Maui, Hawaii & Honolulu County Codes

The Maui, Hawaii and Honolulu County Codes (ordinances) are all current through June 2009 and available on Casemaker.  So, if you’re searching for an elusive county code, try Casemaker.

Hawaii Bar members have access to Casemaker through their bar membership.  Law students can access the same databases via CasemakerX.

Bureau of Environmental Statistics?

Looking at environmental enforcement?  BNA’s Daily Environment Report offers a survey covering enforcement of environmental laws including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act in 2009.  The report, Enforcement: The State of Environmental Crime Enforcement: A Survey of Developments in 2009,  authored by Steven Solow, calls for the Obama Administration to create a Bureau of Environmental Statistics similar to the Bureau of Labor Statistics to “improve environmental protection, grapple with developing data needs on climate change, and provide both the public and private sectors of the United States with reliable and comprehensive data about environmental matters.”

Solow writes:

The BES would be the principal fact-finding agency in the area of the environment It would be an independent national statistical agency, not an “office” of EPA or of any other federal agency. It would collect, process, analyze, and disseminate information to EPA and other federal agencies, as well as to the public, Congress, state and local governments, and the private sector.

Besides reviewing activity in the first year of the Obama Administration, the authors look at new enforcement initiatives, new discovery guidance, an increased focus on chemicals, and electronic waste. The authors also provide summaries of criminal cases brought around the country last year.

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The Law Library at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii makes this resource and many others available to faculty, students and staff of the Law School and to other patrons visiting the Law Library.

Federal Courts Move Toward More Public Access via Pacer

Currently, Pacer users can get up to $10 worth of free documents annually, but now they can get $10 free per quarter.  The cost of obtaining a digital audio of court proceedings will go from $26 to $2.40.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/03/federal-courts-move-toward-more-public-access.html

Webinar HeinOnline’s Treaties and Agreements Library

Using & Searching HeinOnline’s Treaties and Agreements Library

This webinar will be hosted at the following times:

• April 13, 2010 at 10:00-10:30 a.m. EDT (United States & Canada), Click Here to Register
• April 13, 2010 at 2:00-2:30 p.m. EDT (United States & Canada), Click Here to Register

During this webinar we will include a discussion of the following:

• Overview of the content and browsing options
• Treaty Metadata Index
• Searching for a treaty using the Treaty Metadata Search; search examples:
  • Treaty number
  • Parties Involved
  • Short Title
  • Treaty Description
  • Signing, In Force, or Effective Dates
  • Subject
  • And more!
• Interpreting search results and the treaty summary
• Accessing the treaty summary when reading the text of a treaty
• Searching across the other publications in the library such as Kavass’s Guide to the Treaties in Force
• Using Citations on a Page to quickly link to cited materials

Don’t forget to read the System Requirements when registering to ensure you have a seamless experience when the session is scheduled to start.  If you are unsure if your system will allow you to participate in an online meeting, please consult with your technical support team.

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions on Copyright, Franchisee Rights, & Violent Felony

The U.S. Supreme Court today decided three cases:

• Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick, No. 08-103. The Copyright Act’s provision that generally prohibits a potential plaintiff from bringing a suit for copyright infringement unless the copyright has been preregistered or registered, 17 U.S.C. § 411(a), does not deprive federal courts of subject-matter jurisdiction to adjudicate infringement claims involving unregistered works. The provision “imposes a precondition to filing a claim that is not clearly labeled jurisdictional, is not located in a jurisdiction-granting provision, and admits of congressionally authorized exceptions.”  Justice Thomas writes for the majority.

• Mac’s Shell Service Inc. v. Shell Oil Products Co., No. 08-240. A franchisee cannot recover for constructive termination under the Petroleum Marketing Practices Act if the franchisor’s allegedly wrongful conduct did not force the franchisee to abandon its franchise, nor can a franchisor who reluctantly signed a franchise renewal agreement “under protest” assert a claim for unlawful nonrenewal under the statute. The preemptive scope of the PMPA is limited, and “franchisees can still rely on state-law remedies to address wrongful franchisor conduct that does not have the effect of ending the franchise.” Justice Alito writes the unanimous opinion.

• Johnson v. United States, No. 08-6925. A state offense of battery that can be committed by merely “actually and intentionally touching” someone is not a “crime of violence” that can serve as a predicate for enhanced sentencing under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (18 U.S.C. §924(e)(1)).  Justice Scalia writes for the majority.

More at these resources:

• BNA’s U.S. Law Week
• SCOTUSblog

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The Law Library at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii makes this resource and many others available to faculty, students and staff of the Law School and to other patrons visiting the Law Library.

U.S. Supreme Court Finds “Break in Custody” Exception to Miranda

The U.S. Supreme Court decided the following case today:

• Maryland v. Shatzer, No. 08-680. The interrogation rule of Edwards v. Arizona that, once a suspect in custody has invoked his Fifth Amendment right to the presence of counsel, any subsequent waiver of that right is presumed involuntary unless the suspect himself reinitiated questioning, is limited. This presumption of coercion dissipates once there has been at least a two-week break in “Miranda custody.” Additionally, a suspect who was already serving time for another offense experienced a break in Miranda custody when he was released back into the general prison population; therefore, the police were not prohibited by the Edwards rule from initiating further questioning at the prison years later.  Read more on  BNA U.S. Law Week.
• SCOTUSblog reports that the decision in Shatzer was unanimous and recognizes “an exception to the 1981 decision in Edwards v. Arizona, and now establishes that a “break in custody” permits the police to resume questioning a suspect who had previously asked for a lawyer. Furthermore, seven members of the Court rule that if the break in custody lasts more than two weeks between interrogations, the Edwards decision does not apply to suppress a confession.”

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The Law Library at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii makes this resource and many others available to faculty, students and staff of the Law School and to other patrons visiting the Law Library.

The “Nerve Center” of a Business & Miranda Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court decided two cases today:

• Hertz Corp. v. Friend, No. 08-1107. For purposes of the federal diversity jurisdiction statute at 28 U.S.C. §1332(c)(1), a corporation’s “principal place of business” is where a “corporation’s high level officers direct, control, and coordinate the corporation’s activities,” sometimes called the corporation’s “nerve center,” which is typically the corporation’s headquarters. The diversity jurisdictional statute specifies that a corporation has citizenship in the state in which it has its principal place of business, as well as its state of incorporation.
• Florida v. Powell, No. 08-1175. A police officer’s explanation to a suspect prior to custodial interrogation that he had a right to talk to a lawyer before answering questions, and that he could use any of his rights at any time during the interview, satisfied Miranda v. Arizona even though the officer did not expressly state that the defendant was entitled to have the lawyer present during questioning. The court also decided that the contrary ruling of the Florida Supreme Court below was not based on an “adequate and independent state ground” just because that court said its ruling was based on the state constitution as well as Miranda.

Read more on U.S. Law Week and SCOTUSblog

Legal Trivia: Presidents Day Is Not An Official Holiday

A HeinOnline blog post about the holiday retailers call “Presidents Day” indicates that this holiday is actually Washington’s Birthday. In 5 U.S.C. 6103, ten federal holidays are listed.

New Year’s Day – Jan. 1

Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. – 3d Monday in January

Washington’s Birthday – 3d Monday in February

Memorial Day – Last Monday in May

Independence Day – July 4

Labor Day – 1st Monday in September

Columbus Day – 2d Monday in October

Veterans Day – Nov. 11

Thanksgiving Day – 4th Thursday in November

Christmas Day – Dec. 25

HeinOnline also offers links on its blog post to scholarly articles about Washington’s Birthday as a legal public holiday.

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The Law Library at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii makes this resource and many others available to faculty, students and staff of the Law School and to other patrons visiting the Law Library.

Fed. Courts Include Computer Searches in Plain View Doctrine

From BNA’s U.S. Law Week . . . The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth and Seventh circuits recently upheld sweeping searches of suspects’ personal computers as part of the “plain-view” doctrine.   This doctrine is an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.  Last fall, the Ninth Circuit took a different approach in its application of the plain-view doctrine to computer searches. Courts across the country have taken a variety of approaches to the issue that fall into two broad categories:  Those that view computers as analogous to other document containers, such as file cabinets,  and those that believe computers deserve special treatment.  78 U.S.L.W. 1470

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The Law Library at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii makes this resource and many others available to faculty, students and staff of the Law School and to other patrons visiting the Law Library.

Analysis: Criminal Cases From 2008-09 Supreme Court Term

Linked from the front page of BNA’s U.S. Law Week are the annual review and a summary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008-09 term for criminal cases.  The Court’s criminal law decisions included important, need-to-know rulings on double jeopardy, the admissibility of forensic laboratory reports, vehicle searches, prosecutorial immunity, and the scope of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

Supreme Court rulings highlighted by criminal lawyers in BNA interviews include:

• Boyle v. United States

• Yeager v. United States

• Montejo v. Louisiana

• Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts

• Herring v. United States

• Kansas v. Ventris

• Montejo v. Louisiana

• Arizona v. Gant

• Oregon v. Ice

• Van de Kamp v. Goldstein

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The Law Library at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii makes this resource and many others available to faculty, students and staff of the Law School and to other patrons visiting the Law Library.