Archive for February, 2007
February 28th, 2007
The Homicide Report
The Los Angeles Times recently began hosting The Homicide Report, a blog by Times crime reporter Jill Leovy. This is no ordinary blog. Each week Leovy posts a listing of “all homicide victims reported by the Los Angeles County coroner, combined with updates every few days from law enforcement agencies of new homicides not yet listed.”
The number of deaths, the photos and the family’s words are heartbreaking. For just one example, see the February 20, 2007 post on the murder of Nicole Harvey.
Leovy explains the purpose of The Homicide Report:
The report seeks to reverse an age-old paradox of big-city crime reporting, which dictates that only the most unusual and statistically marginal homicide cases receive press coverage, while those cases at the very eye of the storm — those which best expose the true statistical dimensions of the problem of deadly violence — remain hidden.
Controversy has followed Leovy’s decision to provide the race of each victim listed. Follows is a snippet of the transcript from NPR’s On The Media addressing this issue:
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know, in the late eighties and nineties, when inner city homicides were at an all-time high, critics of local crime coverage decried the identifying of perpetrators, and even victims, by race. But you make a point of doing that in The Homicide Report. In fact, one reader wrote into your blog saying, “Your relentless effort to catalog the victims by race adds to their dehumanization.” But you don’t agree with that.
JILL LEOVY: It’s not that I necessarily disagree. I do record the race of all the homicide victims that are listed on the site, as well as their age and gender and where the homicides occurred, and how they died, if I can.
With the race question, I suppose if homicide were equally distributed among Americans, you could argue that it’s irrelevant and we should be colorblind in the way that we talk about it. But the fact is that this is an area where there’s stunning inequality. Black males in this country are four percent of the population, and they’re around thirty-five percent of all homicide victims.
It’s a public health problem, and no more than it would be irresponsible to talk about AIDS without ever mentioning gay men or intravenous drug users, I think it would be irresponsible to talk about homicide and not talk about the groups that are disproportionately afflicted.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is there a sense among the families of black and Latino victims that their stories are under-covered, that there’s disproportionate attention paid to, say, the attractive white woman who’s murdered in her home?
JILL LEOVY: Oh, that’s a chorus. It’s a point of view that dominates, in my experience of covering homicide over the last six years. It’s interesting. The question about race and talking bluntly about the disproportionate effect of homicide particularly on blacks, I find to be more controversial in contexts where people aren’t experiencing a lot of homicide.
In areas – Compton, Watts, South Central Los Angeles – you generally hear the reverse. You generally hear people say, talk more about this, it needs to be out there more. Why aren’t people talking about our victims?
You know, it’s hard approaching people in moments of extreme grief as a reporter. It’s a very intrusive thing. And occasionally you encounter hostility, but much, much more common is actually kind of a heart-wrenching desperation. I have people actually say to me, you know, tell them, tell people this happened.
Source: On The Media
February 20th, 2007
LawBeat
If you, like your friends the very many editors of BoleyBlogs, tend to start your day with a review of the latest legal news, you’ll enjoy LawBeat, “the blog about legal journalism.”
Published as part of the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program at Newhouse, LawBeat provides daily coverage of reporting on “law, lawyers and the courts — who’s doing notable work, and why we sometimes fail to cover this beat well.”
LawBeat is not a survey of the day’s legal news. It’s not for or about lawyers and the courts (though we won’t kick you out if you visit). It’s not about media law. Many journalists and bloggers cover those topics ably and voluminously. Some of my favorites can be found on the blogroll.
LawBeat, instead, will be mostly anecdotes that teach lessons. The lessons are critically important. Ask a lawyer or judge about the quality of legal reporting, and you’re likely to hear all about superficial, hyped or ignorant coverage. Those kinds of mistakes undermine the rule of law and hurt our democracy. We’ll be on the lookout for examples, and hope that you’ll supply us with tips. We’ll also be skeptical of the bench’s and bar’s criticisms, since some are rooted in a desire for public relations rather than journalism — and ignore the difficulties of turning legal and factual complexities into stories with mass appeal. [from The Welcome Mat]
In addition to keen insight and a fresh eye on legal reporting, LawBeat provides a solid collection of research links covering legal news sources, journalist resources, legal and media blogrolls, and legal research links. It also posts the weekly reading list for class, if you just don’t have enough reading for your own courses.
LawBeat’s been around since October of last year, and is primarily the work of Mark Obbie, former Executive Editor of The American Lawyer, court and cops reporter for the Houston Chronicle, and currently visiting professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where he is both Director of the aforementioned Carnegie Legal Reporting Program at Newhouse and Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics and the Media.
February 16th, 2007
Justia’s Federal District Court Filings & Dockets
Robert Ambrogi alerts us to a terribly useful new legal research tool, Justia’s Federal District Court Filings & Dockets.
Justia is a legal portal site run by Findlaw founder Tim Stanley. Stanley left Findlaw upon its purchase by Thomson West. As Ambrogi makes clear, Stanley quickly got busy:
Meanwhile, Stanley started a little company called Justia. At first, Justia’s main focus was “legal marketing solutions” — creating law firm Web sites and blogs and providing search engine optimization. At the same time, Stanley and his staff worked on public-interest side projects such as the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center and RecallWarnings.com. Later came Justia’s Supreme Court Center, pulling together a searchable collection of Supreme Court cases along with Supreme Court resources from all over the Web.
Justia continued to add innovative features, such as BlawgSearch for searching law-related blogs and Blawgs.fm for searching law-related podcasts. Just last week, he launched Federal District Court Filings & Dockets, for searching and browsing federal dockets. Along the way, Justia added collections of links to Web legal resources arranged by legal practice areas and to legal research and law practice resources arranged under cases and codes, courts, states, law schools, legal forms and the like.
Users of PACER, the U.S. federal judiciary’s online docket, filing and case information service, will find that Federal District Court Filings & Dockets provides quick access to dockets (PACER account required). Add in the very-Web 2.0 addition of search links to related dockets, news, blogs, and websites, and you find a fantastic one-stop source of information given very many thumbs up by the very many editors of BoleyBlogs!
Sources: AELR Blog, Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites
February 16th, 2007
Two articles this week provide ideas and tips for using Wikis in the practice of law.
The first, “Wikis for the Legal Profession” by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell (ABA Law Practice Today, Feb. 2007), provides an excellent introduction to wikis, examples of attorney use of wikis, resources for getting started on your own wiki, and even a couple of podcasts on the subject for those who prefer their information aurally.
The second is “Contract Drafting: What Are Wikis?” by Ken Adams (GC New York, Feb. 2007). Adams is the author of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting (ABA 2004) and a lecturer on contract drafting at U. Penn Law School.
In the article Adams considers an innovative use of wikis – public drafting of contract language. Though ultimately finding wikis unsuited to the task, Adams’ opens up the discussion of wiki use in the law in a new, outside-the-box direction.
Sources: Between Lawyers, Adams Drafting
February 12th, 2007
NYU Law’s GlobalLex, publisher of guides and articles to international and foreign law research and previously featured on BoleyBlogs! here, has released three new articles, one on comparative law research, two on foreign law research:
Source: Law Librarian Blog
February 7th, 2007
The Law Professor Blog Network adds four more to its impressive (and highly ranked) collection of over three dozen law professor blogs:
Also, Antitrust Prof Blog has re-launched as Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog with Shubha Ghosh (SMU) and Daniel Sokol (Wisconsin) as co-editors.
Source: email announcement
February 2nd, 2007
Legal Research Engine
Cornell Law Library today announces its new Legal Research Engine, a specialized search engine which “helps users easily find authoritative online legal research guides on every subject.”
[Legal Research Engine] searches approximately 20 different web sites that either prolifically publish guides, or index and link to guides. The number of web sites searched was deliberately kept small to keep search results manageable and focused. You can also add it to your Google home page.
Not sure how to start your research in an unfamiliar area of law? Unclear where to even find the legal authorities required for your research? Find a research guide (often descriptively called a “pathfinder”) to show you the way. Typically created by law librarians who have gained experience in a specialized field, research guides can be a mother lode of information.
The Legal Research Engine does a wonderful job of providing keyword access to many of the better legal research guides available. Another good meta source for such guides is Law Scout from the U. of Akron Law School. Law Scout organizes guides and pathfinders from over 130 law schools by legal subject.
Find these and other such legal research sources at our Research Guides page.
Source: Cornell announcement
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