#AALL2016 Recap: Roman Law, Roman Order, and Restatements

By: Jennifer Allison

Although the title of this program promised content about Roman Law, this program actually was a bit more focused on digitization of library materials, especially materials and collections that are unique and important to researchers.  For both presenters, preserving materials is only one of several goals of library digitization projects.  Both had found that, perhaps, a more important goal is fostering and optimizing the connection between people and materials.

 

Marylin Raisch, a long-time member of the FCIL-SIS, served as moderator and employed a question-and-answer format for Professor Kearley’s discussion, which was both highly effective and quite enjoyable.

Marylin’s knowledge of many topics, including Roman law and U.S. legal history, is quite extensive, and she probably could have offered an informative and interesting program on this topic all on her own.  However, she really allowed Professor Kearley’s knowledge, expertise, and passion for the subject to shine through.

Beginning around 1920, Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Fred Blume, an expert in Roman Law, began work on his English-language annotated translation of the Codex of Justinian.  Transcripts representing various stages and versions of this translation are in Justice Blume’s papers, which are held by the University of Wyoming Law Library. Professor Kearney oversaw and edited the digitization and publication of this manuscript collection, both editions of which are hosted on the University of Wyoming Law Library’s website.

Justice Blume’s personal history, as described by Professor Kearley, provided some fascinating background on his translation projects.  Justice Blume, who immigrated to the United States at age 12, learned Latin in high school and ended up graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a BS in philosophy.  While he did not have formal legal training, he read law in a law office, eventually becoming a lawyer, judge, and politician in Wyoming.

Throughout his life he had a deep interest in Roman legal materials, and decided to translate ancient Roman legal codes after he tried to order English translations of them from book publishers and was told there were none available.

Justice Blume was, as Professor Kearney explained, not alone in the American legal community when it came to his interest in Roman law.  During the early 19th century, many U.S. legal scholars studied Roman legal materials as a part of a larger movement toward exploring the codification of U.S. law.  Although that movement had receded by the end of the civil war, there was a renewed interest in using a Roman or civil law taxonomy as a means of classifying the law in the early 20th century, especially as it related to the American Law Institute’s project on legal restatements.

As Professor Kearney pointed out, the early 20th century saw a “Jacksonian” anti-elitist movement similar to that which is taking place today.  To that end, Justice Blume took care to not discuss Roman law on the bench when he served as a justice on the Wyoming Supreme Court.  However, as Professor Kearney mentioned, among lawyers of a certain sensibility during that time, the language of Latin and Roman law served as an “old-school tie they waved at each other.”

Professor Kearney concluded by discussing the decision he made to include versions of Justice Blume’s work in manuscript form, which includes marginalia and other notes that make it hard to read, in the digital archive.  The advantage of including this as well is to create a real connection between the work and the researcher.

This conclusion created a nice tie-in to Angela T. Spinazzè’s presentation, in which she provided a more general discussion of establishing and managing digitization and digital archives projects.    Ms. Spinazzè focuses on three categories of questions: who, what, and how.

• First, in response to “who,” she considers who the intended audience is, which focuses the work and allows for coalescing around a shared conclusion. This also helps illuminate biases and assumptions.
• Next, she thinks about the question of “what.” This means considering what the digitization project is intended to accomplish, and what the consequences would be of not digitizing the materials.
• Finally, the “how” question focuses really on the materials themselves: how should what you are digitizing be presented to target audiences, and, perhaps unexpectedly, how will the digitization project advance the purpose of the organization? Can it, for example, foster greater collaboration across more institutional departments?  Is a natural outcome of the work the identification of more shared activities across the organization?

Ms. Spinazzè then provided two examples of digitization projects, the Oriental Institute  at the University of Chicago, and the HEIR (Historic Environment Image Resource) at the University of Oxford.  Both of these projects provided unique and illuminating answers to the questions of who, what, and how that really illustrated the effectiveness of the methodology.

The Oxford project sounded particularly interesting.  It saved from destruction a collection of lantern slides and glass plate negatives that had been abandoned in an archive. As it turned out, in addition to saving the original materials, the digital library also provided a wiki-like forum in which researchers and scholars could tag the images (using a controlled vocabulary) and provide new content of the scenes as they had been re-photographed over time.

Overall, although the program was not exclusively about Roman law, it provided a thoughtful forum for contemplating the values of digital collections, and provided insight into how the audience could consider undertaking similar projects at their home libraries.

#AALL2016 Recap: Measuring Impact for Faculty Scholarship and Beyond: A Case Study from the University of Chicago

 

By Alexis Fetzer

On Sunday afternoon, July 17, BePress sponsored a two hour session (with refreshments) featuring Sheri Lewis and Thomas Drueke of the University of Chicago D’Angelo Law Library, who presented on how they track the impact of faculty scholarship and other online publications using the BePress product, Digital Commons.

Lewis and Drueke began their presentation with a brief overview of their institutional repository program. The law school first licensed Digital Commons, an institutional repository software, in December 2012.  In the summer of 2013, the D’Angelo Law Library, using Digital Commons software, created “the mothership”, a database that stores faculty scholarship.  In January 2014, the University of Chicago Law School and the D’Angelo Law Library, officially launched Chicago Unbound, a site in the Digital Commons platform.

Chicago Unbound includes full text journal articles, working papers, other publications, and the table of contents of some journals. It provides citations for other publications with OpenURL links and links to the Library Catalog.  At the time of this presentation, the platform includes over 23,000 citations, 9,000 PDF’s, all six journals published by the Law School, three working paper series, two law school publications, and four lecture series. The site reached 1,000,000,000 downloads as of April this year.

Lewis and Drueke said there are two ways to think about the impact of Chicago Unbound: externally and internally. Drueke presented on the external impact as reflected in metrics such as number of downloads or links provided in outside sources.  He posed the questions “what do these metrics mean?” and “what is the impact of having this information available?” He defined external impact in three different aspects, (1) discovery and use, (2) quantitative, and (3) qualitative.

By reporting on these metrics, they have discovered repository links to faculty work in online books and journals, syllabus and course materials used by students and teachers, government units and policy organizations, news sources, industry reports, comment sections and internet arguments. Drueke noted that some of these links are humorous. One faculty member’s work was even cited in an online article titled “The 50 Juiciest Parts of the 50 Shades of Grey”.

Lewis discussed the internal impact of the institutional repository. One interesting feature is that it links directly to faculty webpage biographies. The storage database (“the mothership”) is used to populate Chicago Unbound as well as faculty pages on the law school website. This generates custom lists for individual faculty members seamlessly. Another internal impact is that repository creates a centralized location for many integrated law school administrative processes. In addition to the faculty scholarship listings, the repository is a space for posting working papers and material for the various law school journals.

In the future, the repository will also serve as a location for archived historical materials as well as student work and publications from former faculty members. Another new development is the more recent relationship between the law school repository and the University’s new institutional repository. The law school’s Chicago Unbound project began before the greater University acquired their own institutional repository and the two entities are working together to determine what their relationship should look like going forward.

 

 

 

#AALL2016 Recap: The Daniel L. Wade FCIL-SIS Outstanding Service Award

By Lucie Olejnikova

Each year, in addition to the Newest FCIL Member and Spirit of the FCIL Awards, and the FCIL-SIS Reynolds & Flores Publication Award, we also honor an FCIL-SIS member who has made outstanding contributions to the Section in any number of the following areas: outstanding leadership in the Section, at meetings, and committee work; special and notable service to the Section; participation in Section educational programs and public-speaking activities; mentoring activities that encourage others in the Section; activities that encourage others to join the section. This year, we are proud to recognize and grant the Daniel L. Wade FCIL-SIS Outstanding Service Award to our colleague, James Hart!

Jim is the Senior Reference Librarian with the Robert S. Marx Law Library at the University of Cincinnati Law School. Prior to joining Marx Law Library, he held positions at San Diego State University and Southeast Missouri State. Currently, he is responsible for providing reference and research assistance to all library patrons, he offers particular expertise in the areas of foreign and international law research, and he teaches in the Legal Research course.

Among his interests are International Legal Research and Writing and International Human Rights, as evidenced by his publication titled “The European Human Rights System” originally published in the Law Library Journal and subsequently reprinted in the February 2011 issue of GlobaLex and again updated in June 2015. Jim is a long time member of various professional associations both regionally, nationally, and internationally. He has presented at local, regional, and national conferences and has been responsible for organizing, coordinating, and participating in a number of excellent programs at the AALL Annual Meeting, which we all had an opportunity to enjoy, including Piercing the Veil of Sovereignty: The Sources of International Human Rights Law in 2012, Translation Tools for the Law Librarian in 2013, and Designing Subject Guides that Make the Effect You Want in 2015.

He has been an active member of the FCIL-SIS and has served on various committees including the FCIL-SIS Schaffer Grant for Foreign Law Librarian Fundraising Committee, the Internships and International Exchanges Committee, the Nominations Committee, and the Strategic Planning Committee. Most recently he has been chairing the FCIL-SIS Electronic Resources Interest Group. In this position, he has spearheaded the much needed update of our Jumpstart pages (no easy task) and he is responsible for securing two excellent speakers at this year FCIL-SIS Standing Committees Joint Meeting  – Mr. Ismael Raboud from the ICRC who spoke to us about the ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law Database, and Mr. Steve Perkins of Library of Congress who spoke to us about the LOC’s Indigenous Law Portal. Jim is always full of ideas, energy, and yes-attitude – and we are lucky to have him. Congratulations!

#AALL2016 Recap: The FCIL-SIS Reynolds & Flores Publication Award

By Lucie Olejnikova

Each year, in addition to the Newest FCIL Member and Spirit of the FCIL Awards, we also give out the Reynolds and Flores Award (“The Thomas H. Reynolds and Arturo A. Flores FCIL-SIS Publication Award”). This Award is named after the authors of the Foreign Law Guide, a source that we all gratefully consult on daily basis. This award recognizes an FCIL-SIS member(s) who have significantly contributed to the professional development of their AALL colleagues during any given year. The publication may be print, digital, or an electronic initiative which in turn may include journal articles, treatises, symposia papers, digitization projects, websites, databases, and e-books – to name a few. This year, we are honored to recognize our colleague – Professor Emeritus Timothy G. Kearley.

Timothy Kearley was the Director of the Law Library and Centennial Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Wyoming. Before coming to the University of Wyoming, he was the FCIL Librarian and Associate Director of the Law Library at the University of Illinois College of Law and then Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law at Louisiana State University Law Center. Professor Kearley was instrumental in creating the FCIL-SIS and served as its Chair in 1989/90.

Among Prof. Kearly’s interests is undoubtedly the fascinating field of Roman law, which extends to his publications, including the Blume’s Annotated Justinian Code Website, which he edited. Further, his article “Justice Fred H. Blume and the Translation of Justinian’s Codex” will appear in Cambridge’s The Codex of Justinian: A New Annotated Translation, to be published this coming fall.

Over his career, he has contributed many articles to Law Library Journal, including his most recent “From Rome to the Restatement: S.P. Scott, Fred Blume, Clyde Pharr, and Roman Law in Early Twentieth-Century America” in the Winter 2016 issue. “This article describes how the classical past, including Roman law and a classics-based education, influenced elite legal culture in the United States and university-educated Americans into the twentieth century and helped to encourage [early American translators such as] Scott, Blume, and Pharr to labor for many years on their English translations of ancient Roman law.”

For this contribution, which greatly enhances the professional knowledge of law librarians in the area of Roman law and legal history, we congratulate Prof. Kearley on receiving the FCIL-SIS Reynolds & Flores Publication Award!

For those of you who have not had a chance to hear him speak at this year program titled “Roman Law, Roman Order, and Restatements”, keep an eye out for the AALL recording.

#AALL2016 Recap: The FCIL-SIS Newest Member and Spirit of the FCIL-SIS Awards

By Lucie Olejnikova

Each year the FCIL-SIS is proud to recognize its colleagues for their contributions to our profession. First, during our annual business meeting, one of our all-stars – Dan Wade – bestows the Newest FCIL Librarian Award on the ‘newest’ FCIL librarian member among us. This year, we are happy to recognize and welcome Janet Kearny, Cataloging and Reference Librarian and Assistant Professor at Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana. Janet is a graduate of Tulane University Law School and is admitted to the Louisiana Bar. She focuses on legal research and technology, teaching research skills and ensuring access to electronic resources. Her research interests are in foreign and comparative law with a focus in civil law systems, the UK, and the EU. Janet is active in the New Orleans Association of Law Librarians and a Masters student in Library and Information Science.

Next, the current FCIL-SIS Chair recognizes colleagues – whose work furthers the FCIL-SIS mission, serves the entire membership, and inspires others to act – with the Spirit of the FCIL-SIS Award. This year we were happy to recognize three wonderful colleagues in this category: Sherry Leysen, Evelyn Ma, and Alyson Drake.

Sherry Leysen is the Research and Instruction Librarian for Faculty at Chapman University Fowler School of Law in California. Prior to coming to Fowler School of Law, she was a reference librarian at the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington Law School and the Rains Law Library at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. At Chapman, Sherry offers reference services to all patrons and participates in teaching legal research. She has published in Legal Reference Quarterly, Law Library Journal, and in AALL Spectrum. Sherry has been an active member of many of the FCIL interest groups and most recently she served on and chaired the FCIL Schaffer Grant for Foreign Law Librarian Selection Committee. She has made sure our recipients have a steady liaison when they arrive in the United States. Her commitment to the spirit of this grant is evident and will be a great inspiration as she joins the FCIL Schaffer Grant Fundraising Committee. We thank her for her excellent service and continuous commitment to the overall mission of the FCIL-SIS.

Evelyn Ma is the Reference Librarian for Foreign and International Law and Lecturer in Legal Research at the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School. She has spoken domestically and internationally (i.e. 2009 Beijing Conference) and published in Law Library Journal on the Issues and Trends of Collection Development of East Asian Law in the US in 2013. Evelyn has been a long time leader of the FCIL Asian Law Interest Group ensuring continuous education opportunities for the group. She herself also presented on issues of access to Asia related resources, East Asian databases and open access materials, and ASEAN Integration on number of occasions. She embodies the FCIL spirit and we are pleased to thank her for her continuous service and never-ending enthusiasm.

Alyson Drake is the Reference and Student Services Librarian at the Texas Tech University School of Law, where she also serves as the default FCIL librarian. Prior to joining Texas Tech, she worked at the University of South Carolina where she taught a variety of legal research classes. Alyson currently chairs the European Law Interest Group and she is stepping up to become co-chair of the Publicity Committee with Susan. Alyson is an active member of CARLIG (Customary and Religious Law Interest Group) and a frequent contributor to DipLawMatic Dialogues blog. She is an example of FCIL librarian without having the official title who fully embodies the spirit of the FCIL as evidenced by her dedicated service.

A Snapshot of Indonesian Law (and Indonesia) & the FCIL-SIS Throws a Party

By Julienne Grant

Dr. Rheny Pulungan, recipient of the 2016 FCIL-SIS Schaffer Grant, gave a fascinating presentation on July 18 entitled “The Legal Landscape in Indonesia:  Limitations and Possibilities.”  This was actually Dr. Pulungan’s first time in the United States, and she admitted to being a little overwhelmed.  She was headed to NYC after her Chicago visit.

Dr Pulungan began her presentation with a quiz for audience members, “Fun Facts About Indonesia,” which tested us on our basic knowledge of the country, such as the number of islands (around 18,000);  population (about 250 million); and official religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Confucianism). Needless to say, the attendees were a bit stumped and surprised at the answers. The speaker also showed a slide of Indonesia embedded on a map of the United States, and many of us were astonished to see what a large geographic area the country spans.

Indonesia’s legal system is complex, with civil law attributes resulting from the archipelago’s time under Dutch rule.  One region, Aceh, applies Shariah law. Since 1945, Dr. Pulungan explained, Indonesia has been creating its own laws. Starting in the 1970s, efforts began to create a national legal information center that would make Indonesian laws more accessible, and beginning in 2004, laws and court opinions have been regularly posted on Indonesian government websites.

The speaker next turned to Indonesia’s judicial system. At the trial level are 250 district courts, appellate level high courts number 30, and the Indonesian Supreme Court is a court of cassation. There are also specialized courts, including religious courts and military courts, as well as a constitutional court.  The Supreme Court has a website where its decisions are posted, although none are translated into English. Dr. Pulungan described the search functionality of the site as being mediocre and indicated that the Supreme Court does publish a small number of its decisions in print.  In 2012, as part of USAID’s Changes for Justice Project, an electronic case tracking system (SIPP) was established that was designed to promote judicial transparency.  According to the speaker, it is possible to search by case number or party name to locate information.  Dr. Pulungan also noted that court decisions at all levels must be uploaded within three days of rendering.

Decisions of the Constitutional Court (established in 2001) are translated into English and available on the Court’s website.  The Constitutional Court is not an appellate court and its authority is vested in the third amendment to Indonesia’s Constitution.  The Court’s database can be searched by multiple variables, including case number, case name, applicant names, and keywords.  The Constitutional Court’s role is “The Guardian of the Constitution.”

According to Dr. Pulungan, Indonesian legislation is relatively easy to find online, but locating official English translations can be difficult. There are several databases of note that contain Indonesian legislation: the State Secretariat Database (updated daily); Lexadin; some UN agency websites (such as UNODC); and Hukum.  Hukum is the only commercial database available for Indonesian law in both English and Indonesian.

The speaker next turned to secondary sources.  She recommended Cornell University’s “Southeast Asia Program” website and a quarterly publication called Inside Indonesia. She also mentioned the English-language law journal, Indonesia Law Review , which is open access, and the Australian Journal of Asian Law that is hosted on SSRN. The Jakarta Post covers legal news and developments, and Dr. Pulungan also noted the “Indonesia at Melbourne” blog and the website of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society.

The speaker closed her talk by emphasizing that translating Indonesian legal materials into English is inherently difficult.  She provided an example of a phrase in Indonesian translated into English by Google Translate as “hiking education,” while a UNESCO document translated it as “educational streaming.” She advised attendees to search for more than one English translation. Dr. Pulungan has created a LibGuide on Indonesian law and told audience members that she was available via email for assistance.

A question from the audience was raised about religious courts, which she explained are unique and preside over family law matters. As an aside, the speaker mentioned that Indonesian couples who marry must be of the same faith; Dr. Pulungan’s husband is Australian, and he had to convert to Islam for a day in order for the marriage to be legal in Indonesia.  Another attendee asked whether any Indonesian court decisions are precedential. There is no precedent, she said, but Supreme Court decisions include practice notes that can influence lower courts.

After Dr. Pulungan’s excellent talk,[1] audience members headed to the FCIL-SIS reception for foreign visitors.  The reception was well attended, and I enjoyed chatting with FCIL colleagues there. Keith Ann Stiverson, 2015-2016 AALL President, welcomed the guests and announced the numbers of foreign attendees:  27 from Canada, 17 from the UK, 2 from Australia, 1 from Hong Kong, 1 from Ireland, 2 from South Korea, and 1 from Switzerland.  Ms. Stiverson’s remarks were followed by a few words from IALL President Jeroen Vervliet (Peace Palace Library). Mr. Vervliet related his adventures in Hyde Park at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. He also announced that the International Journal of Legal Information has a new publisher (Cambridge) and a new look. Mr. Vervliet presented a copy of the new issue to editor Mark Engsberg (Emory U) who had not yet seen it. Overall, it was a great party, although I admit I could have used a few more coconut shrimp.

 

[1] I will also add that Dr. Pulungan made a fashion statement with her dress constructed with fabric covered with images of books. Loved it.

 

Recap: FCIL-SIS Book Group

By Jennifer Allison

Spearheaded by Dan Wade of the Yale Law School Library, the FCIL-SIS Book Group met again this year at the AALL annual meeting. Of the two finalists, the book chosen by the participants was East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity”, by Philippe Sands (published in 2016 by Knopf, ISBN 978-0385350716).

The participants in the book group included:

• Dan Wade, Yale
• John Wilson, UCLA
• Lyonette Louis-Jacques, University of Chicago
• Loren Turner, University of Minnesota
• Jennifer Allison, Harvard
• Daniel Donahue, University of Houston
• Marilyn Raisch, Georgetown
• Evelyn Ma, Yale

After a bit of a location mix-up, the group settled on meeting at the conference hotel’s American Craft  Kitchen & Bar.  Over delicious food and drinks, the conversation about this interesting and unexpected book flowed.

Most of the group’s participants gave the book a thumbs-up, although there were definitely mixed reviews regarding the book’s somewhat unusual format.  Although it was a non-fiction account of the development of the crime of genocide, Sands wove this information into the stories of four people from an Eastern European city, that, throughout its history, has had a number of names, including Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, and as it is known today, Lviv.

One of the four people whose story was told was Sands’ maternal grandfather, a Jew who left his hometown for Vienna in the early 20th century, and then fled Vienna for Paris in the late 1930s.  The book featured extensive descriptions of the grandfather’s early life, the fate of his family in what was, during the war, the Polish city of Lwów, and his later years in Paris, where the author spent time with him.

Sands also told the stories of two men who had studied at the law faculty of the University of Lwów:

• Raphael Lemkin taught at Duke Law School and worked with the American lawyers who were involved in the Nuremberg trials. In his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, he offered the first definition of the word “genocide.”
• Hersch Lauterpacht was an international lawyer who taught at the London School of Economics and Cambridge University. He worked with the Nuremberg Trials’ team of British lawyers.

The book’s fourth biographical figure was the German lawyer Hans Frank, who served the Nazi regime as both a lawyer and the Governor General of occupied Poland.  He was a defendant in the Nuremberg Trials, where he was convicted of the murder of Polish Jews.  He was sentenced to death and executed.

Although biographical information of these four figures was woven throughout the book, the main focus of its second half was the Nuremberg Trials, from the preparation (in which the allies’ legal teams debated whether to use the newly-introduced crime of “genocide” in their prosecution of the Nazi defendants), through the trial proceedings and the outcome.

Some of the members of the book group were not enamored of the book’s extensive use of biographical narrative, and would have preferred that the book focus merely on the earliest development of genocide of a legal norm that could be used by lawyers to prosecute war criminals.  In fact, a few people said that, if they were to read the book again, they would skip its first half entirely.  However, other members of the group felt that the inclusion of the biographical stories made the work more accessible to non-scholars; specifically, “it made it a serious book about genocide that I could recommend to my mom, or sister, one that they would actually read.”

There were other concerns about the book among the group.  As Dan Wade pointed out, “This book likely would not have passed a law school preemption check.”  Perhaps he is correct.  Ana Filipa Vrdoljak, a law professor at the University of Western Australia Faculty of Law, published an article that covered a remarkably similar topic in 2009: Human Rights and Genocide: The Word of Lauterpacht and Lemkin in Modern International Law (20 Eur. J. Int’l L. 1163 (2009)). The article tracked the life paths of these two figures, from their education at the University of Lwów Faculty of Law, through their lives and careers in the United States and England, to their participation in the Nuremberg Trials, in similar detail to Sands’ book.  Of course, Vrdoljak’s article discussed neither Sands’ grandfather nor Hans Frank in any detail, and the presence of the content of those two individuals added a level of narrative complexity and interest to the book that is not present in the article.  Still, Dan’s was a valid point.

Overall, it was a very successful and enjoyable book group meeting.  Hopefully this is a tradition that has been firmly established and will continue at AALL meetings into the future.

07/17/2016 Summary and a Word about DuSable

By Julienne Grant

I was walking home from the Hyatt after the conference ended and an AALL member stopped me on Michigan Ave. to tell me how much she loved Chicago. That made my day.  I sent colleagues all over the city during the conference—to the Chicago History Museum, Wicker Park, Old Town, the CAF boat tour dock, the West Loop, and to Eataly (they owe me a huge cut). Throughout all of this, I was supposed to be writing up reports of various programs/meetings, and I got a little behind.  The following are short summaries of several events from Sunday, July 17:

Latino Caucus:  My DePaul law school classmate, Matt Katz, gave a compelling and provocative presentation that focused on the precarious and truly abominable state of immigration law in this country, providing specific case examples from his firm (Katz Law).  Mateo also berated the increasing trend of prison privatization in the U.S., mentioning a 2013 article in The Guardian, “America’s Private Prison System is a National Disgrace.” To drive his points home, Matt drew upon a wide range of authors, including French philosopher Michel Foucault.  Matt distributed copies of a piece he recently penned, “Como Indocumentado, Que Debo Saber y Hacer en la Era del Trump y la Negación de DAPA por La Corte Suprema?” (As an undocumented immigrant, what should I know and do in the era of Trump and the Supreme Court’s rejection of DAPA?).

After Mateo’s talk, the Latino Caucus began its business meeting, led by Chair Marisol Florén-Romero (Florida International U). The Caucus discussed a number of proposed projects, including one called “Latino Voices.” The goal of this initiative would be to compile information on selected members of the Hispanic legal community, including law librarians.  These personal profiles would be featured on the Caucus’ web page.

Matt Katz

Asian Legal Information in English: Availability, Accessibility, and Quality Control:   This was a very interesting and useful program; kudos to all the presenters who covered China (Alex Zhang, U of Michigan), Hong Kong/Macao (Anne Mostad-Jensen, U of North Dakota), South Korea (Juice Lee, Northeastern), and Japan (Mike McArthur, U of Michigan). The presenters did an excellent job of explaining the complexities involved in translating the law from these jurisdictions and the inherent pitfalls of English-language translations. Free websites and commercial databases were presented, and in some instances demoed live.  Juice Lee’s PowerPoint slides are posted on AALL’s website.

Foreign Law Selectors Interest Group:  The meeting drew about 30 attendees, and was led by Marci Hoffman (UC Berkeley).  Schaffer Grant recipient Rheny Pulungan of the University of Melbourne’s Law School Library offered a brief overview of her library’s print and electronic resources, which she described in more detail during her presentation on Monday, July 18 (summary forthcoming). Representatives from the Law Library of Congress, Yale, Harvard, NEFLLCG, and LLMC Digital provided updates. The LA Law Library was not represented, as Neel Agrawal has left his position there. Marci also brought the group up to date on recent developments related to the Foreign Law Guide (FLG) and Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP). Regarding the former, there are newly-updated entries for Azerbaijan, China, France, Japan, and Mexico.  Updates for Germany, South Korea, and Switzerland have been completed and will be loaded soon; revisions for Argentina, Chile, Italy, and Spain are in the works. She also indicated that the IFLP will soon have a multilingual subject thesaurus and that the database will be adding 10 new Japanese journals.  Marci will post the full minutes of the meeting on the Foreign Law Selectors Interest Group web page.

 

Rheny Pulangan

 

Before closing, I want to say just a bit about the convention center’s DuSable room, which apparently piqued the interest of a few FCIL-SIS members. I’m quite sure the room is named for Jean Baptiste Point DuSable who is known as the founder of Chicago. DuSable was purportedly a Haitian of African and French descent who established the first permanent settlement here in the 1780s. Next time you’re in town, check out the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

 

 

 

Recap: Asian Legal Information in English: Availability, Accessibility, and Quality Control

By Amy Flick

Because I frequently need to help students find primary authority of other countries, yet have no hope of finding materials published in Chinese, Korean, or Japanese, I was pleased to see a program on Asian Legal Information in English in the AALL Annual Meeting program. I was even more pleased to find the program interesting, useful, and supplemented with handouts.

Alex Zhang was the coordinator, moderator, and introductory speaker. She started by stressing the importance of good, reliable translations, but noted that even “official” translations by government entities are still for informational purposes only. In presenting the portion of the program on finding primary law of China, she included:

• The official site NPC (National People’s Congress) Database of Laws and Regulations. The search box is unreliable, so Alex recommended browsing by category, requiring some knowledge of the structure of Chinese law to find the appropriate category. She cautioned that the laws retrieved may not include the dates of coverage, making it unclear for the user if they have the most current version.
• State Council Laws & Regulations
• Commercial sources including Lawinfochina, Westlaw China, and Lexis China, all comparable, and expensive, but Alex is most familiar with Lawinfochina. She recommends it for comprehensive coverage and inclusion of the most recent laws, and for a citator link to amendments to laws.
• Although case law is not considered primary authority in China, a Stanford Law School project is translating Chinese Guiding Cases.

Alex wrapped up by noting that good translation is hard: “the question in legal translation isn’t which one is right, but which one is less wrong.” She suggests comparing and contrasting multiple translations and asking experts for help.

 

Anne Mostad-Jensen presented on law of Hong Kong and Macau. For these jurisdictions, she stressed that it is particularly important to understand their histories. Because of Hong Kong’s history as a British colony, it has a hybrid system of common and civil law, and English is one of its official languages for legal publication. Sources for Hong Kong legal information in English include:

• The Hong Kong Basic Law, which is equivalent to a constitution.
• The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Gazette
• The Hong Kong Judiciary website
• The Department of Justice Bilingual Laws Information System, which has legislation and ordinances, a subject index to ordinances, and an English-Chinese glossary of legal terms.

Macao as a former Portuguese colony has a civil law system. English translation is available for only select legislation and some indexes, not for caselaw, and the translations are not official. Sources include:

• The Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region
• The Macao Government Printing Bureau has some legislation and codes translated into English.
• The WTO’s requirements that legislation related to trade and intellectual property be made available in its official languages, including English, make the WTO website a good source for finding English translations for laws of most countries.

 

Jootaek “Juice” Lee demonstrated resources on law of the Republic of Korea in English. Although South Korea has a civil law system, it has been influenced by U.S. common law. English translations are not official, but English is widely used, and there are English language versions of most government websites. However, terminology can be an issue because of differences in civil and common law. Most primary sources are available in English, and government publishers try to provide accurate translations. Juice warned that Korean law changes rapidly, and English translations may not keep up. There are also issues with understanding the differences between public, private, and social law. He recommended sources including:

• The Korea Legislation Research Institute. There are search options including government body and an alphabetical list, and a legal terms glossary for finding official Korean terms for searching.
• The Ministry of Government Legislation, which Juice recommends searching by words in the title.
• The National Law Information Center. Because of the problem of lag time for translations, Juice suggested searching by title words (in English) in the Korean language version to find the most recent version of legislation.
• The Supreme Court of Korea and the Constitutional Court have some decisions translated into English.
• There are good research guides for finding South Korean law in English, including the Foreign Law Guide database, the Library of Congress’ Guide to Law Online, and Juice’s own guide on GlobaLex.

 

Mike McArthur had the final presentation in the program on finding Japanese law in English. Japanese efforts to be more international led to a 2004 Japanese law requiring translation of Japanese laws. Laws are first made available in tentative translation before an “official” version is available. Of course, translations are still unofficial. Mike warned that the Japanese calendar has a different date system, so he provided a “cheat sheet” for Japanese dates.  Sources for Japanese law in English include:

• The Ministry of Justice’s Japanese Law Translation The database of laws and regulations is searchable with multiple options (title, number, category), and it has a dictionary for finding Japanese legal terms.
• The Supreme Court of Japan. Although Japan has a civil law system, Supreme Court decisions are relevant, and some are translated into English.
• An additional resource for Japanese legal research is ministry reports and white papers, which are translated into English, and which include detailed statistics.

Mike reminded the audience, as did the other speakers, that a legal researcher working with foreign languages and translations can get in over their head quickly, and that they should reach out to a specialist for help.

 

All of the presentations in the program were outstanding, and I appreciate the hard work by the speakers in putting them together!

Recap: FCIL-SIS Teaching Foreign & International Legal Research Interest Group Meeting

By Loren Turner

This year, Catherine Deane led and coordinated the Teaching Foreign & International Legal Research Interest Group meeting at the AALL Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois.  She invited three speakers to present on their teaching experiences:

• Marylin Raisch shared a screencast, a MindMap, and a visual presentation, as examples of how she and her colleague, Charles Bjork, answer research questions in innovative ways.
• Alexis Fetzer explained how she, as a librarian without the FCIL title, successfully proposed and taught an FCIL research course at the University of Richmond School of Law. You can read more about Alexis’s experience in the May 2016 issue of the FCIL newsletter.
• Nina E. Scholtz spoke about her experience in creating an experiential learning course for LLM students. She shared her syllabus for that course and recommended implementing interactive discussion during class to overcome cultural differences.