New titles available on Westlaw

You can now get access to titles in the Common Law Series online via Westlaw.  The titles are:

1. Arlidge, Eady & Smith on Contempt
2. Benjamin’s Sale of Goods
3. Bowstead and Reynolds on Agency
4. Charlesworth & Percy on Negligence
5. Chitty on Contracts
6. Clerk & Lindsell on Torts
7. Dicey, Morris & Collins on the Conflict of Laws
8. Gatley on Libel & Slander
9. Goff & Jones, The Law of Restitution
10. Jackson & Powell on Professional Liability
11. McGregor on Damages
12. Phipson on Evidence

To access them you need to log on to Westlaw in the usual way and then either choose the link to the Common Law Library on the right hand side of the home page or if you choose the commentary database you can access it from the link at the bottom of the page under ‘ Related Category’.  The sources can be browsed or searched but if you need any training on how to use them or if you are having any problems then contact me at katharine.jackson@bodley.ox.ac.uk.

 

Happy holidays from the Bodleian Law Library

“Time flies when you are having fun” as the saying goes, and so the Bodleian Law Library wishes you all a very happy holiday and we hope you enjoy the vacation.

For those staying in Oxford our vacation opening times from Monday 7th December are 9am-7pm Monday to Friday, 10am – 4pm Saturday (Sundays closed).  The Library is closed from the 24th December – 3rd January (inclusive).

For those away from Oxford don’t forget you can access all the databases from anywhere in the world and so if you want to access them during the vacation it’s fairly simple. Go to the OxLIP+ homepage and choose ”Log in” (on the right) and enter your Oxford single sign on details (same as webmail).   Once you’ve logged in successfully you’ll be able to access all the databases and OXAM as if you were in Oxford!

If you have any questions or problems with the databases  please contact the library.You can contact us at law.library@bodley.ox.ac.uk, or on  01865 271462

 

Lisbon Treaty update

The Lisbon Treaty entered into force a couple of days ago (on Tuesday 1 December 2009), and a wide variety of information is now available online, ranging from the Treaty itself, through official press releases of the EU institutions, to commentary, positive or sceptical,  from official and unofficial sources.

The main documents are the Lisbon Treaty (published in Official Journal C 306  17.12.2007), and the consolidated versions of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (formally the EU and EC Treaties), (Official Journal C 115  9.5.2008).  Both documents include “Tables of equivalences”, that set out the re-numbering of the Treaty articles, and both documents are online, linked from pages on the Council website  EUR-Lex and Europa    In addition to the press releases, news pages and “fact sheets” on the these sites, Curia (the site of the Court of Justice of the Europeam Union) carries an excellent press release, which sets out the changes to the Court, and from the Curia home page you can choose in turn the links for the Court of Justice / Presentation and the General court / Presentation to find high quality up-to-date information.

If you weary of the enthusiasm for the Lisbon Treaty on some of the EU Institutions’ web pages and the Swedish Presidency site’s postings for 1 December, the following sources may feel like a breath of fresh air:

European Information Association  Coulisses de Bruxelles,  UE   statewatch  EUobserver  Ideas on Europe

Posted by the European Documentation Centre

 

European Country of Origin Information Network

This freely accessible database, funded by such organisations as the UNHCR, the ERF,  and the Austrian Government, is designed to help anyone assisting asylum claimants.

ECOI Net's home page

(You will see that there is a login option (top right). Registration is free and allows you extra functions eg saving documents you are going to use frequently in your own folder, receive alerts when new documents are added which relate to a country you are interested in.)

Among the categories of documents ECOI Net collects are National Laws. For example, if you needed to find out about Afghanistan’s  Shiite Personal Status Law of March 2009 this site can provide you with an English translation. The Advanced Search Screen is  clean & straightforward …

Advanced Search Screen via Tab

and quite flexible if you read the further Search Tips. In brief, AND, OR and NOT can be used to combine search terms, “…” designates phrase, ~n allows proximity searching, ? is the wildcard symbol for a single letter (anywhere except the very first letter of a word) and * the wildcard for multiple letters (also anywhere except at the beginning of words), ~ for fuzzy-searching (very useful with spelling insecurity!) as is soundex-search facility.  Finally, ( ) can be used to group search operators to construct more detailed searches.  Note the search engine has Thesaurus which automatically includes related terms for you in your search – unless you deselect the “Consider realted terms in search query”.  If you  have a mass of hits, the left hand column on the results’ screen will suggest a tick box way to refine them.
A good feature of the individual results is that headline shows you the source of the document, with an information i box giving a description of the source (in case you are not aware of their status or likely authority), and a hyperlink to that source’s own website. The full text of  the document behind each is shyly made available as a pdf, below a paragraph showing how your search terms are used in the context of that source.

Example of the result of a search

 

New human rights website

One the ways the University of Texas Libraries have embraced the challenge ”to serve as a catalyst for positive change in Texas and beyond,” is the Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI).  

HRDI home page

Its aim is “to preserve and make accessible the historical record of genocide and human rights violations.” (The Bridgeway Foundation stepped in with some financial support.) And indeed the world beyond Texas U can benefit from the library of archived webpages made available from

Screen for searching archived webpages

this site.

 

Cabinet Papers 1915-1978 online

Visiting The National Archives website is becoming more and more worthwhile: dispense with any mid 20th century notion that  might linger in your subconscious that it is little more than a catalogue! Michael Hopkins of Liverpool University has reviewed  what this new resource of Cabinet Papers offers  (or not) (click here). I will just point out that the Papers have been grouped by theme, one of which is Law, Liberty and society. 

Cabinet Papers online: Law Liberty & Society

Within this theme you can drill down through various links to discover Cabinet musings on - as an example- the changes in the law relating to murder and the abolition of the death penalty.

 

EIA student essay competition – Win £200

The European Information Association is currently running an essay competition on the topic  Communicating Europe: Is the EU getting through to you?

Communicating with the public has been a primary concern for the Barroso Commission since it took office in 2004.  Aiming to put people at the heart of EU policies, the Commission’s approach is based on three principles:

- listening to the public – taking their views and concerns into account
- explaining how EU policies affect their everyday lives
- connecting with people locally – addressing them in their national or local settings, through their favorite media

The European Information Association (EIA) and Europe Direct Leeds would like to hear your views on how effective this strategy has been.

For details, visit http://www.eia.org.uk/

(Posted by the European Documentation Centre in the Bodleian Law Library)

 

The future of the US Constitution

In early October this year, Yale Law School hosted a conference called the Constitution in 2020. There is now a Video Digest and other conference related goodies available free online

Conference Home Page

 OUP has just published the book of the Conference - but you do not even have to wait for it to reach the shelves in the Library as no fewer than 10 sample chapters are already available free online.

 

Free access to certain US legal materials

Google Scholar

Google Scholar have introduced free access to certain US legal materials and these can be searched using the advanced search option.   We will be evaluating this shortly and will write a fuller blog but in the meantime more information can be found in an article from Internet for Lawyers.

 

New tool for UN document research

The Dag Hammarskjöld Library has launched a research tool called  UN Member States : On the Record in response to
frequent requests for help in finding out the activities of  Member States within the UN. This tool is designed to make

UN Research Tool

the records more accessible by linking through to existing resources dispersed over a number of weppages on the UN’s website. This promises to be the tool to use if you need answers to any of the following questions: what are the key documents related to a state’s membership in the UN? What statements has the state  made before the principal UN organs? Has it sponsored any draft resolutions? Where can I find the periodic reports it has submitted under the Human Rights conventions?  And many more.  Just find the name of the Member state you are interested in and click!

Results screen for Yemen

 Many thanks to our colleagues in the Outreach Division of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library for continuing to think up and design new paths to ease our way into the huge number of resources available.