcy cases, but not more likely to have other indicia of merit. Bankruptcy cases were more likely to be successful in terms of dismissal rates, significant settlements, and third party settlements than non-bankruptcy cases. This bankruptcy effect fades with respect to settlements of $20 million or more, likely reflecting the influence of D&O insurance policy limits. The bankruptcy effect is evidence that courts and parties assess the merits of securities class actions differently based on the context of the suit.

The Brooklyn Law School Library’s subscription to Trade Law Guide enables researchers at BLS to research material on World Trade Organization jurisprudence. The database was created by a team of trade lawyers, researchers and engineers so that WTO law could be researched in a methodical, comprehensive and efficient manner. The database allows users to search through thousands of documents and zero in on the exact references that answer your research queries. It establishes the standard for legal research in the area of WTO law.

Trade Law Guide is an index that serves as a gateway to specific provisions of WTO agreements, instruments and other subject matter. It has four major tabs: Research Tools; Jurisprudence; Dispute Documents; and Negotiating History. The first of those tabs has a subtab called Article Citator  which provides Pinpoint access to WTO jurisprudence relevant to a provision without having to filter through annotations); its Jurisprudence Citators helps researchers ascertain the status of passages in WTO jurisprudence; the Interpretation tab helps in finding provisions and jurisprudence encompassing the rules of treaty interpretation applicable to the WTO agreements and instruments. There is also a Terms & Phrases tab to help researchers see at a glance where a particular term or phrase has been explicitly defined or where it has been considered or commented upon in WTO jurisprudence.

Other features include DSB Minutes which contain discussions of policy and other issues that arise in respect of WTO jurisprudence. The Jurisprudence Pending tab provides information on ongoing disputes for which reports, awards or decisions are pending. The Annotated Agreements & Texts tab provides fully annotated texts of six principal WTO agreements that have been the subject of extensive dispute settlement activity. The Negotiating History tab allows researchers to download and sort Uruguay Round negotiating documents. Access to the database is by IP address recognition. Off-campus access requires implementation of the BLS proxy instructions. Go to the SARA catalog to search for it.

On Friday, January 25, 2013, the American Law Institute (ALI), the Brooklyn Law Review, and Brooklyn Law School are co-sponsoring a Symposium entitled “Restatement Of…” to begin a discussion about how to continue the “venerable brand” of ALI’s Restatements of the Law titles. The event will be held from 9:00 am.to 5:00 pm at Brooklyn Law School’s Subotnick Center, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY and will be free of charge. Online Registration is required by Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at this link. Restatements of the Law have been clarifying, summarizing, describing, and improving the law and exerting influence on United States courts for nearly a century. Since 2001, the American Law Institute (ALI) has broadened its work and has rewritten many of its original Restatements, added new ones, and moved beyond restatements of the common law in its “Principles of the Law” series.

Continuing this modernization of a venerable brand, the “Restatement Of …” symposium asks: What other areas of the law might be restated? Leading scholars from diverse fields will come together at this symposium to delve deeper into the restatement frontier in their respective areas of expertise. Discussion topics will include new projects that the ALI could undertake, concerns about restating specific areas of the law, restatements currently in progress, doctrines that will resist restatement, and old restatements that have disappeared.

The day will be divided into four discussion groups, each led by a professor who has served as a Reporter on an ALI project. Presenters will address a wide range of issues, including “Should There Be a Restatement of Statutory Interpretation?” and “Religion and the Restatements.” It is expected that the 20 panelists will discuss gay rights, administrative law, safety, child sex abuse, federal tax law, and health-care law to name just a few topics. The full agenda, which includes welcoming remarks by BLS Dean Nick Allard, Introductory Remarks by the event’s organizer BLS Professor Anita Bernstein, Discussants BLS Professors Aaron Twerski and Neil B. Cohen, and Panelist BLS Professor Lawrence Solan, can be viewed here. Professors from 17 law schools will discuss articles they are writing for Volume 79 of the Brooklyn Law Review which will be devoted to the Restatements. It is scheduled for publication in early 2014.