The Law Library is currently accepting applications for graduate research assistants (commonly known as GRAs) for the summer and fall semesters. The Law Library has two types of GRAs – Reference GRAs and Research GRAs. Position descriptions are linked below:

Reference GRA Positions

Research GRA Positions

Eligibility

Law Library GRA positions are open to all GSU law students who have completed their first two semesters of classes. Part-time students are eligible. Students applying for Summer positions must be enrolled in at least 4 hours of Summer classes. Students may apply for both types of GRA position, but cannot be hired for both positions at the same time.

Submission
Applications are due at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 8, 2016.

Reference GRA applicants: Email one document which includes a 1) cover letter, 2) current resume, and 3) completed availability form to Patrick Parsons (pparsons@gsu.edu). Include your last name in the file name.

Research GRA applicants: Email one document which includes a 1) cover letter and 2) current resume to Patrick Parsons (pparsons@gsu.edu). Include your last name in the file name.

by Veselin Simonov

As summer veers ever closer, students – especially 1Ls – face the decision of whether to take classes during the summer. It’s a complicated issue and it’s ultimately up to how each individual student’s schedule shakes out. That said, here are some basic tips that might help you make up your mind.

• To be a full time student in the summer and qualify for financial aid, you need at least six credit hours. That’s two three-credit courses.
• If you’re doing a full time summer internship, it may prove tricky to reconcile that with your class schedule.
• Luckily, the College of Law offers a variety of day and evening courses. There’s also a selection of online courses. This should offer you some flexibility when you’re figuring out your schedule.
• If you’re participating in the externship program, those credits count towards the minimum you need to qualify for financial aid. That means that you can take an externship and only one class and still meet the six hour minimum.
• You still have required courses as a 2L. Two of those are Constitutional Law I and Professional Responsibility. Both are offered over the summer. If you knock one of them out in the summer, that can leave you with more options to take electives in the fall and spring of your second year.
• The College of Law has added some interesting new electives this summer. For example, there’s the mediation clinic and the brand new animal law course.
• Be prepared for a somewhat more intense class experience. Because of the short time frame, courses are more condensed which means longer classes and potentially a denser workload.

If you’re still not sure whether you should take summer classes, try contacting your adviser or the faculty members teaching the courses you’ve got your eye on. They should be able to help you craft a schedule that makes sense.

As almost everyone has heard, President Obama nominated US Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  Judge Garland is the first Supreme Court nominee since President Obama nominated Elena Kagan on May 10, 2010, who was subsequently confirmed by a 63-37 vote in the US Senate.  If confirmed, Judge Garland would fill the recent void left by the unexpected death of former Supreme Court Justice and legal superstar Antonin Scalia.

But, who exactly is Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland?  Would he replicate Justice Scalia’s conservative, textualist leanings or strafe more towards the oft progressive Justice Ginsburg.  Luckily for us, an article written by Georgia State’s very own Caren Morrison gives us a fantastic breakdown of Judge Garland’s record concerning a few contentious issues.  Professor Morrison describes Garland as a “Moderate” with careful and meticulously written opinions.  Some of his judicial highlights are:

• In three different instances Garland  agreed with lower courts that Guantanamo detainees’ detention was legal because they were “more likely than not” part of the Taliban or al Qaeda. However, in Parhat v. Gates he refused to designate Parhat an “enemy combatant” due to a complete lack of evidence.

• Garland ruled against the CIA in granting an ACLU freedom of information act request (FOIA) regarding drones and targeted killings.

• He joined an opinion allowing the listing of polar bears as a threatened species under the ESA.

• He also voted to uphold EPA regulating power plant emissions. This decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia, Garland’s potential predecessor, wrote the opinion.

Read the entire, wonderfully written article here.

Image courtesy of Jacob Moyer via Flickr Creative Commons

By: Murtaza Khwaja

Staying in town over Spring Break? Need a way to catch up on your pro bono hours?

Want to help out in your local community?

Well, here are just a few of the many volunteer opportunities available via Hands on Atlanta during this year’s spring break. Check the Hands on Atlanta Volunteer Calendar for the full schedule: (http://www.handsonatlanta.org/HOC__Volunteer_Opportunity_Calendar_Page)

Sunday 13^th March:

• 1:00pm: Urban Farming at Truly Living Well East Point

Monday 14^th March: – Friday 18^th March

• 9:00am : Trees Atlanta Weekday Plant Guardians (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday)
• 9:00am: Books for Africa (everyday)
• 10:00am: West End Community Urban Garden (may be cancelled)
• 1:00pm: Trees Atlanta Weekday Plant Guardians
• 1:00pm: Books for Africa
• 3:00pm: Girls Inc. of Greater Atlanta Program Volunteer
• 4:00pm: Elementary Homework Help

Saturday 19^th March:

• 7:00am: Green Market – Piedmont Park Conservancy
• 8:00am: Discovery Program at Thomasville Heights Elementary School
• 8:00am: Discovery Program at Perkerson Elementary School
• 8:30 am: Teen Service Saturdays: Trees Atlanta
• 8:30am: Food Pantry at Clarkston United Methodist Church
• 9:00am: Books For Africa

The Muslim Law Students Association is also planning to take a visit down to Clarkston to meet with the refugee population Saturday March 13^th, so if you are interested in immigration law or in working with refugees be sure to reach out to Haroun Mcclellan (MLSA President) @ amcclellan1@student.gsu.edu to reserve a slot.

And don’t forget to stay on the lookout for any PILA events including their Criminal Law panel (March 15^th) and their annual Law week talk.

Also, if you’re interested in further volunteer opportunities throughout the year make sure to check out these two organizations and the different projects they have going on.

Glitter of Hope Foundation (The Glitter of Hope Foundation is a not-for-profit organization devoted to addressing the basic needs of orphan* children rescued from refugee camps in Africa and Asia and brought into the US as refugees. ) http://www.glitterofhope.org/

Helping Organizations and People Everywhere (H.O.P.E. teams up with non-profit organizations and charities worldwide to support many initiatives including: financial empowerment, ambassadorship and networking, strengthening local communities, physical & mental health, youth leadership, and non-profit consulting.) http://hopefsm.weebly.com/

The Bluebook. The mere mention can incite strong emotions in the law community. Some of love (perhaps Stokholm syndrome from long law review hours?) and some of hate.

Why is a system designed in an age of manual typesetting still dictating the law community’s citation formatting?

This question has been asked for decades and prompted the creation of alternatives. Richard Posner even wrote a law review article entitled Goodbye to the Bluebook in 1986. Throughout years of complaints and criticisms the Bluebook has remained the gold standard.

Baby Blue is a project started by NYU to create [yet] another Bluebook alternative. However, Baby Blue is not really an alternative.  Instead it is more of a “re-expression” of the rules–the stated goal being to breakup “the cartel” controlling the publishing and updating of the Bluebook.  Idealistically, legal citation rules should be simple and freely available to all.

The Harvard Law Review initially took exception to Baby Blue and sparked many discussions about the the Bluebook’s copyrightability. The historical origin of the Bluebook was even researched and called into question.

Does Baby Blue infringe on the Bluebook’s intellectual property?  Who can assert a copyright claim?  These interesting questions may never be resolved; as of the creation of this post Baby Blue is freely available online.

by Veselin Simonov

Image by flickr user Erik Thauvin

It’s primary election season and Georgia voters will soon get to pick their preferred presidential nominees! For both parties, Georgia votes on Tuesday, March 1 along with Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. The Republican-only contests on March 1 are the Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming caucuses. The Democrats hold the American Samoa caucus on March 1 as well. This group of primaries is called Super Tuesday, and it’s the day on which candidates have a chance to win more delegates than on any other single day of the primary calendar.

As the name implies, Super Tuesday happens on a Tuesday in either February or March of a presidential election year. It started out in 1988 as a way for some states to pool their electoral power in the primaries in order to secure a more prominent national role. It’s also an effort to offset the retail politics targeted towards early states that resulted in frontloaded primary contests. Super Tuesday is one of the first significant electoral tests of a campaign’s national appeal and its ability to conduct broad-reaching, wholesale politics.

Super Tuesday does not come without issues, however. First, it’s expensive to campaign all over the country on a packed schedule. This can force candidates with smaller war chests to drop out. Second, the time crunch results in less expansive, shallower campaign efforts in the immediate lead-up to Super Tuesday. Finally, the mass primary also has the potential to overshadow primaries that come after it by, in effect, picking the nominees early.

This year, Super Tuesday consists mostly of southern state primaries (leading some to dub it the “SEC primary”) in a bid to increase the region’s political influence. So, if you’re looking to have your voice heard, go out and vote for your preferred nominee. As a reminder, Georgia has open primaries. You pick which primary you want to vote in at your polling place by taking an oath to affiliate with the party you are voting for. If you don’t know where your polling place is, you can always check at the GA Secretary of State’s My Voter Page.

Sources:

• Josh Clark. “Why is Super Tuesday so super?” http://people.howstuffworks.com/super-tuesday.htm
• Paul-Henry Gurian and Audrey A. Haynes. “Presidential Nominations and Campaigns: Toward 2004” http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&fid=6635288&jid=PSC&volumeId=36&issueId=02&aid=147359&bodyId=&membershipNumber=&societyETOCSession=&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1049096503002038
• Bloomberg Politics. “What to Know About Super Tuesday, the Biggest Test of 2016 Yet” http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-23/what-to-know-about-super-tuesday-the-biggest-test-of-2016-yet
• PBS. “The first super Tuesday.” March 9, 1988. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics-jan-june88-super_tuesday/

Students often ask about ways they can improve their research.  They say they want to be more efficient.  They say they want to be more effective.  They want to use technology proficiently, to support their work.  They know that employers are interested in hiring candidates who will do legal research as needed, keeping costs to a minimum.

The Applied Legal Experience, Research, & Technology (ALERT) Program is a non-credit program developed by the Law Library that provides students with additional opportunities outside of the College of Law curriculum to develop their legal research and technology skills.  Students, through a survey, identified the topics that are included this semester. Please RSVP if you would like to attend any of the sessions!

Upcoming next week is the sixth topic this year–Formatting a Word Document.  Roxanne Greeson, who works with the College of Law and the GSU Center for Instructional Innovation, will be presenting on the topic of Formatting a Word Document.  The presentation will help you to use the tools available in Microsoft Word to assure that your documents are formatted consistently and efficiently.  The program will happen twice:  5 PM on February 24 and 2:50 PM on February 25.

The next topic for the year is Legislative History.  Terrance Manion, Librarian and Director of Information Technology, will take you through the process of doing legislative history research.  We have some great tools in the library for gathering a federal legislative history, such as the ProQuest Legislative Insight database.  We also have print materials, such as Nancy Johnson’s Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories that are helpful.  The Legislative History program is scheduled for noon on March 2 and 5 PM on March 3.

The final topic will be Research Parties and Expert Witnesses.  Meg Butler, Associate Director for Public Services, will share tools and tips for using law library resources to identify and evaluate expert witnesses and parties.  The program is scheduled for noon on March 21 and 5 PM on March 24.

We hope to see you at the programs!

by Veselin Simonov

If you live in the neighborhoods of East Atlanta, Cabbagetown, Reynoldstown, Edgewood, Gresham Park, Grant Park, Kirkwood, Ormewood Park or Boulevard Heights – listen up! You may be eligible to vote in the Georgia House of Representatives runoff election in District 58 that’s happening TODAY! The district covers residents from just south of Piedmont Park to around Turner Field to over by Fort McPherson. If you aren’t sure whether you live within the district lines or where your polling location is, you can check the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page.

District 58 was previously represented by Simone Bell (D-Atlanta), who resigned late last year to become Lambda Legal’s Southern regional director. As reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, former Representative Bell held the distinction of being the nation’s first African-American lawmaker, serving in a State House, who is out as a lesbian.

Park Cannon

The special election was held on January 19, 2016 between three candidates: Kwame Thompson, Park Cannon, and Ralph Long, III. The runoff held today is between Park Cannon and Ralph Long, III. Park Cannon won the special election with 47.43% of the vote and Ralph Long, III came in second with 33.65%. Only 835 people voted in the special election.

Ralph Long, III

So if you live in District 58 and have a few minutes to spare today, we encourage you to stop by your polling location and fulfill your civic duty! And, of course, if you would like to research the candidates or check your voter registration status, please feel free to use the technology and resources available in the law library.

ProQuest Regulatory Insight home screen

The law library recently added the new ProQuest Regulatory Insight database to its collection of research tools available for you.  You may be familiar with ProQuest Legislative Insight, which provides legislative histories for federal laws that have been enacted.  Regulatory Insight contains federal administrative law histories organized by public law.

Our law students can access ProQuest products through our law library database list.  You may be asked to select the appropriate account when you login; if that happens, please select the account that includes the College of Law (“Coll of Law Lib”) in its description.

You can search Regulatory Insight by number, including Federal Register or Code of Federal Regulations citation, as well as the Public Law Number, Statutes at Large Citation, U.S. Code Citation, the Regulation Identifier Number (RIN), and the Agency Docket Number.

There is an advanced search function that allows word searching of the Federal Register (1988 to present) and the Code of Federal Regulations (1997 to 2015), as well.

If you need help accessing or using this new product, please contact a reference librarian!