Update on "Baby Veronica" ICWA Adoption Case

The Prairie Law Blog has been reporting on the high-profile ICWA case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, which has become known in U.S. media outlets as the "Baby Veronica" case.  (See our previous posts of June 28, 2013 and September 5, 2013 for more information on the background of the case.)  In an emotional turn of events, Baby Veronica was handed over to her adoptive parents on Monday after the Oklahoma Supreme Court lifted an emergency stay which had allowed Veronica to stay in the custody of her biological father in Oklahoma.  As reported by CBS News, the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision to lift the stay was not unanimous.  For a local perspective on this issue, the South Dakota Public Broadcasting website has made available an interview with Saunie Wilson, a former juvenile court judge on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and Raymond Cournoyer, ICWA Director of the Yankton Sioux Tribe.  Click here to listen to the interview. 

(This entry was originally written and posted by Sarah Kammer)

Banned Books Week: Celebrate the Freedom to Read

This week (September 22 to September 28, 2013) is Banned Books Week, an annual event which is sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and other national organizations.  The purpose of Banned Books Week is to celebrate the freedom to read and "the value of free and open access to information" (ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom, http://www.ala.org/bbooks/bannedbooksweek). 

The law library is currently featuring a display for Banned Books Week.  This display features compiled lists of some of the most frequently banned or challenged books by decade and by year. The display also features selected library resources on the First Amendment and freedom of speech. 

For more information about Banned and Challenged Books, visit the ALA's website on the topic here.  The ALA also maintains a list of Notable First Amendment Cases on the Right to Read Freely.  For First Amendment and free speech resources in the law library, click here to access a list of titles in the law library's catalog.

Update:  A local Sioux Falls attorney and USD Law alum has been blogging on "Banned Books That Shaped America."  You can visit his blog, A Progressive on the Prairie, here.  (Note: The McKusick Law Library has included this link for informational purposes only, and does not endorse the blogger or blog or any opinions expressed therein.)

(This entry was originally written and posted by Sarah Kammer)

New Study on Link Rot in Supreme Court Opinions

A recent New York Times article has highlighted a topic that has been of recent interest to law libraries and legal scholars: link rot in legal citations.  The article addresses a forthcoming study by Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Law and Computer Science at Harvard, Larry Lessig, a professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard, and Kendra Albert, a Harvard law student.  The study looks specifically at link rot in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, finding that nearly 50% of the links in Supreme Court opinions no longer work.  The study also looked at link rot in law journals, including the Harvard Law Review.  Professor Zittrain discusses the study in a recent post on his blog and provides a link to the study on SSRN. 

Law libraries, who have long had an interest in this topic (see a recent article here by law librarians Raizel Liebler and June Liebert in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology), are becoming more involved than ever in addressing link rot in legal citations.  Zittrain's blog discusses a new project called Perma.cc, which is a project undertaken by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and a number of academic law libraries.  According to Zittrain, the project "will allow those libraries on direction of authors and journal editors to store permanent caches of otherwise ephemeral links."

(As an aside, the New York Times article mentions the recent book by Richard A. Posner titled "Reflections on Judging."  The Law Library has recently received this book as part of its collection.  See the library's catalog for more information.)

(This entry was originally written and posted by Sarah Kammer)

Dakota Days - Legal Research CLE

Darla Jackson and Marsha Stacey will be co-presenting a Continuing Legal Education program titled “Conducting Free, Low Cost, and Other Electronic Legal Research” from 3:00 - 4:30PM on October 4, 2013 (during Dakota Days) at USD Law School Room 102. Attendance at the program is free to all who are interested in improving their legal research skills. Registration is requested but not required.

Additional details regarding the program and registration are available via the September 2013 issue of the State Bar of South Dakota Newsletter at page 30.

(This entry was originally written and posted by Darla Jackson)

U.S. Judicial Conference Appeals to President for Additional Court Funding

In the wake of several years of flat funding for the judiciary and the sequestration cuts that took effect in fiscal year 2013, the Judicial Conference of the United States recently wrote a letter to President Obama, appealing for additional funding in FY2014.  The Chief Justice of the United States is the presiding officer of the Judicial Conference, and membership is comprised of the chief judge of each judicial circuit, the Chief Judge of the Court of International Trade, and a district judge from each regional judicial circuit.  See the Judicial Conference website for further information about the U.S. Judicial Conference.  To view the letter to President Obama, click here.  As the letter outlines, the judiciary has already announced new cost-cutting measures in anticipation of continued budget cuts, including reducing attorney compensation for indigent criminal defense.  Fiscal year 2014 begins on October 1, 2013, the deadline for Congress to resolve the budget issue.  See here and here for other articles discussing this topic.  For further information on the federal judiciary and budget issues, consult the 2012 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary prepared by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

(This entry was originally written and posted by Sarah Kammer)

Upcoming Presentation on Tribal/State Relations and Library Display

On Thursday, September 19 at 3:00 p.m., the USD Native American Law Student Association and the USD School of Law are hosting a presentation by P. Sam Deloria, board member of the American Indian Graduate Center, Albuquerque, NM.  Deloria will speak on Tribal/State Relations in the Law School Courtroom.  After Mr. Deloria's presentation, there will be a discussion panel with other experts in the area, including Professor Frank Pommersheim of USD Law, J.R. LaPlante, director of the South Dakota Department of Tribal Relations, and Philip Mahowald, general counsel for the Prairie Island Indian Community in Minnesota.  Both LaPlante and Mahowald are graduates of the USD School of Law.

To accompany the presentation, the law library is currently featuring a display which features a recent article by Tasse Hanna, Sam Deloria, and Charles E. Trimble, The Commission on State-Tribal Relations: Enduring Lessons in the Modern State-Tribal Relationship, 47 Tulsa L. Rev. 553 (2011-2012).  The display also features print titles on tribal/state relations, as well as information on the South Dakota Department of Tribal Relations website and resources.

(This entry was originally written and posted by Sarah Kammer)

Hispanic Heritage Month Display

September 15 through October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month, a time to recognize the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans to the United States and celebrate the group's heritage and culture.  The law library is currently featuring a display to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month.  The display features some of the law library's print resources which discuss Hispanic and Latino identity and the American legal system.  Highlighted are American Cultural Pluralism and the Law by Jill Norgren and Serena Nanda, which contains a chapter on Latinos and the Law, as well as Race, Racism & Reparations by J. Angelo Corlett, which offers a chapter on Latino Identity.  The display also features A Latina Judge's Voice, 13 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 87 (2002), a transcription of a speech by Sonia Sotomayor, in which she discusses her background and its impact on her judicial career.  Justice Sotomayor is the first Hispanic American appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

(This entry was originally written and posted by Sarah Kammer)