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Archive for March 2013 (20 posts)

Scenes Outside the U.S. Supreme Court – Pic(s) of the Week

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The following is a guest post by Debora Keysor, a Senior Legal Reference Specialist in the Law Library of Congress.  Debbie has previously blogged about PACER and Supreme Court Records and Briefs.

The nation’s capital was once again the place to be, but not for the Cherry Blossoms this week.  Thousands of people descended on Capitol Hill to brave a spring snowstorm and cold temperatures to witness history being made.

A cold, messy business: Folks camped out early Monday in front of the Court during a rare Spring snow storm in hopes of snagging a ticket to hear arguments this week.

The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments for two high-profile gay marriage cases this week.  Both cases could result in landmark decisions, which may be out as soon as this summer.  On Tuesday, March 26, 2013, the Court heard arguments in the California Proposition 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, Docket # 12-144.  You can either listen to or read the arguments for free online. The audio recording and transcript of the oral arguments are available.

Snow has melted, but campers still braving the cold for second day of arguments at Supreme Court

On Wednesday, the Court heard arguments in the federal Defense of Marriage Act, United States v. Windsor, Docket # 12-307. The audio recording and transcript of the oral arguments are now available. Records and briefs in both cases, “Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 cases,” are also available.

Press secure front row sidewalk seats

All in all, it was about the busiest it has been in front of the Supreme Court since the show outside last June.

Orin S. Kerr, Law Library Scholar-in-Residence, Testifies Before Congress and Other Guggenheim Program News

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The following is a guest post by Cynthia Jordan, Senior Writer-Editor at the Law Library of Congress. Orin S. Kerr, Law Library Scholar-in-Residence for the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation Program on Demography, Technology, and Criminal Justice at the Library of Congress, has had a couple of busy weeks.  On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, he […]

Women’s History Month

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March is Women’s History Month.  This year, March has also seen the Centennial of the 1913 Suffrage March, and International Women’s Day.  Women’s History Month was established in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 to establish Women’s History Week.  Both this law and the subsequent Presidential Proclamation 4903 speak to the important role women played […]

A Visit to the National Library of Azerbaijan in Baku – Pic of the Week

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This is a guest post by Pamela Barnes Craig, Instruction/Reference Librarian and a frequent contributor to In Custodia Legis.  She is the co-author of the blog post Being Well-Informed: Congress.gov Training and her recent posts include Happy Belated Birthday, Title IX, and Civil War Military Trials. I was fortunate to visit the National Library of Azerbaijan in Baku […]

W3C Government Linked Data Working Group Issues Last Call for Vocabularies

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Last April, I mentioned the work of the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group (GLDWG) to provide recommendations for governments on which RDF vocabulary terms to use for common concept areas. The GLDWG has announced Last Call working drafts of three vocabularies: • Organization Ontology (ORG):  describes a core ontology for organizational structures, aimed at […]

What is your Favorite Case? Part 2

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Last December, I set out to discover my law library colleagues’ favorite cases. Some responded with humorous cases and some with landmark cases that forever changed the face of law. I was unable to talk to everyone in December, so this month I resumed my efforts to discover my colleagues’ favorite cases. Shameema Rahman, Senior […]

Six Months of Congress.gov

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It has been six months since we introduced Congress.gov. During that time we’ve been busy working to develop the beta into a full system. The first update after the September launch was in October when we made searching variants of citations easier. In November we continued to revise Congress.gov. With the start of the 113th Congress […]