Schaffer Law Library Blog

According to a NY times article: In last week’s Kennedy v Louisiana decision, the Supreme Court stated, among other things, that “a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either.”  A recent blog post corrected that fact stating that “Section 552(b) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, 119 Stat. 3136, 3264 (2006), provides that ‘[u]ntil the President otherwise provides pursuant to’UCMJ article 56, ‘the punishment which a court-martial may direct for an offense under’ the amended UCMJ article 120 ‘may not exceed the following limits: . . . For an offense under subsection (a) (rape) or subsection (b) (rape of a child), death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.’

The Schaffer Law Library just received the following gift title to help out those students taking the Bar exam this summer:

The Essential Rules for Bar Exam Success
(Steven I. Friedland)
KF303 .F75 2008

This item will be on reserve, so be sure to ask our circulation staff if you would like to use this item.

The Top 100 Law and Laywer Blogs from Criminal Justice Degrees Guides.  Thanks to bespacific.

Here is a list of new items added to our collection this week:

Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America 1861-2003
(William N. Eskridge Jr.)
KF9328 .S6 E84 2008

Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention
(John Cooper)
HV6322.7 .C67 2008

The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror and the Death of Reconstruction
(LeeAnna Keith)
F379 .C59 K45 2008 Continue reading New Books…

PolicyArchive (www.policyarchive.org) is the first “free comprehensive online archive of public policy research.”  It was developed because “locating and obtaining this research online can be difficult or impossible. Most policy research has no online home outside of the institution that produced it, and sometimes not even there.  Research indices are hard to find or non-existent.”

According to a NY Times article, Vermont Law School and the William Mitchell College of Law are “two law schools in the nation that bar military recruiters, as a protest against the 15-year-old rule that prevents openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military.” 

No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke but is the title to a documentary on taking the California bar exam.  You can read more about the film here and here.  Thanks to the Volokh Conspiracy.

Need some fun, entertaining books to read this summer?  Come to the Schaffer Law Library and discover the law thrillers, stories and novels it has to offer.   Here are a couple picks:

Murder in Vegas: New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation
(Michael Connelly)
PS648 .D4158 2005

Criminal Seduction
(Darian North)
PS3557 .I25 C74 1993

The Client
(John Grisham)
PS3557 .R5355 C57 1994

Presumed Innocent
(Scott Turow)
PS3570 .U754 P7 1988

Continue reading Summer time, and the reading is easy….

The US Supreme Court has decided District of Columbia v Heller.  You can read the opinion here.

The New York State Senate and Assembly have introduced bills (S7528 & A10522) to add plastic knuckles to the category of ”deadly weapons” in the Penal Law.  The amendments to the Penal Law will affect sections 10.00 and 265.01.