Video: Malamud on Law.Gov: America’s Operating System, Open Source

Video is now available for Carl Malamud’s address entitled Law.Gov: America’s Operating System, Open Source, given at Gov 2.0 Expo 2010, on 27 May 2010, in Washington, DC, USA.

The address details new findings about copyright restrictions on legal materials in the U.S., and offers an update on the progress of the Law.gov legal open government data project.

Video Available for Law.gov Core Specifications Task Force Meeting 26 May 2010

Video is now available for the first meeting of the Law.gov Core Specifications Task Force held 26 May 2010 at the offices of Google in Washington, DC, USA.

This event is also being referred to as the Law.gov Open Source Workshop, the Open Source Law.gov Workshop, and Open Source Procurement for Law.Gov.

Click here for the meeting program.

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the meeting (scroll down to tweets from May 26, 2010).

Click here for information about the Law.gov legal open government data project.

HT Carl Malamud.

Video Available for Law.gov U.S. House of Representatives Event

Video is now available for the Law.gov Event at the U.S. House of Representatives held 25 May 2010 at the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, DC, USA.

Click here for the conference program.

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the workshop (scroll down to tweets from May 25, 2010).

Click here for information about the Law.gov legal open government data project.

HT Carl Malamud.

May 31 Deadline: Comments Requested on Legal Process Outsourcing, by ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission

Comments are requested — with submission deadline of 31 May 2010 — on the topic of the legal ethics of legal process outsourcing, by the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20.

The call for comments begins:

The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 is studying the ethical and professional regulatory implications of legal process outsourcing in a domestic and international context. The Commission is reviewing the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, existing ethics opinions and other literature and studies about this topic. The Commission is also interested in gathering information about domestic and international legal process outsourcing from lawyers, law firms, clients and outsourcing providers, and developed the following questions to do so.

Click here for the call for comments.

Click here to submit comments.

Ethics of Virtual Law Practice: A Debate Held on Twitter

A debate on the legal ethics of virtual law practices and virtual law offices, between Stephanie Kimbro, Esq. and Brian L. Tannebaum, Esq., was held on 7 May 2010, on Twitter. The debate was co-sponsored by 22 Tweets and ABA Journal.

Click here for the transcript.

The ethics of virtual law practices and virtual law offices is one of the topics on the agenda of the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20.

Van Opijnen, Rechtspraak en digitale rechtsbronnen: nieuwe kansen, nieuwe plichten

Marc van Opijnen of Bureau Internet Systemen en Toepassingen Rechterlijke Organisatie (BISTRO) has published Rechtspraak en digitale rechtsbronnen: nieuwe kansen, nieuwe plichten, Rechtstreeks 2010 No. 1. Here is the abstract:

Sinds de komst van internet is de informatievoorziening voor en door de rechterlijke macht in een stroomversnelling geraakt. Waar rechters en griffiers vroeger vele uren nodig waren om in wetten, tijdschriften en boeken argumenten voor beslissingen bijeen te zoeken kan dat nu via sites en zoekmachines. Toch kan er nog veel verbeterd worden.

In dit nummer van Rechtstreeks geeft de rechtsinformaticus Marc van Opijnen een overzicht van de vele nieuwe verworvenheden op het gebied van bronnenonderzoek, maar hij gaat ook in op de verschillende stagnaties die optreden. Zo is er nog steeds weinig uniformiteit in het weergeven van uitspraken, wetten en regelingen en dreigen gebruikers door een gebrekkige structuur en een overvloed aan informatie de weg kwijt te raken. Hij pleit er daarom voor dat rechters als belangrijke producenten en consumenten van het recht zich meer bewust worden van de ongekende mogelijkheden die de automatisering biedt.
Daarnaast pleit de auteur ervoor dat, nu commerciële uitgevers het monopolie op juridische literatuur zijn kwijtgeraakt, ook andere wettelijke belemmeringen voor een snelle en vrije uitwisseling van teksten en bronnen moeten verdwijnen.
Van Opijnen denkt dat de kosten en inspanningen die een dergelijke omslag van de rechterlijke macht vergt, ruimschoots kunnen worden terugverdiend door de hogere productiviteit en de kwaliteit die erdoor ontstaat. Hij voorziet een situatie waarin rechters al meteen aan het begin van hun werk met één druk op de knop over een handzaam overzicht beschikken van alle bronnen die voor hun zaak van belang kunnen zijn.

HT JURIX.

Bennett on The Enterprise Data Management Council Semantics Repository Case Study

Mike G. Bennett of the EDM Council, Inc. will present a paper entitled The Enterprise Data Management Council Semantics Repository Case Study at SemTech 2010: The 2010 Semantic Technology Conference, to be held 21-25 June 2010 in San Francisco, California, USA.

This presentation is of interest to the legal informatics and legal communication communities because the EDM Council Semantics Repository is a collection of ontologies for financial documents, most of which are legal in nature, among them many types of financial contracts.

Here is the abstract of the presentation:

This presentation documents a case study of the EDM Council Semantics Repository for the financial services industry. The paper shows how the requirements for the semantics repository were met using the Ontology Definition metamodel (ODM) standard with some adaptations and additions for presentation to business subject matter experts. The modeling tool and presentation framework are demonstrated.

Included is a summary of the relationship with other standards, both within the financial services industry and more widely, including the XBRL accounting standard. Also covered are plans for maintaining alignment with semantics standards.

Finally, the paper summarizes a number of ongoing “Proof of Concept” activities showing how the Semantics Repository can be used to solve real data problems within the securities industry. These include a proposal to demonstrate how the Semantics Repository can form part of a global regulatory framework which would help in controlling systemic risk in the financial markets.

This session will address the following topics:

• Aims and requirements of the Semantics Repository
• Description of the modeling approach and framework
• Extensions to existing semantics formats
• Relation to other standards (ISO 20022, FpML, XBRL etc.)
• Ongoing Proof of Concept exercises

Thanks to Mr. Bennett for sending the URL of the abstract.

Visualizing Legislation: Software Tools

A number of software applications and platforms are now available for creating visualizations (i.e., graphical depictions) of legislation. Here are some of them:

• Compendium — an argument mapping application, distributed free-of-charge — has been applied to legislation (see pages 129-132) by participants in the EU’s LEX-IS Project. (See the description in Loukis et al., Using Argument Visualization to Enhance e-Participation in the Legislation Formation Process, a paper delivered at ePart 2009: The First International Conference on eParticipation, 1-3 September 2009, Linz, Austria. (Click here for the full paper on SpringerLink.));
• Seadragon and Zoomorama have been used to create visualizations of bills, entire legislative codes, and titles of legislative codes (click here for 11 U.S.C.; click here for 17 U.S.C.; click here and here for 26 U.S.C.) by Michael James Bommarito II, Daniel Martin Katz, & Jon Zelner, all of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Center for Study of Complex Systems and Computational Legal Studies;
• DocBlocks and IBM Many Bills have been used to visualize topics in legislation, by the IBM Research Visual Communication Lab;
• CMap Tools have been used for the visualization of norms and related fields of law in legislation, by Felix Zimmermann of jurMeta and kjur.de. [Thanks to Mr. Zimmermann for this information, which was added 31 May 2010.]

If you know of other software tools used to create visualizations of legislation, please feel free to identify them in the comments.

Thanks to @fodden for suggesting this post.

Legal Communication Papers at RSA 2010: Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference

Many legal rhetoric / legal communication papers (scroll down) are being presented at RSA 2010: The 14th Rhetoric Society of America Biennial Conference, being held 28-31 May 2010, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Click here for the conference program.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #rsa2010.

The legal communication / legal rhetoric papers being presented at the conference include the following:

• Jen Bacon, West Chester University, Relational Rhetorics in Same-Sex Divorce;
• Timothy Barouch, Northwestern University, Concord and Controversy of Sound Judgment: The Brandeis Confirmation;
• Tim Behme, University of Minnesota, Orators’ Reproaches to Jurors and Assembly Members in Ancient Greece;
• Matthew Brigham, James Madison University, Critical Perspective in the Study of Rhetorical Concord and Controversy: Considering the Possibilities and Limits of the Hermeneutics of Suspicion and the Hermeneutics of Hope;
• Elizabeth Britt, Northeastern University, Listening to Defending Our Lives: Identification and Domestic Violence Advocacy;
• Sarah Burgess, University of San Francisco, Making a Scene: Demanding Legal Recognition;
• Randall Bush, Northwestern University, Carl Schmitt and Situated Law: Or, Why Rhetoric Needs the Exception;
• Douglas Coulson, University of Texas at Austin, Law, Narrative, and Authority in Historical Writing;
• Erica Delgadillo, University of Colorado at Boulder, Rights or Benefits: Uncovering the Strategies and Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs in Varnum v. Brien;
• Brita Dooghan, University of Pittsburgh, The Sublime at Trial: A Rhetorical Perspective of Law and the Sublime;
• Christine A. Geyer, Syracuse University, Judicial Rhetoric as Motion: Stasis Theory and “The Law”;
• Lewis H. Glinert, Dartmouth College, Sacred Arguments: Inductive and Agonistic Rhetoric in Jewish Legal Responsa;
• John Gooch, University of Texas at Dallas, The Neglected Legal Rhetoric of L.A. Police Chief William Parker;
• Keith Grant-Davie, Utah State University, Dissent in Zion: Using Stasis Theory to Analyze Legal Disputes Between the FLDS Church and the State of Utah;
• Hans Vilhelm Hansen, University of Windsor, Louis Riel’s Speech to the Jury, 1885;
• Michelle Kelsey, Arizona State University, Creating a Critical Understanding of the Contemporary Pro-Gay Marriage Movements;
• Rebecca Kuehl, University of Minnesota, (Re)Contextualizing Social Rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Toward a Feminist Theory of Global Citizenship;
• Katie Langford, Texas Tech University, Developing Color Consciousness in Hernandez v. Texas;
• Sean Larson, University of Minnesota, The Ethics of Judicial Oratory in Aristophanes’ Wasps;
• Megan Little, University of Texas at Austin, A Case Study of Exposure and Hiding: The Rhetoric of Classification in Legal Discourse;
• Robert Lively, University of Nevada, “We Must Always Go Fully Armed to Court”: The Viking Forensic Tradition;
• Lucas Logan, Texas A&M University, The Rhetoric of Surveillance: A Broad Analysis of the Legal Evolution of Electronic Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment from Olmstead v. United States to Al-Haramain v. Bush;
• Seth Long, California State Polytechnic University, Measuring Manhood: Sophistic and Platonic Rhetoric in the Gay Marriage Debates;
• Ryan Malphurs, Texas A&M University, Supreme Court Arguments as Ritual;
• Mark McPhail, Southern Methodist University, International Justice in Rwanda;
• Francis Mootz, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, et al., Supersession: The New Rhetoric Reads Lawrence v. Texas;
• Jay Mootz, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, The Role of Rhetoric in Legal Education;
• LeiLani Nishime, University of Washington, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Tiger Woods Bill, and the Racial Order;
• Todd Oakley, Case Western Reserve University, Constructional Approaches to Grammar and the Rhetorical Question in Marbury v. Madison;
• Carrie Anne Platt, North Dakota State University, “We are Pro-Marriage, Not Anti-Gay”: The Rhetorical Construction of Tolerance in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate;
• Amy Propen, York College of Pennsylvania, Knowledge, Power, Ethos, and the Rhetorical Advocacy Work of Guardians ad Litem in the Legal Arena;
• Catherine Schryer, Ryerson University, Lost Voices and Broken Chains of Evidence: A Study of Citation Practices in Forensic Letters;
• Mary Lay Schuster, University of Minnesota, Standing in Terri Schiavo’s Shoes: Rhetoric as Advocacy in End-of-Life Cases;
• Joe Sery, University of Pittsburgh, Progressive Sedition: Holmes, Abrams, and the First Amendment Gateway to Dewey’s “Great Community”;
• Robert Sullivan, Ithaca College, The Isocratean Concept of Natural Law: Eloquence and Civilization in the Greco-Roman Rhetorical Tradition;
• Mary Lynn Veden, University of Washington, Antirrhesis and Judicial Activism: The Midcentury Concord and Conflict of Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter.

For abstracts or full text of any of the conference papers, please contact the author(s).

If you know of other legal rhetoric / legal communication papers being presented at the conference, please feel free to identify them in the comments.

HT @BLarsonMpls.

Ratcliff et al. on The Hidden Consequences of Racial Salience in Videotaped Interrogations and Confessions

Professor Jennifer J. Ratcliff of The State University of New York, College at Brockport, Department of Psychology, and colleagues, have published The Hidden Consequences of Racial Salience in Videotaped Interrogations and Confessions, 16 Psychology, Public Policy, and Law No. 2, pages 200-218 (2010). Here is the abstract:

Evaluations of videotaped criminal confessions can be influenced by the camera perspective taken during recording. Interrogations and confessions recorded with the camera directing observers’ visual attention onto the suspect lead to biased judgments of the suspect. Although a camera perspective that directs visual attention onto the suspect and interrogator equally appears to promote unbiased judgments, investigations to date have relied on videotapes that depict only Caucasian suspects and interrogators. We examined the possibility that even equal-focus videotapes may become problematic when the suspect is a minority (e.g., Chinese American or African American) and the interrogator is Caucasian. That is, to the extent that Caucasian observers are inclined to direct more of their attention onto minorities, an effect documented previously, we expected biased judgments of the suspect to also occur in equal-focus videotapes. Three experiments provided evidence of this racial salience bias. Implications are discussed, including a practical way of avoiding the bias.