In response to the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12, 2010, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) stayed deportations of people with criminal convictions. On December 9, ICE lifted that ban.  According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, 89 Haitian nationals were arrested and detained last week. ICE officials claim the deportations will begin in January.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has joined forces with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, and Alternative Chance, to denounce ICE’s decision to deport Haitian nationals during the current conditions in Haiti, which include a cholera outbreak. The International Red Cross claimed that the epidemic has reached Haitian jails, and that at least 10 people had died from cholera as of November 29, 2010.

According to the civil rights groups, “Sending Haitian nationals to be detained in facilities deemed deplorable before the earthquake where exposure to cholera could lead to death is a violation of the U.S. government’s obligations under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). The Convention Against Torture prohibits the United States from deporting someone when it can be shown that "more likely than not that he or she would be tortured if removed to the proposed country of removal." 8 CFR 1208.16.

Has exposure to a life-threatening disease ever been considered torture under CAT?  You could plug 8 CFR 1208.16 into Lexis or Westlaw and check the citations from courts and administrative agencies.  You might want to take a look at this book on Defining Torture.  You can always use a periodicals index to narrow the focus of your periodicals search to just articles dealing with the Convention against Torture, and then narrowing your search to articles that include definitions, or articles that mention disease.

                      -Ryan Harrington

For over 40 years legislation on food and agriculture was collected and disseminated by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through a publication called Food and Agricultural Legislation.

Since the advent of the digital in formation age, the FAO Legal Office has taken up the challenge to provide its user community with an accessible, more comprehensive and up-to-date legal information service through its online database, FAOLEX.

FAOLEX contains treaties, laws, and regulations on food, agriculture, and renewable natural resources from all over the world. Most of the material comes from the official gazettes sent by FAO's Member Nations pursuant to Article XI of the FAO Constitution. Upon receiving such material, the FAO Legal Office selects, indexes, and summarizes in English, French, or Spanish significant texts pertaining to FAO’s mandate, i.e. legislation on agriculture, livestock, environment, fisheries, food, forestry, land & soil, cultivated plants, water, and wild species & ecosystems. Records are provided in either English, French or Spanish or the language of communication used by the originating country.

The Legal Information Institute of India (LII of India) is now open for public access prior to its formal launch in India in early 2011.

LII of India at present has 50 databases, including over 300,000 decisions from 37 Courts and Tribunals, Indian national legislation from 1836, over 800 bilateral treaties, law reform reports and about 500 law journal articles. The LawCite citator tracks case and journal article citations. Further case law, and State and Territory legislation, will be added by the time of the formal launch.

LII of India has been developed through cooperation between four leading Indian Law Schools (NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad; National Law School of India University, Bangalore;  National Law University, Delhi, and  Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur) in partnership with AustLII. The technical hub of the project will be NALSAR in Hyderabad, with initial development and ongoing support from AustLII.

Prof VC Vivekanandan of NALSAR is the Director. Funding support has been provided primarily by AusAid, with additional support from the Australian Research Council and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

There is an Outline of the project and a User Guide.

Many system features will be familiar to users of WorldLII, AustLII (Australian LII), SAFLII (Southern African LII), etc.

The Ninth Session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be held at the United Nations in New York this week December 6th to 10th 2010.

Representatives from the 113 States Parties to the Rome Statute will gather to discuss various issues and decide on the Court's operational matters. The Ninth Session follows the Kampala Review Conference which concluded in June of this year with parties adopting a resolution on a definition and framework for the prosecution of the crime of Aggression.

Historical treatises and primary sources on ICC jurisprudence are located on L1 of the law library with call number KZ6310.

December 1^st marks World AIDS Day, commemorated annually since 1988. Events will take place around the world. The day is seen as one promoting human rights, and the campaign slogan is universal access and human rights. There is a major rights campaign under the banner of Light for Rights. According to the World Health Organization, as of 2009, there were 33.3 million people living with HIV, including 2.7 million children. In 2009, 2.6 million people were newly infected with HIV, and 1.8 million died because of the disease.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the area most affected by the virus. In 2009, it accounted for 67% of the infections worldwide, 68% of new infections among adults, and 91% among children. It also accounted for 72% of the world’s AIDS related deaths. 

Law virtually touches on all things, and it is not surprising that the Yale Law Library’s collection includes numerous books on law as it relates to AIDS. A few recent examples of books especially bearing onAIDS and  human rights are the following:

• Jones, Peris S., AIDS Treatment and Human Rights in Context
• Dwasi, Jane A., The Human Right to Work in the Era of HIV and AIDS
• Engh, Ida-Eline, Developing Capacity to Realise Socio-Economic Rights: The Right to Food in the Context of HIV/AIDS in South Africa and Uganda
• Human Sciences Research Council, Associates for Development, International Center for Research on Women, Women’s Property Rights HIV and AIDS and Domestic Violence: Research Findings From Two Districts in South Africa and Uganda
• Mapetia, Matseliso, Gender, HIV/AIDS, and the Law in Lesotho: Embracing Rights-Based-Approach to Promote Women’s Sexual and ReproductionRights

 There is also a great webpage that can lead you to the HIV/AIDS laws of the world: HIV/AIDS Laws of the World.

                                                                                                         ----- Daniel Wade

The Doing Business Law Library is the largest free online collection of business laws and regulations. Created by The Worldbank, the database links to official government sources wherever possible. Translations are not official unless indicated otherwise. The collection is updated regularly but cannot guarantee that laws are the most recent version.

The Doing Business Gender Law Library is a collection of national legal provisions impacting women's economic status in 183 economies. The database facilitates comparative analysis of legislation, serves as a resource for research, and contributes to reforms that can enhance women’s full economic participation. The laws are not always the most recent version, nor is the library exhaustive, and the translations are not official unless indicated.

-- Thanks to Camilla for bringing this database to my attention some time ago!

Seeking to create its own version of Silicon Valley, the Russian government is building a new "technology incubator" zone.  In September 2010, President Dmitri Medvedev signed a new law to establish the Skolkovo Innovation Center, located 20 kilometers west of Moscow.  It will provide incentives for private companies to engage in research and development and commercial application of new technologies, focusing on information technology (IT), space research, nuclear energy, environmental protection and energy-saving. 

A special commission will consider applications for participation; over 40 companies have already submitted proposals.  The Russian authorities also plan to provide top-notch infrastructure and facilities, andthey have already allocated over $133 million to the project.

Under the new legislation, companies accepted as "members" of the Center will be entitled to a variety of special privileges, including a 10-year holiday from income, value-added, and property taxes; reimbursement of customs duties for certain imported equipment; and rights to operate under streamlined accounting and technical regulations.  There are even plans for a new court to be located in the Center that will handle intellectual property disputes, with the goal of reducing IP infringement.  From: Russian Law News.

                                                                                                                       ----- Barbara Olszowa

Poland's Justice Ministry estimates the number of online registered and reviewed court cases in Poland this year to be at half a million. More than 300,000 e-cases were filed by September, something not many had expected. There are speculations that some 100,000 people would take advantage of this solution, as altogether Polish courts reviewed 1.2 million cases last year. It turns out that almost half that number will be referred to e-courts this year. This novel way of seeking court arbitration was introduced in Poland on January 1, 2010. Fees for online reviewed cases are three times lower than for traditional court room proceedings. From, Poland's e-courts gain popularity.

                                                                                                            ----- Barbara Olszowa

The European Convention on Human rights turned 60 this month.

In celebration of this event, the European Court of Human Rights has devoted a page to demonstrating the Convention in video and pictures. The page even has illustrations of the specific articles of the convention, such as the right to a fair trial:

Today the Court released ten judgments, and will release ten more on November 23^rd, and then 17 more on the 25^th.

Today's judgments included a ruling in Boutagni v. France, about a Moroccan national who argued that his expulsion from France would subject him to degrading treatment and torture. Recent judgments have included Alexseyev v. Russia  (violation of peaceable right to assembly by a gay rights activist).

A subject heading search in Morris for the European Convention On Human Rights will redirect you towards Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950) where you will find hundreds of books in our collection.

                                                                                                           ----- Ryan Harrington

For an overview of the Singapore legal system, other than consulting the Foreign Law Guide and the law library Country-by-Country Guide, these open-source research guides are helpful. See here, here and here.

The primary law of Singapore consists of its Constitution, statutes, subsidiary legislation, and case law.  The law library does not subscribe to the fee-based database on Singapore law, LawNet, yet much of the recent primary law of Singapore is available freely on the web.

Statutes     Singapore Statutes Online includes major constitutional documents and recent statutes but does not include subsidiary legislation. The Singapore Parliament website covers bills from 2002, selective committee reports from 2004, and parliament reports/debates.

Case Law     LawNet, hosted by the Singapore Academy of Law, provides free access to the current three months of decisions and judgments rendered by the Subordinate Courts and the Supreme Court. The Academy website also includes Law Reform Reports.  Singapore Law Reports which cover selective Supreme Court decisions are available in Lexis.  Singapore Academy of Law Annual Review of Singapore cases, basically a discussion of cases selected from the Singapore Law Reports, is available in HeinOnline and in print.

EGov Portal     EGazettes, the electronic version of the Singapore Government Gazette, is published daily and available for free public viewing for 5 days. The government information portal provides links to government departments and selective current legislation.

Current Awareness     Singapore Law Watch, managed also by the Singapore Academy of Law, provides links and RSS feed subscription to legislative updates, recent judgments and commentaries. CommonLII covers selective legislation, judgments and secondary sources including the Singapore Yearbook of International Law.

For the law library print collection, treatises relating to the law of Singapore are shelved in the Lower East Side foreign law collection with the call number KPP.

A recent blog posting on website of the International Vision Collective, dedicated to promoting universal values awareness, tells us of child worker exploitation in the cocoa-growing industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast by the Hershey Company, the largest American candy producer and a purveyor of many Halloween treats from Almond Joy to Kit-Kat. See, Fair Trade Chocolate Trumps Hershey's this Halloween.

Tulane University Law School’s Payson Center for International Development recently reported on the use of child labor in the cocoa sector in West Africa, citing Hershey as one company that needs to more closely supervise its supply chain.  In response, many NGOs have called upon Hershey to undertake fair trade practices and the abolition of child labor in the cocoa industry. Hershey is alleged to be the only U.S. chocolate manufacturer that has failed to adopt any type of labor certification, i.e., to have their labor practices monitored by an organization that screens for the abuse of labor rights.

In recent months the Yale Law Library has been increasing it collection of materials dealing with global food issues. Examples of books recently added to the collection include: Ensuring Global Food Safety: Exploring Global Harmonization edited by Christine Boisrobert; The New Regulation and Governance of Food: Beyond the Food Crisis by Terry Marsden; and, Food Crises and the WTO: World Trade Forum by Baris Karapinar and Christian Haberli.

A quick search of Labordoc, a bibliographic service of the International Labour Organization (ILO), brought up a report from 1996 entitled, Child labour and cocoa production in West Africa: The case of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana,  and another from 2007, Rooting out child labour from cocoa farms.

                                                                                                                            ---- Daniel Wade

Finding cases from Canada has gotten much easier in recent years with the addition of online resources.  Both the Bluebook (19th ed.) and the Canadian Citation Committee now require a neutral citation if one exists.  Neutral citations are in the format of case name, year [no brackets], court abbreviation (no periods), and document number.  The court abbreviation is chosen by the court, and most Canadian courts have chosen their neutral citation abbreviation.  Document number is usually a chronological number assigned to the decision.  Parallel citations may follow the neutral citation if one (or more) exists.  For example, Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2010 SCC 3, [2010] 1 S.C.R. 44.  This citation can easily by found on CanLII and can lead you to the proper neutral citation (SCC) and a parallel print citation (S.C.R.).

There are still plenty of print reporters to wander through as well. Cases from the Supreme Court of Canada can be found in two reporters in order of Bluebook preference:

• Canada: Supreme Court Reports (S.C.R.) - KE140 .A21971
  
• Dominion Law Reports (D.L.R.) - KE132 .A216

Other Federal Court cases are generally found in these reporters:

• Federal Court Reports (1971 - current) - KE138 .A21971
  
  • from 1971 - 2003, the abbreviation is F.C.
    
  • beginning in 2004, the abbreviation is now F.C.R.
    
• Exchequer Court Reports (1875 - 1971) - Canada 36 Ex241

Many of the Canadian cases are online, free, and official. 

• Judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada (S.C.R.) - give the neutral citation and the reporter citation
  
• Federal Court Reports - these are digital versions of the print F.C. and F.C.R. volumes; you can open the entire volume for proper pagination
  
• Federal Court of Appeals - this is the neutral citation and document
• CanLII - gives the full-text opinion with the neutral citation, CanLII citation, and any parallel citations
  

CanLII is extremely helpful for sourcecites and bookpulls because it gives not only the neutral citation but also parallel citations. See, for example, Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2009 FC 405 (April 23, 2009), 2009 FC 405 (CanLII), [2010] 1 F.C.R. 34, 188 C.R.R. (2d) 342, 341 F.T.R. 300.

• C.R.R. is the Canadian Rights Reporter - KE4381.5 .A45 C36
• We have the Federal Trial Reports (F.T.R.) in print up to 2008 - KE144 .A23

Other online resources for finding Canadian cases are:

• Quicklaw (subscription)
• Westlaw and Lexis (passwords)

As always, please do not hesitate to see a librarian for assistance!

Cases from the UK are published in many reporters, both official and unofficial, and online in several databases.  The new Bluebook (19th ed.) gives the names of the reporters considered authoritative and a list of acceptable online services.  In fact, for cases after 2001, a neutral citation from BAILII, the British and Irish Legal Information Institute, is required (T2.42, p.408).  An example of a neutral citation is, Glasgow Corp. v. Central Land Board, [1955] UKHL 7.  

Cases from England and Wales are often sought after for sourcecites and general research.  As explained in the Bluebook (T2.42.1, p.414), cases after 1865 are published in and should be cited to the official Law Reports, which consists of many different sets of reporters including

• Appeal Cases (A.C.) - KD275.4
  • Related earlier reporters in this series are: 
    
    • English and Irish Appeal Cases - KD275 .L39
      
    • Scotch and Divorce Appeals - KD275.2 .L39
      
    • Privy Council Appellate - KD275.3 .L39
      
• Chancery Division (Ch.) - KD276.3 .L39
  
• Queen's Bench (Q.B.) - KD277.7 .L39
  
• King's Bench (K.B.) - KD277.7 .L39 (same as above, but when a King reigned)
• Probate Division (P.) - KD279.3 .L39
• Family Division (Fam.) - KD279.4 .L39 (replacing Probate Division in 1972)

If the case cannot be found in Law Reports, you can use the following reporters, in order of preference:

• Weekly Law Reports (W.L.R.) - KD282
  
• All England Law Reports (All E.R.) - KD288 .A64

There are still more print reporters that can be used if needed, such as:

• Lloyd's Law Reports (L.L.R.) - KD1815 .A2 .L57
• Human Rights Law Reports - UK Cases (H.R.L.R.) - KD4080 .A38 H86
• UK Human Rights Reports (U.K.H.R.R.) - we do not have
• International Law Reports (I.L.R.) - KZ199 .I58
  

Finally, you can find cases from the United Kingdom in several databases:

• BAILII (free)
• Lawtel (subscription)
• Justis (subscription) - also includes access to International Law Reports (I.L.R.)
  
• Westlaw and Lexis (Passwords)

As always, please feel free to see a librarian for assistance in this complicated quest.  Also see this research guide.

The New York Times today has an excellent article about the effects of foreclosure laws in Spain.  In Spain, foreclosure and eviction do not terminate the debt, so after losing their homes, many people owe the remainder of the mortgage.  According to the article, people cannot escape the debt through bankruptcy either, because mortgage debt is specifically excluded from the bankruptcy laws. 

You can find the laws in the official gazette of Spain, the Boletín Oficial del Estado.  We also have access to a database called vLex, where you can research legislation and caselaw as well as secondary sources.  The Foreign Law Guide's chapter on Spain (also a subscription database) is an excellent introduction to the Spanish legal system.  More Spanish resources can be found using the Country-by-Country guide.

If you are looking for the laws in English you can consult the book Butterworths International Insolvency Laws.   The book will also allow you to compare laws in Spain to laws in several other European countries.  Other books and secondary sources on this subject can be found here, in Morris.

                                                                                                                                                         ----- Ryan Harrington

A gazette is an official government pulication that conveys government business, news, and laws as they are passed to the public.  Most countries have a gazette and many are available free online.  The regularity of publication of gazettes varies by country as do their official names, naturally, as they are published in the vernacular.  For example, the gazette of Peru is called El Peruano; it is in Spanish, publshed daily, and available online.

The gazette of South Korea is the Gwanbo; it is in Korean and also published online.

You can find a complete list of gazettes on our Country-by-Country Guide to Foreign Legal Research.  This portal also has research guides for each country to help you get started researching the law of foreign nations.