http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/571907

Have you ever flashed your headlights to warn other drivers about a speed trap?  Is it legal to flash your headlights?  If it is illegal does this law violate your constitutional right to freedom of speech? One man in Florida believes that the ticket he received for flashing his headlights is a violation of his right to free speech.  Read all about the suit he has filed here.

If you are interested in viewing your first amendment rights take the following steps.

1)      Log onto LexisNexis

2)      Make sure the Legal tab is selected

3)      Select view more next to Federal Legal – U.S.

4)      Select USCS – United States Code Service: Code, Const, Rules, Conventions & Public Laws

5)      You can now expand the sections in the Table of Contents, start with:

a.       Constitution of the United States of America

b.      Amendments

c.       Amendment 1

d.      Religious and political freedom (part 1 of 4)

e.      Start reading

You can also read the first amendment by looking at a book or locating it on Westlaw.

 

WASHINGTON, DC, September 8, 2011 – The War Crimes Research Office and the Women and International Law Programat American University Washington College of Law announce the launch of the Gender Jurisprudence Collections (GJC).

The GJC is an online research tool that allows judges, lawyers, and researchers to search the jurisprudence of eleven international/ized criminal courts and tribunals for documents containing information regarding the prosecution of crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence.

Reviewers have analyzed and catalogued more than 17,000 documents from the War Crimes Research Office’s Jurisprudence Collections, noting, for example, when evidence of sexual or gender-based violence appears in the record, when sexual or gender-based violence charges are brought, dropped, or dismissed, or when a defendant is tried for a crime of sexual or gender-based violence. The GJC features keyword and targeted search fields, which eliminate the need to sift through irrelevant documents when conducting research on the rapidly developing jurisprudence in these bodies.

American University Washington College of Law, with support from the Open Society Institute’s International Women’s Program,created this database in response to requests by experts in the fields of gender and international criminal law, who noted that researching the treatment of sexual and gender-based violence by the international tribunals which have emerged since the 1990s was unduly difficult because of the absence of a central database of materials related to the investigation and prosecution of such cases. Judge Patricia Whalen of the War Crimes Chamber of the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has called the creation of the GJC “a great accomplishment,” while former Legal Advisor on Gender Issues at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Patricia Viseur Sellers has noted that the GJC promises to be “a fabulous tool” that she “can’t wait to use and see used by others.”

In the future, the GJC will feature digests of key documents, which will highlight the facts, allegations, and other factors affecting the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence. The project website will in the future also feature space for expert commentaries and discussion.

Faculty and students at PSL can get FREE (well, no additional charge) access to materials from the Practical Law Company. Most of these materials are business law oriented and from the perspective of the business attorney, although some have applications in other areas of law and other contexts. The kinds of materials available include:

• Practice notes (including "Overviews" and "Toolkits")
• Standard documents and clauses
• Checklists
• Articles
• Updates

Practice notes, standard documents and clauses, and checklists are continuously updated. Some examples:

• Tribal Finance: Overview (Practice Note)
• Confidentiality Agreement: General (Mutual) (Standard Document)
• Fiduciary Duties of the Board of Directors (Practice Note)
• Bankruptcy: Overview of the Chapter 11 Process (Practice Note: Overview)
• Sexual Harassment Toolkit (Practice Note: Overview)
• US Copyright Duration Flowchart (Checklist)
• Drafting arbitration agreements: checklist (Checklist)
• Removal: How to Remove a Case to Federal Court (Practice Note)
• Office Leasing: Tenant Estoppel Certificate (Standard Document)
• Debt v. Equity Tax Classification Checklist (Checklist)

To set up your own account, click on "PLC LAW SCHOOL", click on "FREE PLC Access for Students, Faculty and Staff", fill in the blanks (use your phoenixlaw dot edu email address), agree to their terms of use, and click on "Register". They will send you your password (your email address will be your Username).

For all you Star Wars fans... and those interested in copyright law and/or British law...

The prop designer who created the Storm Trooper helmets has won the battle against Lucasfilm in a copyright case in the UK. He can continue to sell the helmets in the UK, just not the US.

Read all about it here from the BBC.

 

Hat tip to Slashdot and TechCrunch for alerting me to this story.

Saw this post by the ABA Journal: 30 Lawyers Pick 30 Books Every Lawyer Should Read

Surprisingly some of these books are not necessarily about lawyers, legal topics, or politics. Some are, but not all. As the post explains, these books are: "Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, they help us define who and what we are—or what we are a part of, or what we have and can yet endure."

What is a book you'd recommend now that summer is coming to an end?