The library’s hours will be affected by several law school events over the next few weeks. Below are the hours when we’ll be open until the start of Fall semester.

image by flickr user tanelteemusk

Exams (July 18-28)

Intersession (July 29 – August 9)

 Orientation (August 10-17)

By Ryan Kerr

Here at GSU College of Law, students are getting ready for a break before Fall Semester begins.  Some of us are lucky enough to get away and visit family or even take trip that has no purpose other than to relax.  For those burned-out law students and lawyers out there, taking a law-themed vacation may help refuel your professional fire and give you a much needed rest.

The United States

by Flickr User Tim Sackton

As the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. has many amazing sight-seeing options.  To see where laws are born, the U.S. Capitol Building, which contains both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is free to visitors Monday through Saturday. Likewise, the Supreme Court is open to the public during the week and has no admission charge.   To round out your visit of the branches of the U.S. government, free tours of the White House can be arranged through your member of Congress.  The building can be toured Tuesday through Saturday and visits must be scheduled at least 21 days in advance.

To actually see the documents that created our nation and our system of laws, the National Archives (also located in D.C.) is open Monday through Saturday.  For no charge you can see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights among other historic exhibits.

To see where these documents were adopted, a short trip from D.C. to Philadelphia is required.  Admission to Independence National Historic Park is free, although timed tickets are needed to go into Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were discussed and approved.

There are many interesting sites associated with the civil rights movement across the country.  Here in Atlanta, the Martin Luther King National Historic Site  and the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York provide a comprehensive look at the continuing struggle to ensure the law applies equally to all Americans.  Admission to both sites is free and they are open daily.

London, England

Photo by Flickr User Alex Loach

Within London there are many points of interest for the traveling law-buff.  The iconic “Old Bailey” (The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales) offers free tours throughout the week.  The public can also visit the Houses of Parliament, located in the Palace of Westminster, on Saturdays and select week days and see where the House of Commons and the House of Lords meet.  The Houses also occasionally served as the venue for the Royal Courts of Justice.  (Adults £17.50 for an unguided audio tour).

Just to the west of London is Runnymeade, a park on the bank of Thames where one of the most significant acts leading to modern constitutional law occurred, the signing of the Magna Carta.  The Temple of the Magna Carta is one of several historical sites in the park. Admission to the park is free, but parking is charged by the hour.

If insurance law is your thing, you might want to take a tour of Lloyd’s to see how far the insurance industry has come since the days of underwriting ships and cargo over coffee.  One day a year Lloyd’s has an open house and throughout the year tours can be arranged by appointment (£10 per person).

Paris, France

When thinking about the French legal system, one of the first things that comes to my mind is the French Revolution.  One site that is open to public is the Conciergerie, the first royal palace in Paris which was used as a prison during the Revolution to hold such notables as Marie Antoinette.  It is open daily for tours (8.50 €).  Inmates who were condemned to death were taken to the Place de la Concorde where the guillotine was kept, admission is free to this public plaza.

For a look at the modern French legal system, the lower house of the French legislature (Assemblée Nacionale) meets at the Palais-Bourbon which is open during the week for free tours.  The upper house (Sénat) meets at the Palais du Luxembourg and tours are available for groups and individuals on certain days when the Senate is not in session.

Photo by Flickr User Wally Gobetz

Next to the Conciergerie is the Palais de Justice, the building that houses to the Court of Appeals of Paris and the Court of Cassation (France’s highest court) is open to the public.

An American visiting Paris may be interested to see the former Hotel d’York, where American representatives (Including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin) met with a British delegation to sign the Treaty of Paris which recognized the independence of the United States.

I hope that gave you some ideas for your vacation.  With so much to see and do, many locations were left out.  What recommendations do you have for legal themed travel?

By Darius Wood

Behind the trepid 80’s décor lies a modern two-floor library that holds a variety of legal, professional, and general resources. 

On reserve you can find everything from headphones to course textbooks for every course currently taught. A few key items are:

• Earplugs
• Projector Kits
• The Bluebook
• Dry Erase Markers
• Flash Cards (Torts, Contracts, Federal Income Tax, etc.)
• AudioCaseFiles [CD’s] (Civil Procedure, Corporations, Bankruptcy, etc.)
• Flip Video Cameras
• Chargers (Apple, Andriods, and Labtops)

The Reference Collection includes:

• Study Aids, but because you cannot study 12 hours straight…
• Movies (How I Met Your Mother, Lincoln, The Hunger Games, etc.)
• T.V. Shows (Downton Abby, Suits, Matlock, Scandal, etc.)

Additionally, the library provides a number of resources online:

• Study Room Reservations 
• Exam Archive
• GIL-Find Your one-stop place to find out if a book or other document is available in the Law or Main University Library
• Tip: Try Worldcat, if you cannot find it on GIL. It will search libraries around the world for that rare book or document. The World is your oyster

Planning an all-day excursion to the library? Well, these are your essentials…

• Quick Bites: Waffle House, Willy’s, Panthers Club (Chick-fil-a, Pounce Deli, State Place Grill, etc.), The Courtyard (The Carving Board, Far East Fusion, etc.)
• Coffee: The Courtyard (Starbucks brewed), Einstein Bros. Bagels, Waffle House, and Seattle’s Best Coffee (2nd floor vending machine)
• Microwaves: Located on 2nd and 6th floors of Urban Life
• Fridge: Located on 2nd floor of Urban Life

Other things include:

• Bookeye Scanners (Located in alcove)
• Magazines (Located in reading room)
• Book Swap (Located across from reference collection)
• *PILA auctions off a study room for the whole semester every year

You just thought of the perfect opening sentence for your environmental law paper, but your at the gym – miles away from a computer. Or you want to review your professor’s PowerPoint presentation from last class, but you forgot to print them out prior to boarding the train. Law students are constantly on the go, shuffling class time, externships, classes, and student organizations, not to mention their outside of law school lives.

For Georgia State students who need to access and edit documents when they are away from their computers and laptops, their is a solution. Using your Campus ID and Password, you have access to two services that will allow you to not only save Word documents to cloud storage, but also access documents in the cloud storage, and create and edit documents on your smart phone. The best part of all, these services are absolutely FREE to current students.

Using OneDrive (also called SkyDrive), students can save files to the OneDrive cloud and access them on their computers, tablets, and phones. For information on how to access OneDrive, refer to the Using OneDrive post by GSU IS&T.

In order to access, edit, and create documents from your smart phone, you will need to download Office 365 Mobile. This service allows students to access Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents in their OneDrive account, and also edit and create Word and Excel documents. To find out more information on how to download Office 365 Mobile, refer to the Download Office 365 Mobile post by GSU IS&T. 

by: Darlene Childers

Courtesy of Flickr: Jesse Michael Nix

For newly admitted law students, the summer before classes begin can be overwhelming with questions regarding books, schedules, professors, etc…

So, if you are looking for a few introductory resources to answer “What should I expect my 1L year?”, the GSU Law Library is a great place to start:

1. One L
2. 1L of a ride : a well-traveled professor’s roadmap to success in the first year of law school
3. One L of a year : how to maximize your success in law school
4. The insider’s guide to your first year of law school : a student-to-student handbook from a law school survivor
5. The first year law school survival kit
6. Acing your first year of law school : the ten steps to success you won’t learn in class
7. Law school : a survivor’s guide
8. Slaying the law school dragon : how to survive–and thrive–in first-year law school
9. How to succeed in law school
10. Law school : briefing for a legal education

President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the signing of the Civil Rights Act. Image from the LBJ Presidential Library.

On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger stood on the balcony of a house in Galveston, Texas, and read out the text of General Order No. 3, informing the people of Texas of the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation. Annual celebration of Juneteenth (a portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth”) began the next year; although celebration of the day declined in the early 20th century and was primarily centered in Texas, in more recent years recognition of the day has increased and spread. Juneteenth was officially recognized as a state holiday in Texas in 1980. Today, 43 states and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth through legislation.

The reading of General Order No. 3 is not the only significant event in civil rights history to occur on this day. 98 years after Maj. Gen. Granger read out the order, President Kennedy called for the passage of comprehensive civil rights legislation, and legislation that would later become the Civil Rights Act was introduced in Congress. Exactly one year later, on June 19, 1964, the Senate passed the Civil Rights Act (H.R.7152).

Does the National Basketball Association (“NBA”) have the power to force the owner of Los Angeles Clippers (Donald Sterling) to sell his team after he made some racist remarks in a private conversation that was leaked to the public? [Story]

Right to Privacy?

Sterling first asserts that under Cal Pen Code § 632 that the audio tapes were illegally recorded because he did not consent – California requires all parties to consent to a recording (whereas, one-party consent is enough in states like Georgia: O.C.G.A. § 16-11-66). Sterling contends the NBA’s usage of the audio tape recording should not “be admissible in any judicial, administrative, legislative, or other proceeding” as that would be a violation of his rights under the California Constitution.

However, in the NBA Constitution and By-laws there is a provision in Article 14, Procedure for Termination that states “strict rules of evidence shall not apply, and all relevant and material evidence submitted prior to and at the hearing may be received and considered”. On its face, this purports to allow the NBA Board of Governors to consider the audio tape in their proceedings as they are a private association and not a court of law.  Further, there is question of whether California vs. New York law applies as Article 18(e) in the Constitution and By-Laws declares that New York laws apply.

Contractual rights? 

The NBA in its “Summary of Sterling Termination Charge” avowed four legal grounds for terminating Sterling’s ownership:

1. Article 13(d) Fail or refuse to fulfill its contractual obligations to the Association, its Members, Players, or any other third party in such a way as to affect the Association or its Members adversely.
2. Violation of the Duty of Loyalty Under New York law, all member teams of the NBA owe each other a duty of loyalty to support the League in the attainment of its proper purposes.
3. Article 13(a) Willfully violate any of the provisions of the Constitution and By-Laws, resolutions, or agreements of the Association.
4. Article 13(c) Fail to pay any dues or other indebtedness owing to the Association within thirty (30) days after Written Notice from the Commissioner of default in such payment.

Sterling argues that he did not violate any of these provisions and as a result the NBA has no basis to terminate his ownership. None of this may matter, the has league canceled their vote to forcibly remove Sterling because Sterling’s wife has reportedly negotiated the sale of the team for $2 billion.

Additional Resources:

NBA Constitution and By-Laws

Summary of Sterling Termination Charge

Donald Sterling Answer to Charge