Just in time to celebrate the 266th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson on April 13, 1743 in Albemarle County in the Virginia Colony, the BLS Library has added to its collection Jefferson vs. the Patent Trolls: a Populist Vision of Intellectual Property Rights by Jeffrey H. Matsuura (Call # KF2979 .M34 2008). This small, aesthetically pleasing 154 page volume published by the University of Virginia Press deals with a subject matter that is very important today: intellectual property, a hot topic in today’s world that Jefferson thought of 200 years ago.

The book examines Jefferson’s perspective on the topic from the perspective of a practitioner, a world class scientist and inventor and the first Commissioner of Patents in his capacity as the nation’s first Secretary of State. Jefferson, who is best known as one of the Founding Fathers and the third President of the early republic, was active as an inventor who tinkered with the latest technical advances of his day, improving on the creations of other inventors. Jefferson s philosophy regarding intellectual property placed an emphasis on the practical benefits for people most in need. He favored encouraging widespread participation in the knowledge networks of his time.

His inquisitive nature and focus on practical applications made him an active mechanical tinkerer. He worked on improving agricultural devices like the plow. He also developed labor-saving devices like the polygraph, a device that enabled a writer to make multiple copies of a document at the same time. Jefferson was curious about a wide range of innovative devices. One of the most interesting is the wheel cipher, a cryptographic device for encrypting and decrypting messages for use in official US government communications. Like so many of Jefferson’s devices, the wheel cipher was a refinement on the work of several previous inventors. Jefferson never pursued commercial development of this device demonstrating his general lack of interest in commercialization of his inventive efforts.

The debate about the use of laptops in class by students has been going on for some time now. Earlier this year, the National Law Journal had an article Survey Favors Clickety-Clack of Laptops in Class reporting on a national study from Indiana University that found that law school students who used their laptops in class were highly engaged in classroom activities. Despite this, many law professors remain skeptical about the benefits of laptops in the classroom. Last month, the Chronicle of Higher Education posted an article Students Stop Surfing After Being Shown How In-Class Laptop Use Lowers Test Scores. So the debate goes on without any clear resolution.

Putting aside who is right and who is wrong in this debate, CALI has now posted a video describing two online tools (CALI Instapoll and Google Moderator) that instructors can use to help engage those in the classroom that are using laptops.

The video runs about 26 minutes and has some useful suggestions for intructors.

The Library of Congress Blog reports in today’s post, YouTube, and Now We Do Too that the Library of Congress has been working for several months on a project to post some of its collection of audiovisual materials (some 6 million films, broadcasts and sound recordings) on its own YouTube channel. The now public project has begun with 74 videos arranged in a series of playlists that are accessible on LC’s YouTube Channel.

This is just the beginning of a project where LC will keep uploading additional content. Besides posting on YouTube, LC will make all of the videos available at LOC.gov and on the American Memory Motion Picture & Television Reading Room.

As an example of one of the videos posted on YouTube, the LC Blog featured a 37 second video entitled Boxing Cats which was filmed around July 1894, in Edison’s Black Maria studio. It may not help with legal research but it is something completely different.

As part of its education program, the US Government Printing Office (GPO) now uses YouTube to further its mission of Keeping America Informed on the three branches of the Federal Government. For nearly 200 years, GPO has worked with libraries throughout the country to provide free, open and permanent access to the documents of our democracy through the Federal Depository Library Program. The public can visit any of the 1,250 Federal depository libraries throughout the country and access information on virtually any topic.

This five minute video “U.S. Government Printing Office: Working with Libraries” is one that GPO has posted on YouTube along with ten others. See the full list at GPO Printer’s Videos.

The Law Librarian Blog reports that UCLA has just released a new Beyond LexisNexis & Westlaw guide which describes a wide range of online legal research resources and covers primary law, government resources, research guides, reference sources, forms, and legal news. The LibGuides platform is so well organized and helpful that the BLS Library has implemented LibGuides to feature research by our librarians. Among the most popular of the BLS guides are:

• Treaty Research Guide by Jean Davis
• Administrative Law Research by Jean Davis
• Researching Statutes by Kathleen Darvil
• New York Civil Practice: Selected Resources by Kathleen Darvil
• New Jersey Legal Resources by Harold O’Grady
• Restatements of the Law: A How to Guide by Kathleen Darvil
• Guide to Pro Bono Projects by Jean Davis
• Resources for Teaching Law School Seminars by Jean Davis

Episode 040 – Conversation with Professor of Law Ben Trachtenberg.mp3

This podcast is of a conversation with Professor Ben Trachtenberg, Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at BLS for the current academic year. The conversation is about his recent article, The Exception Swallowing the Hearsay Rule: Coconspirators, ‘Coventurers’, and the Confrontation Clause where he discusses his research into the history of the hearsay rule and the exception for statements of co-conspirators. In the article, Professor Trachtenberg argues against a revisionist view of the exception by some prosecutors who disclaim the need to show any wrongful goal whatsoever and argue that when proving the existence of a “conspiracy” to justify admission of evidence under the exception, they need show only that the declarant and the defendant were “coventurers” with a common purpose, not an illegal purpose. This Article contends that such a reading of the Exception is mistaken and undesirable.

In the fall, Prof. Trachtenberg taught Criminal Law and is teaching Environmental Law this spring. He joins BLS from Covington & Burling LLP, where he was a litigation associate. Prior to that, he clerked at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with the Hon. Jose A. Cabranes. He served as an articles editor of the Columbia Law Review and is the author of “State Sentencing Policy and New Prison Admissions,” 38 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 479 (2005).

Public outrage over the $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG executives after it received $173 billion in bailout funds spurred the House into passing H.R. 1586 by an overwhelming majority vote of 328-93 on March 19. The House bill would levy a 90 % tax on any bonuses from bailed-out firms (TARP recipients) paid out in 2009 to individuals with incomes over $250,000. Prospects for Senate passage of S. 651, the companion bill in the upper chamber, are looking dimmer each day. The Senate bill would impose an excise tax equal to 35% of the bonus on both the employee and entity effectively taxing the bonuses at a 70% rate.

Now the TaxProf Blog reports that the Congressional Research Service has issued a report that deals with many of the potential challenges to H.R. 1586 and S. 651 if they became law. The report called Retroactive Taxation of Executive Bonuses: Constitutionality of H.R. 1586 and S. 651 addresses the prohibition under the US Constitution of ex-post facto laws and whether these bills could be considered “Bills of Attainder”.

U.S. Const. Art. I, § 9, cl. 3 reads “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

The report disposes of the ex-post fact issue fairly quickly by citing to US v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 468 (1965) where Supreme Court defined a bill of attainder as a “law that legislatively determines guilt and inflicts punishment upon an identifiable individual without provision of the protections of a judicial trial.” The thornier issue is whether the proposed legislation would amount to a Bill of Attainder. The important role of legislative history is discussed at page 16 of the report. Whatever final action Congress takes, the details of the legislative history will determine whether the resulting law will be affirmed or declared unconstitutional.

An interesting aside is whether A.I.G. executives who returned their bonus still have to pay taxes on them. See the NY Times article Returned Bonuses May Still Be Taxable.

For further reading in the BLS collection, consult SARA, the online catalog, for Limits on States: A Reference Guide to the United States Constitution by James M. McGoldrick with a foreword by Kenneth Starr (Call # KF4600 .M36 2005).

The New York Law Journal Magazine publishes an end of the year list of the NYLJ 100 Largest Private Law Offices. At press time, the financial crisis had just hit the country resulting in some startling changes to the number of attorneys that populate New York law firms and layoffs were being announced in many of the larger firms.

Additional charts in the Magazine include:

· the NYLJ 100: The Largest Private Law Offices in New York State
· the Largest Minority-Owned Law Firms in New York State
· Attorney General, Corporation Counsel and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices
· a list of Attorney Concentration by County and
· information about the District Attorneys’ Offices in New York State

The Magazine also has a chart with statistical information on the fifteen New York State Law Schools detailing the number of Full-Time/Part-Time Students, Percentage of Minority and Women Students, Faculty/Student Ratio, Tuition Rates, and Bar Pass Rates for the July 2007 exam.

The Office of the United States Department of Justice for the Southern District of New York has compiled a resource page with links to PDFs of court documents from the United States v. Bernard L. Madoff criminal case 09 Cr. 213 (DC). The case began on December 11, 2008, when Bernard L. Madoff was arrested on a criminal complaint alleging one count of securities fraud.

On March 10, 2009, a Criminal Information was filed in Manhattan federal court charging Bernard L. Madoff with eleven felony charges including securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), and theft from an employee benefit plan. The criminal case concluded on March 12, 2009 when Madoff pleaded guilty to all eleven counts in the Information. Bernard Madoff’s guilty plea allocution can be found at page 23 of the Transcript of the March 12, 2009 Guilty Plea Proceeding,

Madoff faces a statutory maximum sentence of 150 years’ incarceration. Madoff is also subject to mandatory restitution and faces fines up to twice the gross gain or loss derived from the offenses.

The site has links to http://www.madoff.com/ where the receiver will be posting information about its activities and to http://www.sipc.org/ where the trustee will be posting information about its activities. Investors and other interested parties should consult those websites for more information.

In the next two months, the Brooklyn Bar Association will host a series of educational programs and events for legal practitioners and law students. Among the events sponsored by the BBA are these which will take place at the BBA’s offices at 123 Remsen Street:

On-Line Legal Research – Using the West Key Digest System March 23, 2009 (1:00-2:00pm) and Using Lexis April 6, 2009 (1:00-2:00pm) Brooklyn Supreme Court Senior Law Librarian, Jacqueline Cantwell will cover the basics of online research from signing on, retrieving a case when you have a citation or party name, how to update by Keycite and Shepard’s, tables of authorities, retrieving New York Code sections, and e-mailing and printing cases.

Traffic Violations Update – March 25, 2009 (6:00-8:00pm) The program will feature leading figures in this area, Hon. John L. Araujo, senior administrative law judge, New York state Dept. of Motor Vehicles; Hon. Stephen Borkan, a supervising administrative law judge; Karen Friedman, President of the Association of Motor Vehicle Trial Attorneys; Jeffrey Levine, whose practice focuses on handling chemical test refusal hearings and Michael Beer, an attorney who defends clients against traffic violation charges. The agenda promises to cover the prima facie elements and defenses to common traffic violations such as speeding, seatbelts, cell phone violations and others. Participants will learn about chemical test refusal hearings and see a demonstration of the type of laser gun used by police.

Electronic Filing in New York State Courts – April 20, 2009 (6:00-8:00pm) Jeff Carucci, the Statewide Coordinator for E-Filing and Chris Gibson, the Case Management Coordinator for the E-Filing Resource Center will lead this overview of the E-Filing program in NYS Courts. They will demonstrate in detail how the e-filing software works and the benefits it offers to users.

Ethics in Litigation Financing – April 28, 2009 (5:30-7:30pm) Former BLS Prof. Anthony Sebok will present a course on legal ethics and client counseling in the area of legal finance; current New York law concerning the legality of non-recourse funding under Judiciary Law §489; the NY rules of professional conduct; the history of champerty (a prohibition against the sale of a party’s interest in a lawsuit) and maintenance (intermeddling of an uninterested party to encourage a lawsuit) in English and American common law; and the policy reasons that have led the NY courts and legislature to permit non-recourse funding of litigation.