OMB Watch has created a Regulatory Resource Center Website, intended to educate users on the regulatory process and teach citizens how to comment on federal regulations using Regulations.gov, the government's portal for public comments. 

OMB Watch is a nonprofit government watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C.  When OMB Watch first launched a developmental version of the Regulatory Resource Center in October 2007, public response was overwhelmingly positive.  OMB Watch will continue to improve the site based on public needs, comments, and concerns.   They encourage feedback at any time at: RegResources@ombwatch.org.

Beginning with the 110th Congress, the PDF files of Public and Private Laws on GPO Access have been digitally signed and certified to assure users that the online documents are official and authentic.   To search or browse Public and Private Laws go to GPO Access.

 GPO Access is the website maintained by the U.S. Government Printing Office and provides free electronic access to various government documents.  Click on this link for more information about how GPO has begun implementing digital signatures to certain electronic documents on GPO Access.

"[A]ll Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."  U.S. CONST. art. VI.  However, when the Senate ratifies a treaty with a two-thirds vote, does that mean the treaty provisions are binding on the states?  According to a new ruling by the Supreme Court, they are binding only if the treaty explicitly says so or if there is legislation to make that clear. 

The decision is Medellín v. Texas, at is available at: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-984.pdf   As a background note, in the Case Concerning Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mex.U.S.), 2004 I.C.J. 12 ( Avena ), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held that the United States had violated Article 36(1)(b) of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (Vienna Convention or Convention) by failing to inform 51 named Mexican nationals, including petitioner Medellín, of their Vienna Convention rights. The ICJ found that those named individuals were entitled to review and reconsideration of their U.S. state-court convictions and sentences regardless of their failure to comply with generally applicable state rules governing challenges to criminal convictions. In Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, 548 U.S. 331 (2006) issued after Avena but involving individuals who were not named in the Avena judgment-the Supreme Court held, contrary to the ICJ's determination, that the Convention did not preclude the application of state default rules. The President then issued a memorandum stating that the United States would “discharge its international obligations” under Avena “by having State courts give effect to the decision.  ”Relying on Avena and the President's Memorandum, Medellín filed a second Texas state-court habeas application challenging his state capital murder conviction and death sentence on the ground that he had not been informed of his Vienna Convention rights. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Medellín's application as an abuse of the writ, concluding that neither Avena nor the President's Memorandum was binding federal law that could displace the State's limitations on filing successive habeas applications.  On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that neither Avena nor the President's Memorandum constitutes directly enforceable federal law that pre-empts state limitations on the filing of successive habeas petitions.

Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, who served as a State Department official in the Clinton administration, expressed some concerns over the decision in a statement to National Public Radio:  "If our international allies have no assurance that we're actually going to keep our word, then they have much less incentive to keep their word when they're being obliged to do something."  To listen to the entire NPR story, go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89064847

For more information on treaty research, please see: Marci Hoffman, Researching U.S. Treaties and Agreements (LLRX, May 15, 2001) available at: http://www.llrx.com/features/ustreaty.htm

 The European Commission’s 13th Progress Report on the Single Telecoms Market said that Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and France are ahead of the US.  Why do you think they are?  Take a look at the URL to the report for one possible reason.

On March 17, 2008, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether a person who was compelled, against his will, to assist or take part in persecution is barred from asylum under the "persecutor bar" at Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) § 208(b)(2)(A)(i).  Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158 provides that the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Attorney General may, in his discretion, grant asylum to an alien who demonstrates that he is a refugee within the meaning of the Act.  The statutory definition of "refugee" excludes "any person who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(B).  If the evidence indicates that an asylum applicant persecuted any person, he bears the burden of proving that he did not.

Mr. Negusie, caught up in the civil war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, was drafted and forced to be a guard in an Eritrean prison, where he was ordered to mistreat prisoners. He eventually escaped, hiding in a shipping container on a ship bound for the United States. Despite a finding that he was likely to be tortured if returned to Eritrea, he was denied asylum because of his activities in the prison.

In rejecting Negusie's immigration appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an unpublished decision, determined that Negusie's intent while being compelled to assist authorities was irrelevant.  Rather, the Court's focus was "on whether particular conduct can be considered assisting in the persecution of civilians."  Fedorenko v. U.S., 449 U.S. 490, 512 n. 34 (1981).  The case opinion is Negusie v. Gonzales, 231 Fed. Appx. 325, No. 06-60193 (5th Cir. May 15, 2007) (per curiam), available at: http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions%5Cunpub%5C06/06-60193.0.wpd.pdf

The Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic was retained to prepare a petition for certiorari and argued that the statutory history and plain language of the INA's persecutor exception demonstrate the Congress never intended it to apply to asylum-seekers who have been compelled under threat of torture and death to participate in persecution.  See: http://www.yale.edu/supremecourtclinic/pages/cases.html

The DOJ's response is on file at: http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/2007/0responses/2007-0499.resp.html

The case will be argued during the October 2008 term.
 

"Legal clean-out purges old laws

By Michael Peel, Legal Correspondent

Published: March 19 2008 03:50 | Last updated: March 19 2008 03:50

Hundreds of allegedly obsolete laws on subjects ranging from the East India Company to servants who impersonate their masters would be scrapped under plans before parliament.

The Ministry of Justice said the pruning of “meaningless and defunct laws” would remove all or part of 328 acts of parliament, although it will leave in force legal oddities such as the rights of British monarchs to the heads and tails of whales caught off the country’s shores."

--More--  

3/15/2008 - By ADAM ZAGORIN
TIME Magazine
As the top lawyer for America's biggest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Gus Puryear IV is known to sport well-pressed preppy pink shirts, and his brownish mop of hair stands out among most of President Bush's graying nominees to the federal bench. A favorite of G.O.P. hard-liners, Puryear, 39, prepped Dick Cheney for the vice presidential debates — both in 2000 and 2004 — and served as a senior aide to two former Senators and onetime presidential hopefuls, Bill Frist and Fred Thompson.  For more of this story, go to: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1722065,00.html 

Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing website: http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=3076

Follow the nomination on THOMAS: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/nomis.html

Corrections Corporation of America's Website: http://www.correctionscorp.com/

 3/13/2008 - By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 13, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democratic leaders agreed Thursday to a rare closed-door session -- the first in 25 years -- to debate surveillance legislation. Republicans requested privacy for what they termed ''an honest debate'' on the new Democratic eavesdropping bill that is opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress.   For more of this story, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorist-Surveillance.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 required the transcription of all public and closed session hearings by all House and Senate committees. The responsibility for deciding which hearing transcripts should be published rests with the individual House and Senate committees. Unpublished hearings transcripts are opened for general public access according to different schedules by the Senate and House of Representatives for their respective committees. In the House, unpublished hearings and records are closed for 30 years, with investigative hearings of both the House and Senate normally remaining closed for 50 years.

 3/13/2008 - Washington, DC – A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) effort to close regional and research libraries around the country has been plagued by managerial problems. The report says that the decision to close libraries was not justified and strongly suggests that the entire process EPA has followed in closing the libraries is flawed and could deprive the public, EPA staff, state and local agencies, and academics with valuable environmental data. GAO recommends that EPA continue its moratorium on further changes to its libraries until it takes actions to justify its decisions, improve outreach, ensure sufficient oversight, and implement procedures for dispersing and disposing of materials.  For more of this story, see: http://science.house.gov/press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=2127 

To address these an other problems, on Thursday, March 13th, the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing titled, "EPA Library Closures: Better Access for a Broader Audience?." The Hearing Charter is posted on the committee website. It provides some background on the EPA library closures and outlines five key questions to be addressed during the hearing. These questions are:

1.  Did EPA Have a Plan for Maintaining Continuity of Library Services When the Plan Was Implemented in 2006?
2. Did EPA Realize Budget Savings Through Implementation of Their Plan?
3. Has EPA's Effort to Digitize Library Holdings Resulted in Greater Access to Library Collections?
4. Did Implementation of EPA's Plan Ensure Continuity of Library Services to EPA Employees and the Public or Improve Library Services?
5. What Is The Path Forward?

For more information, see: http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2118

To send your own comments to the House Committee, see: http://science.house.gov/contact/contact_generalform.htm

The U.S. Census Bureau has published its first comprehensive atlas of population and housing since 1920. It includes more than 700 full-color maps derived from 210 years of official Census data. While the Atlas will be distributed to Federal Depository Libraries and will be able for purchase from the U.S. Government Bookstore, the Bureau has also made the entire atlas available online in PDF format for free. While the individual chapter files are large and the data is based on the 2000 Census, paints a fascinating and dynamic portrait of the America. The Atlas interprets population and housing data through maps organized by: states, counties, cities of more than one million, and major metropolitan areas of more than four million. See: http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/censusatlas/

The Law Library of Congress has posted several recent articles by Louis Fisher about inherent executive power in foreign relations and national security contexts.

It has always seemed that history is the area of research best suited for the heavy use of technology.  A new wiki on English medieval legal documents confirms this again!

The notice of the wiki, published on the listserv of the American Association of Law Libraries Special Interest Section for Foreign, Comparative and International Law says, "Hazel Lord, Senior Law Librarian at the University of Southern California School of Law has been tirelessly working on a bibliography of published sources of English medieval legal documents (covering the years 600-1532).  What she had thought originally would only be a few hundred sources, has blossomed into a list of close to 1,000 sources!"

She has created a wiki for this project.  The wiki can be found here:  http://emld.usc.edu/tiki-index.php.

She hopes that you will take a look and participate.

A new web site, JD Supra, offers documents created by some law firms for reference and form. Interesting. Firms involved include the EFF, Morrison & Foerster,  Mintz Levin, etc.

A recent study of citations to state supreme court opinions reveals that the California Supreme Court is most often followed by sister state supreme court.  The New York Times article describing the study includes the following:

In the 65 years ending in 2005, more than 24,000 state high court cases have been followed at least once. California leads with 1,260 decisions. Washington is next, with 942, and Colorado is third, with 848. New York comes in 10th and is only about half as influential as California, with 627 followed cases.

The study, published in the UC Davis Law Review is available here.

New York Times
By Robin Pogrebin
Published: March 11, 2008

The New York Public Library’s venerable lion-guarded building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street is to be renamed for the Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, who has agreed to jump-start a $1 billion expansion of the library system with a guaranteed $100 million of his own.

Click here for more of this story.

New York Public Library's Website: http://www.nypl.org/

Mexican senators on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a sweeping judicial reform that would introduce public, oral trials and guarantee the presumption of innocence. The Senate voted 71 to 25 in favor of the measure, after a clause that would have let police search homes without warrants was deleted from it.

Click here for more of this story

Official Website of the Mexican Senate: http://www.senado.gob.mx/

The UK Parliament is planning to put 200 years of its debates online. All Hansard reports from 1804 through 2004 are scheduled to be digitized and posted.  Currently, Handsard debates from November 1988 are available at the Parliament web site.

U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno of Philadelphia has tallied the number of times Aaron Wider, the CEO of HTFC, dropped the F-word or a variant of it in a deposition — it was 73 times — and calculated the more than $29,000 sanction he and his lawyer Joseph R. Ziccardi should pay. In his 44-page opinion in GMAC Bank v. HTFC Corp., U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno found that Ziccardi was also to blame for his client's hostile conduct because he failed to stop his client's tirades and persuade him to answer questions.

(via The Legal Intelligencer)

The Library of Congress has a number of RSS feeds.  Many are primarily of interest to those headed to DC, but there are also some excellent copyright feeds, law feeds, and other interesting feeds.  A list of the feeds with descriptions is available here: http://www.loc.gov/rss/.