The recent one year anniversary of the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, the man convicted in 1999 of the Lockerbie bombings, prompted me to to delve a little further behind the headlines. Al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds after doctors diagnosed him with terminal prostate cancer. I thought …
Australia and New Zealand are like a couple of squabbling siblings most of the time. We make jokes at each others’ expense, including our different accents (they really are different!), and we love to beat each other at sports. You would have seen plenty of references to this rivalry if you ever watched the Flight …
The title of this post comes from the New Zealand Alcohol Advisory Council’s (ALAC) latest ad campaign targeting the drinking culture. One of ALAC’s previous campaigns had the punch line “it’s not the drinking – it’s how we’re drinking.” Anyway, you get the idea – if you need to have ad campaigns telling the country …
Last week we posted a collection of pre-1923 piracy trials. The immediate response was fun to follow on Twitter. Georgetown Law Library tweeted: Avast me hearties! Read all about pre-1923 pirate trials from @LawLibCongress http://go.usa.gov/cQk A recent post on Slaw, a Canadian law blog, by Simon Fodden (the founder of the blog) discussed the collection. …
In the course of monitoring significant legal developments in the jurisdictions that I cover, I often come across amusing or quirky stories that make me smile, but also make me think (possibly because I’m a total geek…). I mean, when you analyze or discuss these stories you realize that there might be deeper underlying societal …
The Australian federal election is being held on August 21. The current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced the election on July 17, a couple of weeks after she replaced Kevin Rudd as leader of the Labor Party. The (very brief) election campaign is in full swing, with various issues coming to the forefront of the …
The Law Library of Congress has decided to provide a little outlet for my genius personality to shine through in the form of a blog. I have sat and pondered what to write about for the past few days now, after conveniently unfortunately being out of town on vacation during the launch week. Whilst there …
Following on from my previous post, another part of what we do is write articles for the Law Library’s Global Legal Monitor: The Global Legal Monitor is an online publication from the Law Library of Congress covering legal news and developments worldwide. It is updated frequently and draws on information from the Global Legal Information Network, official …
Back before the 18th Edition of The Bluebook was published, we were asked to help revamp table T.2 Foreign Jurisdictions. We have a great group of almost two dozen foreign law specialists (that Kelly previously mentioned) who come from around the world to work at the Law Library of Congress. In other words, we have the …
While the Law Library does employ a number of legal reference librarians as well as collections staff and other people that work with our huge book stacks (approximately two American football fields under our building!), there are quite a few of us that don’t have a background in library or information sciences (although I did work at …