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15 Internet Legal Research Tips

Here is a good, quick list of 15 Internet legal research tips to keep in mind. Included is the underused but not-to-be underestimated search with quotes tip (#4), a reminder to search by filetype such as pdf (#6), to make use of links collections such as the Boley site (#10), and to search legal blogs – especially law professor blogs (#s 8 & 13).

Speaking of blogs, don’t forget Google Blogsearch in addition to Technorati and the other search tools mentioned. The list predated Google’s entry into blog search.

The Relationship Between Law Review Citations and Law School Rankings by Alfred Brophy (SSRN)

Professor Alfred Brophy of the University of Alabama School of Law has published the research paper, The Relationship Between Law Review Citations and Law School Rankings by Alfred Brophy.

The paper examines the relationship between law reviews and school reputations, finding a “high correlation between law review rankings and law school rankings” in the U.S. News top tier schools, but not so much in the lower tiers. It is an interesting mashup (as the kids say) of the various school rankings and citation data.

Find the abstract here. Download the full text here.

Source: BarclayBlog

The latest issue of Lewis & Clark Law School’s Lewis & Clark Law Review is now out.

Here are the articles published in Volume 9, Number 4 of Lewis & Clark Law Review, complete with links to the abstracts:

Symposium Articles

• Is Morrison Dead? Assessing A Supreme Drug (Law) Overdose by Jonathan H. Adler
• Why Not Heighten The Scrutiny Of Congressional Power When The States Undertake Policy Experiments? by Ann Althouse
• Raich And Judicial Conservatism At The Close Of The Rehnquist Court by Eric R. Claeys
• Rescuing Federalism After Raich: The Case For Clear Statement Rules by Thomas W. Merrill
• “Society Must Be [Regulated]”: Biopolitics And The Commerce Clause In Gonzales V. Raich by John T. Parry
• The Medical Marijuana Case: A Commerce Clause Counter-Revolution? by Robert J. Pushaw, Jr.
• What Hath Raich Wrought? Five Takes by Glenn H. Reynolds & Brannon P. Denning

Symposium Reviews

• Moving Beyond Instinct: Persuasion In The Era Of Professional Legal Writing by Kathryn M. Stanchi

Symposium Comments

• One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Women Asylum-Seekers in the United States and Canada Stand to Lose Human Rights Under the Safe Third Country Agreement by Amy K. Arnett
• Needed, Private Attorneys General: Empowering Consumers To Reform The Household Goods Moving Industry by Joseph L. Franco
• Competency, Consent, And Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Mentally Ill Prisoner’s Right To Refuse Invasive Medical Treatment In Oregon’s Criminal Justice System by Elizabeth R. Newell

New L&C Law Scholarship is a regular feature of BoleyBlogs! Here we announce new content from the Law Reviews of Lewis & Clark Law School, along with the latest publishing ventures of our own faculty, students and staff.

Jonathan H. Adler, Is Morrison Dead? Assessing A Supreme Drug (Law) Overdose, 9 Lewis & Clark Law Review 751 (2005)

There was little doubt that the federal government would prevail in Gonzales v. Raich. What was, perhaps, so unexpected was so expansive a repudiation of enforceable judicial limitations on federal power. In upholding the constitutionality of the Controlled Substances Act as-applied to the non-commercial intrastate possession and consumption of marijuana for medical purposes as authorized under California law, the Supreme Court hollowed out the core of contemporary Commerce Clause jurisprudence. Insofar as United States v. Morrison had stood for the propositions that only intrastate economic activities could be aggregated for purposes of the “substantial affects” test, that attenuated connections between a regulatory scheme and interstate commerce exceeded Congress’s limited and enumerated powers, and, perhaps most importantly, that judicial review should serve as the ultimate check on overly broad assertions of federal power, it may now be a dead letter. The rationale adopted by Justice Stevens’s majority opinion undercuts the primary judicial safeguards of federalism. While the Raich majority purports to be following the doctrinal contours of Lopez and Morrison, it actually represents a repudiation of these prior cases. Further, Raich continued the Supreme Court’s uninterrupted practice of rejecting as-applied challenges to federal statutes, and is likely to preclude any such suits in the future. The inability to mount as-applied challenges to broad regulatory statutes like the CSA is significant because it creates additional barriers to future Commerce Clause litigation. The lack of a viable way to challenge discrete applications of broader federal laws means few Commerce Clause challenges can ever hope to succeed. The central holding of Morrison, like the legendary Jim Morrison, now lives on only in the hearts of true believers.

(abstract from Lewis & Clark Law Review)

Ann Althouse, Why Not Heighten The Scrutiny Of Congressional Power When The States Undertake Policy Experiments?, 9 Lewis & Clark Law Review 779 (2005)

This Article assesses Justice O’Connor’s attempt, in her dissent from Gonzales v. Raich, to define a new standard of review for congressional Commerce Clause authority when a state has undertaken a policy experiment in an area that has traditionally been left to states. The majority in Raich found that the Controlled Substances Act was not a “single-subject statute,” as in United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison, and regulated more than non-commercial intrastate matters. The majority viewed Raich as an easy case—not significantly different from Wickard v. Filburn. This Article finds that the decision was conventional and predictable and not a surprising betrayal of the principles of limiting the commerce power articulated in Lopez and Morrison.

O’Connor’s dissent, although never clearly articulated, suggests a higher level of scrutiny for federal statutes that infringe on the states’ ability to carry out specific policy experiments. This Article restates O’Connor’s suggestion as a straightforward doctrine and discusses the difficulties it would present. It may be disappointing and unsatisfying to those of us who care about federalism values, but O’Connor’s suggested doctrine would be unworkable and unstable.

(abstract from Lewis & Clark Law Review)

Eric R. Claeys, Raich And Judicial Conservatism At The Close Of The Rehnquist Court, 9 Lewis & Clark Law Review 791 (2005)

This Article explains the separate opinions of Justices Scalia and Thomas in Gonzales v. Raich and other New Federalism cases. Scalia and Thomas’s opinions highlight a tension in how different judicial conservatives understand the objects of constitutional interpretation. Thomas represents the views of “originalists,” who seek above all else to identify and follow the original meaning of the relevant constitutional text. Scalia represents the views of “judicial minimalists,” who seek above all else to develop rules that minimize the interpretive and policy-making discretion of federal judges. Although originalism and minimalism complement one another in many cases, they do not always do so, and Raich marks the New Federalism case where these two approaches diverged.

This divergence makes it impossible to understand “judicial conservatism” as a coherent project to change contemporary constitutional interpretation. Contrary to the views of many critics of the Rehnquist Court, “judicial conservatives” as such are not united enough to threaten seriously the New Deal transformation of the national government’s power.

(abstract from Lewis & Clark Law Review)

Thomas W. Merrill, Rescuing Federalism After Raich: The Case For Clear Statement Rules, 9 Lewis & Clark Law Review 923 (2005)

The Rehnquist Court’s federalism jurisprudence began with a focus on clear statement rules, but then turned to prohibitory limits on the scope of federal power. This Article specifies the differences between clear statement rules and prohibitory limitations, and outlines some of the factors courts should consider in determining which strategy to pursue in any given context. The Article argues that the scope of the Commerce Clause is an issue that should be resolved using clear statement rules. The Court’s decision in United States v. Lopez to follow a prohibitory approach was both strategically mistaken and poorly executed. Although the principles the Court established in Lopez have been largely eviscerated by Gonzales v. Raich, the Court now has the opportunity to consider whether to turn to a strategy of clear statement rules. Such an approach would put Commerce Clause jurisprudence on a sounder footing, and could be achieved without upsetting the results in any of the major decisions in the post-Lopez era.

(abstract from Lewis & Clark Law Review)

John T. Parry, “Society Must Be [Regulated]”: Biopolitics And The Commerce Clause In Gonzales V. Raich, 9 Lewis & Clark Law Review 953 (2005)

This Article makes three points about the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Gonzales v. Raich. First, it suggests that Raich complicates the effort to define Commerce Clause doctrine. Although Raich employed the doctrinal structure created by the Lopez and Morrison decisions, the emphasis was entirely different, and perhaps the only clear doctrinal result of the decision is that pieces of comprehensive regulatory programs will be upheld precisely because they are part of a larger program. Second, this Article contends that Raich exemplifies an idea of government power that assumes the rationality and desirability of regulation and that this assumption dovetails with Michel Foucault’s theory of biopower or biopolitics, in which the power of the modern state turns on its ability “to make live and let die.” Specifically, the Article explores what it means for constitutional law to accept the biopolitical nature of contemporary governmental power, particularly in the context of end of life decisions as well as pain-management. The third, concluding section considers the possibility that biopolitcs, while usually described in negative terms, has more complex normative implications.

(abstract from Lewis & Clark Law Review)

Robert J. Pushaw, Jr., The Medical Marijuana Case: A Commerce Clause Counter-Revolution?, 9 Lewis & Clark Law Review 879 (2005)

Many observers have suggested that Gonzales v. Raich signals the Supreme Court’s abandonment of its radical ten-year effort to enforce meaningful limits on Congress’s power “to regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” Professor Pushaw argues that such reports of the death of recent Commerce Clause jurisprudence are greatly exaggerated. Indeed, he demonstrates that the so-called Commerce Clause “revolution” was quite modest, consisting of the development and application of vague standards to invalidate two minor federal statutes. Those standards are so elastic that they could plausibly have been invoked either to uphold or strike down the federal law involved in Raich, which prohibited the cultivation or possession of marijuana for any purpose.

Professor Pushaw contends that, if the Court actually wants to reform its doctrine, it must identify and apply particularized rules of law drawn from the Commerce Clause’s text, history, and early precedent. This law is straightforward: Congress can regulate only “commerce” (i.e., the sale of goods or services and all accompanying activities geared toward the market) that has an impact “among the states.” Application of this approach in Raich would have resulted in thwarting Congress’s attempt to reach conduct—the mere possession of home-grown marijuana for personal medical use—that did not constitute “commerce” and had no effect in any other state.

(abstract from Lewis & Clark Law Review)

Glenn H. Reynolds & Brannon P. Denning, What Hath Raich Wrought? Five Takes, 9 Lewis & Clark Law Review 915 (2005)

The Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Raich provides an opportunity to reflect on the Rehnquist Court’s apparent run at establishing a judicially-enforceable federalism. Two of the most visible symbols of this effort were the decisions in United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison, in which the Court twice struck down acts of Congress as beyond the scope of its commerce power. Now, nearly ten years after Lopez and five years after Morrison, Raich leaves many wondering whether the Court provided an answer to John Nagle’s question whether Lopez was destined to be a watershed or a “‘but see’ cite.” In this Article, we offer our tentative, impressionistic answer(s) to the question we pose in this title. In doing so, we move from the practical impact of Raich (i.e., what does this mean for as-applied challenges to which lower courts were becoming receptive?) to more abstract ones (e.g., does Raich represent the third death of federalism, or was the Rehnquist Court’s federalism project an illusion?).

(abstract from Lewis & Clark Law Review)