This week in the Law Library we’re teaching technology in law practice and celebrating Constitution Day and Week.
This Week’s Research Sessions
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Technology in Law Practice
Shannon Kemen, Legal Technology & Research Instructional Services Librarian
Room 107
11:10am – 12:05pm
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Technology in Law Practice
Shannon Kemen, Legal Technology & Research Instructional Services Librarian
Room 107
11:10am – 12:05pm
Constitution Day Celebration, September 18, 2023
#Constitution Day is observed each year to commemorate the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787. Public Law 108-447 requires that every educational institution which received Federal funds hold a program on the Constitution for students. This year the College of Law’s Constitution Day speaker is Deborah L. Brake, professor of law and John E. Murray Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. She will speak on “Constitutional Rights and Retrenchment: The Elusive Promise of Equal Citizenship.” The idea of “equal citizenship” has been a foundational concept in the United States for centuries. In the past two terms, however, the Supreme Court has decided cases that have undermined constitutional equality rights. Professor Brake will discuss the impact of recent rulings as well as the changes on the Court. The lecture is made possible through the generous support of the Alfred B. Katz Constitution Day Fund in memory of Alfred B. Katz ’35. More at Constitution Day Event Details.
Featured Study Aids
Constitutional Law CALI Lessons
Available on CALI, these are interactive exercises for students studying Constitutional Law. You will need to set up a password to use CALI online. To set up a username and password, you will be asked to enter UC Law’s authorization code. You can get this code from any reference librarian or at the Circulation Desk.
Constitutional Law: Individual Rights: Examples & Explanations
Available via the Aspen Learning Library study aid subscription, this is a problem-oriented guide to the principle doctrines of Constitutional law as covered in the typical course. This text walks the student through the provisions that protect individual rights. It combines textual material with examples, explanations, and questions to test the students’ comprehension of the materials and provide practice in applying legal principles to fact patterns.New to the Ninth Edition: inclusion of nearly 50 new Supreme Court cases, as well as expanded discussion of the freedom of association and the Richer treatment of the right to keep and bear arms.
Understanding Constitutional Law
Available via the LexisNexis Digital Library study aid subscription, this study aid covers all of the central concepts and issues students encounter in any basic constitutional law course. Structure of Government issues revolve around the twin themes of federalism and separation of powers. Individual rights and liberties follow a concept organization-Due Process, Equal Protection, and First Amendment. Clearly written and authoritative, Understanding Constitutional Law addresses the central concepts and issues students encounter in most Constitutional Law casebooks. “Structure of government” issues revolve around the twin themes of federalism and separation of powers. Individual rights and liberties follow a concept organization – Due Process, Equal Protection, and First Amendment.
United States Constitutional Law (Concepts & Insights)
Available via the West Academic study aid subscription,
this text guides law students, political science students, and engaged citizens through the complexities of U.S. Supreme Court doctrine—and its relationship to constitutional politics—in key areas ranging from federalism and presidential power to equal protection and substantive due process. Rather than approach constitutional law as a static structure or imagine the Supreme Court as acting in isolation from society, the book elaborates and clarifies key constitutional doctrines while also drawing on scholarship in law and political science that relates the doctrines to large social changes such as industrialization, social movements such as civil rights and second-wave feminism, and institutional tensions between governmental actors. Combining legal analysis with historical narrative and sensitivity to political context, the book provides deeper understanding of how constitutional law arises, functions, and changes in a complex, often-divided society.
Featured Database
Civil Rights and Social Justice
Containing publications from the Commission on Civil Rights, legislative histories on landmark legislation, briefs from relevant U.S. Supreme Court cases, and more, this database, available on HeinOnline, covers civil rights in the United States as their legal protections and definitions are expanded to cover more and more Americans.
Featured Guide
Exam Study Guide — Constitutional Law
This guide page features study aids to help you with understanding Constitutional Law and for review and exam preparation.
Featured Videos
Federal Law Part I: Overview of Constitutions, Statutes, and Legal Authority
This video introduces US Constitutional and statutory law. It explains where they fit in the hierarchy of legal authority, what a session law is, what a code is, and the difference between official and unofficial codes. The video is 11:24 minutes long and features closed captioning
Federal Law Part II Video: Researching Constitutional & Statutory Law on Westlaw
This video provides an overview of researching the US Constitution, federal statutes, and federal court rules on Westlaw. It covers retrieving by citation; using the notes of decision; making sure a statute is still good law; finding materials citing a statute; navigating to the United States Code Annotated when you don’t have a citation; and using statutory finding tools such as the table of contents, index, and popular names table. This video is 10:36 minutes long and it is closed captioned and features a table of contents.
Federal Law Part III: Researching Constitutional & Statutory Law on Lexis
This video covers researching the US Constitution, federal statutes, and court rules on Lexis. It covers finding statutes, court rules, and constitutions by citation, finding them when you don’t have a citation, navigating the annotated code, using the annotations, and shepardizing them. It is closed captioned and is 10:26 minutes long. It also features a table of contents.
Featured Treatise
The Oxford Handbook of Feminism and Law in the United States
While the term “feminist” was not used in the United States until the 1910s, the foundations of feminist legal theory were first conceptualized as early as 1848 and developed over the next one hundred and fifty years. This chapter traces that development. It begins with the establishment of the core theoretical precepts of gender and equality grounded in the surprisingly comprehensive philosophy of the nineteenth-century’s first women’s rights movement ignited at Seneca Falls. It then shows how feminist legal theory was popularized and advanced by the political activism of the women’s suffrage movement, even as suffragists limited the feminist consensus to one based on women’s maternalism. Progressive feminism then expanded the theoretical framework of feminist theory in the early twentieth century, encapsulating ideas of global peace, market work, and sex rights of birth control. In the modern era, legal feminists gravitated back to pragmatic and concrete ideas of formal equality, and the associated legalisms of equal rights and equal protection. Yet through each of these periods, the two common imperatives were to place women at the center of analysis and to recognize law as a fundamental agent of change.
Featured Website
Library of Congress, 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Primary Documents in American History
Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” This Library of Congress guide provides access to digital collections, websites, and print materials related to the amendment.