The Legal Universe At Your Fingertips, For Free!

The end of the workday. You lock up your shop, trundle off to the local attorney watering hole, and almost instantly find yourself embroiled in a friendly, yet frenzied, argument over whether case X said Y or Z. Factions form. A wager ensues. The next round depends on who's right. But how to settle it?

Soon, you'll no longer need to adjourn to the nearest law library, spectators in tow, to leaf through bound reporters. Instead, you'll be able to whip out your iPhone and enlist the aid of your Fastcase app. As Robert Ambrogi reports,

The app is not yet available in Apple's App Store, but Fastcase granted me an exclusive first look at a pre-release version of the app. I have a full review and a half-dozen screen captures at my LawSites blog.

The short version of my review is this: I was impressed. The app is easy to use and produces lightning-fast results. Use it to search cases from all federal courts and the courts of all 50 states. Search using natural language or Boolean queries or by citation. Documents are displayed in a crisp, readable, size-adjustable font. You can save documents and revisit recent searches.

You will not find every feature on the app that you would expect in a browser-based research tool. For example, you cannot print documents or e-mail them directly from the app. (You can, however, copy a document and paste it into an e-mail.) Still, for legal research on the go, at any time, and for zero cost, this is a must-have for any lawyer with an iPhone.

Sounds like it might even be useful for things other than settling bar bets. And the icing on the case: "[N]ot only is the app free, but so it the research."

Did You Wake Up This Morning Pleading, "My Kingdom for a Guide to the Canons of Statutory Interpretation!"

Then you should buy a lottery ticket, because today is your lucky day. A little birdie hipped us to a Congressional Research Service report providing that which you seek. Behold: "Statutory Interpretation: General Principles and Recent Trends (updated Aug. 31, 2008)". From the report's summary:

The Supreme Court has expressed an interest “that Congress be able to legislate against a background of clear interpretive rules, so that it may know the effect of the language it adopts.” This report identifies and describes some of the more important rules and conventions of interpretation that the Court applies. Although this report focuses primarily on the Court’s methodology in construing statutory text, the Court’s approach to reliance on legislative history are also briefly described.

The report is primarily geared towards those drafting legislation. (And if there were any doubt of where the author's allegiance lies, consider this snarky commentary from elsewhere in the summary: "Not infrequently the Court stacks the deck, and subordinates the general, linguistic canons of statutory construction, as well as other interpretive principles, to overriding presumptions that favor particular substantive results.") Nonetheless, the report looks like it can also serve as a helpful overview for those of you tangling with thory statutory interpretation issues.

Another Resource for Acquired and Derivative Citizenship Claims and Defenses

Last month United States Citizenship and Immigration Services issued this press release announcing the establishment of the agency's new Geneology Program.

USCIS maintains historical records documenting the arrival and naturalization of millions of immigrants who arrived in the United States since the late 1800s . . . and naturalized between 1906 and 1956. Until today, the process to request these records was handled through a Freedom of Information Act / Privacy Act (FOIA) request.

"In many cases USCIS is the only government agency that has certain historical records that provide the missing link which genealogists or family historians need," said Jonathan "Jock" Scharfen, USCIS’ Acting Director.

Or defense counsel. Anyone who's ever tried to do the investigation and research involved in exploring acquired and derivative citizenship claims knows just how difficult it is to dig up the necessary information. Perhaps the USCIS Geneology Program can be a useful tool for that.

So how does one take advantage of the program? Per the press release,

Individuals may submit genealogy records requests by using the new forms, G-1041 - Genealogy Index Search Request, and G-1041A - Genealogy Records Request. Both forms are available on the new USCIS Genealogy Program page at: http://www.uscis.gov/genealogy.

Fees range from $20 to $35, depending on the services requested. (Don't forget to keep in mind FRE Articles 8, 9, and 10 if you're requesting documents to use at trial.)

Hat tip: Bender's Immigration Daily.

Practitioner's Guide to the Fifth Circuit

Stymied by the mystery that is the Fifth Circuit? Luckily, Raymond Ward of "the (new) legal writer" hips us to the Practitioner’s Guide to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which gives a soup-to-nuts explanation of how the appeals process works in New Orleans. And while you're in the neighborhood, you should also drop by the Fifth Circuit library, which is chock full of handy information and links.

Free Online Legal Databases (Some Even Searchable)

This article at law.com highlights several sites offering free access to databases of federal statutes and case law. Some are simply a repository of opinions, which can be handy if all you want to do is pull up a case.

Another project, still in early testing, aims to give this growing body of public-domain law a sophisticated search engine comparable to those of commercial legal databases. Already, the developers of this experimental legal search engine, called PreCYdent, claim their tests outperform "by a wide margin" Westlaw natural language search, not to mention other commercial databases.

And then there's this:

Not to be outdone, at least one commercial publisher is getting aboard the free-law bandwagon. On Feb. 13, Fastcase, the company that provided Public.Research.Org with all those cases, unveiled an even larger free library of cases, statutes, regulations, court rules and legal forms. Called The Public Library of Law, it claims to be "the most comprehensive free resource for legal research online."

PLOL includes all the federal cases Fastcase provided to Public.Research.Org, plus appellate cases from all 50 states from 1997 forward. In addition, it has all states' statutes and court rules, selected states' regulations or administrative codes, the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations and court rules.

Read the whole article for more.

New Book: False Confessions "A Systemic Feature of American Criminal Justice"

Via Grits for Breakfast, we see that Anne Reed at Deliberations is highlighting a new book by University of San Francisco law professor Richard Leo, entitled Police Interrogation and American Justice. According to the book,

[t]he problem of false confession is not limited to a small number of cases. These studies reveal that false confessions are therefore not an anomaly but a systematic feature of American criminal justice, despite procedural safeguards such as Miranda rights and a constitutional prohibition against legally coercive interrogation techniques. . . . Unless police change their procedures for selecting suspects and their interrogation practices, false confessions will continue to occur regularly.

Per Reed, "Leo narrates the development of increasingly sophisticated techniques of police interrogation, techniques that manage to break down a defendant's psychological defenses and build a detailed and compelling story for the jury at the same time."

So if you can lay your hands on a copy, the book may provide valuable background information you can use to prepare for cross-examinaning the agents who interrogated your client, and for countering prosecution arguments that focus on a supposedly damning confession. It may also be chock full of useful fodder for attacking relevant conduct enhancements that are based on nothing more than a statement the defendant allegedly made during post-arrest interrogation.

If you don't feel like shelling out the dough for Professor Leo's book (which Harvard University Press appears to be quite proud of, if the $45 list price is any indication), Volokh Conspirator Orin Kerr helpfully points us to a free article covering similar ground:

Berkeley lawprof Charles Weisselberg has posted a fascinating new draft article, Mourning Miranda, on how the police in California currently implement the Miranda warnings. Weisselberg looks closely at how police officers in California are trained to conduct interrogations, and he concludes that the police interpret Miranda to let them do many of the things that the U.S. Supreme Court found objectionable in 1966 that led the Court to create the Miranda framework.

Although Professor Weisselberg's article is focused on the California fuzz, many of the interrogation techniques he describes in detail are apparently used by law enforcement agencies around the country.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection "Inspector's Field Manual" Available On-Line

Thanks to the FOIA efforts of one Charles M. Miller, a California immigration attorney, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection "Inspector's Field Manual" is available for your persual here. As Miller's introduction cautions, "sections . . . may be out-of-date by later changes to the law or policy or may reflect an arguable exposition of the law." Nevertheless, you may find the manual useful when investigating your cases or preparing for trials or motions hearings.

There's some interesting stuff in there. For example, the CBP's understanding of the permissible scope of immigration checkpoint detentions is narrower than the Fifth Circuit's. From section 18.6(e) of the Manual, with emphasis added:

Border Patrol agents can make routine vehicle stops without any suspicion to inquire into citizenship and immigration status at a reasonably located permanent or temporary checkpoint provided the checkpoint is used for the purpose of determining citizenship of those who pass through it, and not for the general search for those persons or the vehicle. Inquiries must be brief and limited to the immigration status of the occupants of the vehicle. The only permissible search is a "plain view" inspection to ascertain whether there are any concealed illegal aliens.

Link via Bender's Immigration Bulletin--Daily Edition.

Cool (and Free) Online Legal Resources

Eugene Volokh hips us to a treatise published by the Congressional Research Service: The Constitution of the United States of America, Analysis and Interpretation: Analysis of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. I've never heard of it before, so I can't vouch for it. But Professor Volokh endorses it: "Though it has its limitations, it's generally a very useful resource -- and, it seems to me, a highly underpromoted one."

And speaking of the Constitution, have you ever found yourself imploring, "My kingdom for an online copy that allows paragraph-level permalinking!" Of course you have. And here it is. There's also the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and a searchable version of the Federalist Papers. (Hat tip: Randy Barnett.)

Cool Research Tips

Having trouble separating the wheat from the chaff when doing electronic research? Then check out this post at the Volokh Conspiracy: Reducing False Positives in Lexis/Westlaw Searches.

More broadly, as a commenter to a related post reminds us, consider enlisting the aid of your friendly neighborhood law librarian. They're the legal research experts, and can probably save you some time, to boot.