Category Archives: Legal Research

Ninth Circuit Questions for Certification – There’s A Chart for That

Writ columnists Vik Amar and Alan Brownstein recently wrote an interesting article on the latest ruling in the litigation regarding Proposition 8, California’s anti-gay-marriage initiative. Using the process known as certification, the Ninth Circuit, in trying to figure out if the the proponents of Prop. 8 had standing to defend the case in federal court, asked the California Supreme Court

Free Federal Rules E-Books from CALI and LII

Our friends at CALI [Computer Assisted Legal Instruction] and Cornell LII have issued a series of helpful e-books for lawyers, law students, and anyone else who wants quick and free access to the Federal Rules. The Federal Rules of Evidence, Civil Procedure, and Criminal Procedure are available for free download on CALI’s site. The book’s are based on Cornell LII’s

Public Domain Citation News: Colorado (re)-Joins the Band

A hat tip to our friend Ed Walters over at FastCase who alerted us to the news that Colorado has proposed adopting a public domain citation format for its Supreme Court and Court of Appeals published opinions. (Yay!)  By our count, this means there will now be seventeen states using some form of universal / vendor neutral citation for their

Justia’s Top 10 Lists for October 2011

Here is a rundown of October’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Onward blog and Facebook posts readers viewed the most. Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for October 2011 Dennis Chen, 1,360 points, 28 answers Tanner Woods Pittman, 500 points, 10 answers Rodney John Alberto, 910 points, 21 answers Andrew Bresalier,

Judicial Conference Approves PACER Fee Increase

Buried in an announcement from the Judicial Conference today on standards and procedures for sealing civil cases comes news of an approved fee increase for PACER access: The Conference . . . authorized an increase in the Judiciary’s electronic public access fee in response to increasing costs for maintaining and enhancing the electronic public access system. The increase in the

Universal Citation for State Codes

As readers of this blog, you probably already know that we at Justia are big fans of universal citation. With that said, I wanted to give you all a heads up that Courtney, in continuing to fight that good fight, has written a great piece on the topic which is now up  on Cornell’s VoxPopuLII blog. In it, she generally

Down the Rabbit Hole: Establishing Uniform Authentication and Preservation Standards for U.S. Legal Materials

A hat tip to Rob Richards at the Legal Informatics Blog for alerting us that the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Laws (NCCUSL) will meet on July 7th to consider adopting The Uniform Electronic Materials Act (the Act).  As Rob notes in his post, the Act aims to “establish uniform legal standards for the authentication and preservation of U.S.