Marx Markings

All About Impeachment

Posted on January 24, 2020 by susanb

The impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump has started so let’s explore impeachment and impeachment resources in this blog post. So far, no president has been removed from office due to impeachment, but President Trump is the third president to face an impeachment trial (President Nixon’s impeachment proceedings never reached the trial stage).

Andrew Johnson

The first president to face articles of impeachment was Andrew Johnson.

Andrew Johnson On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives passed a Resolution of Impeachment by a vote of 126 to 47 ^[1]. They filed eleven articles of impeachment with the primary focus of the impeachment charges related to the firing of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, an alleged violation of the Tenure of Office Act ^[2] (the act was eventually repealed and a similar law was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926)). The Senate adopted 25 rules for the impeachment trial and Chief Justice Salmon Chase presided over the trial.^[3] Access to watch the trial was permitted through the distribution of 1,000 Senate gallery tickets each day of the trial.^[4] President Johnson narrowly escaped being removed from office with the Senate falling short of one vote to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict.^[5]

You can research more about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson by looking at some of these fabulous resources:

William Jefferson Clinton

The second president to face articles of impeachment was Bill Clinton.

William J. Clinton

On October 8, 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to authorize the House Committee on the Judiciary to begin an inquiry into whether to impeach President Clinton.^[6] The House of Representatives initially proposed four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton but two of them failed to pass.^[7] The primary focus of the remaining impeachment charges related to alleged lying under oath and obstruction of justice in the Paula Jones lawsuit.^[8] The Senate Rules for the trial were adopted in January 1999 and Chief Justice William Rehnquist presided over the trial.^[9] President Clinton was acquitted on both articles of impeachment: 45-55 on Article 1^[10] and 50-50 on Article 2.^[11]

You can research more about the impeachment of Bill Clinton by looking at some of these resources:

Donald J. Trump

President Trump’s impeachment trial has just begun.
Andrew Johnson On Oct. 31, 2019, the House of Representatives passed an impeachment resolution authorizing the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committees on Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, the Judiciary, Oversight and Reform, and Ways and Means to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House to impeach President Trump.^[12]After holding hearings, the House passed a Resolution of Impeachment, consisting of two articles: abuse of power and obstruction of justice.^[13]The House then appointed its managers and the proceedings moved on to the Senate. The Senate rules were adopted on January 22, 2020.^[14]

You can research more about the impeachment of President Trump by looking at some of these resources:

[1] Resolution of Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, February 21, 1868 (Library of Congress)

[2] See Articles of Impeachment (Congressional Globe)

[3] Senate Impeachment Rules (Congressional Globe)

[4] U.S. Senate Historical Office, President Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment Trial, 1868 (includes images of impeachment tickets)

[5] U.S. Senate Historical Office, The Senate Votes on Presidential Impeachment

[6] H.R. Res. 581, 105th Cong. (1998)

[7] H.R. Res. 611, 105th Cong. (1998)

[8] Id.

[9] S. Doc. No. 106-2 (1999)

[10] S. Roll Call Vote on Article 1, H.R. Res. 611, 106th Cong. (Feb. 12, 1999)

[11] S. Roll Call Vote on Article 2, H.R. Res. 611, 106th Cong. (Feb. 12, 1999)

[12] H.R. Res. 660, 116th Cong. (2019)

[13] H.R. Res. 755, 116th Cong. (2019)

[14] S. Res. 483, 116th Cong. (2020)

This Week in the Law Library …

Posted on January 21, 2020 by susanb

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Closure

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Law Library will be closed Monday, Jan. 20 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Law students and faculty will have their usual 24/7 access; however, circulation and reference services will not be available, and the Law Library will not be open to non-law students, faculty, or the public.

Research Instruction

Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020

Prof. McCord’s Lawyering II, Section 2
- Associate Dean of Library Services & Director of the Law Library Michael Whiteman will be working with section 2 on Advanced Searching Techniques
- 10:40am – 12:05pm
- Room 100B
Advanced Legal Research
- Associate Dean of Library Services & Director of the Law Library Michael Whiteman, Associate Director Susan Boland, and Electronic Resources & Instructional Services Librarian Ron Jones
- 3:05pm – 4:30pm
- Room 104
Prof. McCord’s Lawyering II, Section 4
- Legal Technology & Research Instructional Services Librarian Shannon Kemen will be working with section 4 on Advanced Searching Techniques
- 3:05pm – 4:30pm
- Room 100A

Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020

Prof. Smith’s Lawyering II, Section 6
- Associate Director Susan Boland will be working with section 6 on Federal Law Research
- 9:00am – 10:30am
- Room 100B
Prof. Lenhart’s Lawyering II, Section 1
- Associate Director Susan Boland will be working with section 1 on Federal Law Research
- 1:30pm – 2:55pm
- Room 100B

Spring Into a New Year with Study Aid Resources

Spring into a new year with the Law Library study aid resources! The LexisNexis Digital Library (OverDrive collection) has undergone a complete redesign. You can still access the classic design at any time, but the new design implements features to make the study aids easier to use. When you access the current LexisNexis Digital Library site you will get a prompt to “Try the improved LexisNexis Digital Library!” You can click to try it or continue using the classic site. Any notes taken will remain on the classic site for now but later this year, any notes on the classic site will be migrated to the new one. Among the enhancements on the new site:

Accessing the study aids will be streamlined. You won’t have to check out materials any more.
Your digital library eBooks will be available with or without an internet connection. Once you download the app, you’ll be able to access study aids offline.
You’ll be able to organize and sync your annotations and highlights across sessions and devices.
Your home page will populate recently read eBooks and your personal annotations and tags.

You can find all of our study aids by subject on the Exam Study Guide.

If accessing the online study aids from the West Academic subscription on-campus (either connected to Secure Wireless or on a networked computer), you can just click on the links on the Exam Study Guide or go to the West Academic subscription page. If you want to be able to access them from off-campus, create a West Academic account. To create an account, click the Create an Account link at the top right corner of the Study Aids Subscription page. Use your UC email as the email address. Once you have filled in the required information to set up an account, you will need to verify your email address (they will send you a confirmation email that you will need answer to verify the email address).

If accessing study aids from the LexisNexis Digital Library (OverDrive), you will need to login using your UC credentials. Under the classic interface the study aids check out for 3 days, but you can check them out as many times as you want. On the new site, you won’t need to check them out anymore but can go directly to the study aid.

If using CALI, you will need to create an account (if you have not already done so) using a Cincinnati Law authorization code. You can obtain this code from a reference librarian.

January Arguments at the United States Supreme Court

From SCOTUS Blog:

Monday, Jan. 13, 2020

Lucky Brand Dungarees v. Marcel Fashions Group – whether, when a plaintiff asserts new claims, a defendant can raise defenses that were not actually litigated and resolved in any prior cases between the parties.
- Oral Argument Transcript
Thole v. U.S. Bank, N.A. – whether an ERISA plan participant or beneficiary may seek injunctive relief against fiduciary misconduct under 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(3) without demonstrating individual financial loss or the imminent risk thereof; (2) whether an ERISA plan participant or beneficiary may seek restoration of plan losses caused by fiduciary breach under 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(2) without demonstrating individual financial loss or the imminent risk thereof; and (3) whether petitioners have demonstrated Article III standing.
- Oral Argument Transcript

Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020

Kelly v. United States – whether a public official “defraud[s]” the government of its property by advancing a “public policy reason” for an official decision that is not her subjective “real reason” for making the decision.
- Oral Argument Transcript
Romag Fasteners Inc. v. Fossil Inc. – whether, under Section 35 of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a), willful infringement is a prerequisite for an award of an infringer’s profits for a violation of Section 43(a), 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a).
- Oral Argument Transcript

Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020

Babb v. Wilkie – whether the federal-sector provision of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which provides that personnel actions affecting agency employees aged 40 years or older shall be made free from any “discrimination based on age,” 29 U.S.C. § 633a(a), requires a plaintiff to prove that age was a but-for cause of the challenged personnel action.

Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2020

Shular v. United States – whether the determination of a “serious drug offense” under the Armed Career Criminal Act requires the same categorical approach used in the determination of a “violent felony” under the act.
GE Energy Power Conversion France SAS v. Outokumpu Stainless USA LLC – whether the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards permits a nonsignatory to an arbitration agreement to compel arbitration based on the doctrine of equitable estoppel.

Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2020

Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue – whether it violates the religion clauses or the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution to invalidate a generally available and religiously neutral student-aid program simply because the program affords students the choice of attending religious schools.

More on “Crimmigration”

Posted on January 17, 2020 by susanb

The Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law was endowed by Stanley M. Chesley (’60) in 2006 to bring outstanding legal scholars of national and international prominence in all areas of law to the College as visiting professors. On Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020, UCLA School of Law Professor Jennifer Chacón gave the Distinguished Visiting Professor lecture “Criminalizing Migration: The US and Beyond.” Professor Chacón’s research focuses in the fields of immigration law, constitutional law and criminal law and procedure. In the lecture, she covered the evolution of immigration enforcement and discussed some of the consequences that have resulted from the integration of policing and immigration. For those interested in reading more about these issues, below are some selected resources to start you on your journey, including materials by our own Prof. Yolanda Vázquez.

Books & Chapters

Articles, Chapters & Reports

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Tech Tip: Start the New Year Right -Get Organized with Outlook!

Don’t let your emails get away from you! You can make important emails from your boss or clients stand out by assigning them their own unique color so you will be able to see right away when they enter your inbox.

To color code important emails in Outlook, follow these steps:

Select View, then View Settings.
Select Conditional Formatting.
Select Add. In the Name field, name the rule that you are creating (ex. Email from Boss Smith)
Select Font and select the color that you want associated with this rule. You can also change the Font size and style here as well if you want.
Select Ok.
Select Condition. In the From.. field type in the email address of the sender or senders you want associated with this rule (ex. Boss.Smith@law.com). For multiple people, separate their email addresses with a semicolon.
Select Ok.

Here’s how an email will appear that has been assigned a green font:

Chill Out Over Winter Break With These Legal Books

Posted on December 20, 2019 by susanb

Now that final exams are over what are you going to do with all that free time? How about cozying up with a good book! Hey, what else do you expect a librarian to suggest!

ABA Greatest Law Novels Ever

To Kill a Mockingbird
Crime and Punishment
Bleak House
Kafka’s The Trial
Les Miserables
Billy Budd
Presumed Innocent
The Scarlet Letter
The Bonfire of the Vanities
An American Tragedy
The Paper Chase
Bartleby the Scrivener
Native Son
The Stranger
A Tale of Two Cities
A Time to Kill
The Caine Mutiny
Their Eyes Were Watching God
QB VII
The Firm
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Handmaid’s Tale
Anatomy of a Murder
The Fountainhead
Tie: Old Filth & The Ox-Bow Incident

You can read more about the ABA’s choices and why they picked the books they did in their gallery: ABA Journal, 25 Greatest Law Novels Ever.

Not feeling like doing any more reading? Check out the ABA Journal’s 25 Greatest Legal Movies and 25 Greatest Legal TV Shows.

Want to avoid thinking about anything legal over break? Check out some of these other resources for great books and movies:

Non-Legal Book Lists

International Human Rights Day

Posted on December 10, 2019 by susanb

It’s International Human Rights Day! Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10th. On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was the Chairperson of the drafting committee. This year’s theme is “Youth Standing Up for Human Rights.”

Here at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, we have long advocated for human rights every day of the year. The Urban Morgan Institute, founded in 1979, was the first endowed institute at an American law school devoted to international human rights law and has long been a world leader in legal education and human rights scholarship. The endowment for the institute resulted from a relationship between human rights activist William Butler and Urban Morgan. Every year, the Institute awards between 10 and 15 fellowships to students. The Urban Morgan Institute also works to provide students with hands-on summer experiences with human rights organizations and attorneys, international judges, governmental agencies and UN bodies. Cincinnati Law students have completed successful summer experiences at dozens of locations, including Amnesty International USA, the High Court of Botswana, Africa Watch, ACLU, Chilean Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Center in Pretoria, South Africa, the Navajo Supreme Court and Legal Services Organization for the Navajo Nation and the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights. Cincinnati Law students also work on one of the oldest academic journals dedicated to human rights, Human Rights Quarterly. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, Human Rights Quarterly is overseen by Distinguished Service Professor Bert Lockwood, who serves as editor in chief as well as director of the Urban Morgan Institute. The Law Library works closely with student editors and cite checkers on Human Rights Quarterly. Additionally, the Law Library is privileged to have been selected as the repository for the Papers of William J. Butler. The Papers of William J. Butler include speeches, letters, congressional testimony and other personal and professional writings that document the human rights contributions and other public service of William J. Butler. Also included in this collection are: proceedings of annual meetings of representatives of sovereign nations on human rights and foreign policy held from 1977 to 1999; executive documents of the International Commission of Jurists and the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists; reports of human rights missions to numerous countries; materials generated during international human rights trials observed by William Butler; and, two landmark civil rights cases he argued and won in the U.S. Supreme Court, namely, Engel v. Vitale (1962), “the school prayer case” and Kent v. Dulles (1958), “the passport case.”

Those interested in human rights can find other great resources here at UC Law. Among the relevant research guides created by UC Law librarians are:

A few of the relevant databases to which we subscribe are:

At UC Law, every day is human rights day!

Tech Tip: Make Your Holidays Smarter with the Internet of Things (IoT)

Posted on December 2, 2019 by skemen

It’s Cyber Monday and many retailers are focusing their sales on smart technologies. Where there were once just smart phones, there are now “smart” devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the technologies and “smart” devices that “sense information and communicate it to the Internet or other networks and, in some cases, act on that information.”1 These “smart” devices are able to communicate, process information and “respond automatically to improve industrial processes, public services, and the well-being of individual consumers.”2 Some examples of IoT devices include: cars, voice-activated assistants, appliances and other home systems, health-monitoring devices, road sensors, security devices, smart meters and personal fitness trackers.3 Click here for or a listing of IoT devices to help make your holidays a little smarter!

U.S. Gen. Accounting Office, GAO-17-75, Internet of Things: Status and Implications of an Increasingly Connected World (2017), https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/684590.pdf.
Id.
Lee Rainie & Janna Anderson, The Internet of Things Connectivity Binge: What Are the Implications? 2 (June 6, 2017), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/06/06/the-internet-of-things-connectivity-binge-what-are-the-implications/.