Whether you're hunting for an audiobook for long commutes or seeking out a perfect beach vacation read, it can be daunting to pick the right title. After all, no one wants to be stuck on a long plane ride with a book that turns out to be a dud! To help you find something good to read this summer, the Goodson Law Library staff are once again sharing their recent recommendations. You can see some of these titles in person at the service desk display this month, along with special summer reading bookmarks. Magic for Beginners: Stories, by Kelly Link (2005). (Request a print copy or read the e-bo ..read more

Hard to believe that summer is almost here! Whether you are graduating from Duke Law this month or continuing your legal studies next year, your access to legal research services and other campus databases may change this summer. Below is a summary of policies for the major legal research databases that you might wish to access in the next few months. Continuing Students Westlaw allows continuing students to use Thomson Reuters products, including Westlaw Precision and Practical Law, over the summer for non-commercial research (i.e., "to gain understanding and build confidence in your researc ..read more

Curious about how casebooks and study aids have treated a particular court opinion or doctrine over time? The Goodson Law Library now has access to a brand-new collection in HeinOnline: the West Academic Casebooks Archive, available to the Duke University community with NetID and password. This collection contains nearly 4,000 historical West casebooks and study aids, including the American and University Casebook series, Hornbooks, and Nutshells. Contents of this collection date from the 1830s to 2018. Hundreds of additional titles will be added in the near future. However, don't go looking f ..read more

Last month marked a milestone for the Caselaw Access Project (CAP), an ambitious project from the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab to digitize centuries of U.S. federal and state case law for free public access. Launched in 2016 with the financial backing of online legal research company Ravel Law (now owned by LexisNexis), the Caselaw Access Project involved the digitization of more than 36 million pages of printed case reporters. The original agreement contained a commercial use restriction for eight years, which has now expired. The Innovation Lab commemorated the occasion with a conferen ..read more

The Goodson Law Library has just subscribed to MuniPro MuniCode Library, a database with nearly 4,000 municipal codes. While many municipal and local ordinances are freely readable and searchable online (such as Durham, NC), MuniPro allows researchers to search across multiple codes and jurisdictions, as well as create saved searches and alerts for topics of interest. For more details, visit the vendor help page.    Municode is available to current members of the Duke University community and is linked from the Legal Databases & Links and campus libraries Databases A-Z list. If ..read more

Last week, the talk of the Internet was an essay called "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger." The Cut's financial-advice columnist Charlotte Cowles details the elaborate telephone scam that led her to withdraw five figures of savings and surrender the cash to someone she believed to be an undercover CIA agent. Social media chatter debated whether Cowles's predicament was the relatable reaction of a frazzled mom who had been targeted by experienced con artists, or the public admission of a surprising lapse in common sense. However one may feel about Cowles's particu ..read more

Most legal researchers are familiar with the federal government's treaty powers (for an overview, check out the Constitution Annotated discussion of Article II, section 2, clause 2 or the three-part 2023 Congressional Research Service report series on International Agreements). Likely less familiar to many are state-level commitments with foreign governments. After all, the Constitution expressly prohibits states from entering into their own treaties, and requires congressional consent for states to enter into agreements or compacts with foreign governments. However, individual U.S. states can ..read more

The Goodson Law Library has recently subscribed to Jus Mundi, a research platform containing the full text of treaties, case law, rules, and publications related to international law and arbitration. This database is available to current Duke University students, faculty and staff with NetID and password, and links are available through the Duke Libraries Catalog and Legal Databases & Links page. Jus Mundi includes thousands of documents on the topics of investment arbitration, commercial arbitration, public international law, law of the sea, and international trade. Decisions from more th ..read more

The end of the semester is almost here! Amid the flurry of final exams and the holiday rush, it might be hard to find time for your perfect winter break book. But a good read can help pass the time on long flights or airport delays, as well as give you a great way to wind down for the night at the end of busy holiday festivities. To help you find something appealing to read before you go, here are seven recommended titles that the Goodson Law Library staff have enjoyed recently. Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall, by Zeke Faux (Request a print copy  or put a hold ..read more

Regular Goodson Blogson readers know that we have been recommending holiday gift ideas for the law students and lawyers in your life since 2009 (see past entries here). We thought that was a pretty long history, until Assistant Director for Reference, Clinics, and Outreach Laura Scott uncovered an even earlier holiday gift guide from Duke Law in the December 2, 1964 issue of The Devil's Advocate newspaper. In the "Observed Around the Law School" column, student Alex Denson (LL.B.'66) shared a humorous "shopping guide for the law student who has everything" that would have been familiar to law ..read more