For the first time, the annual Alumni Reunions Weekend program
included a program by Law Library. Last Saturday in the library’s Caplin
Reading Room, staff members Philip Herrington, Elizabeth Ladner, and Kristin
Jensen presented “Capturing the Past, Preserving the Future: People, Places,
and Pedagogy.” The program featured fellow Philip Herrington’s look at the history
of U.Va. Law School as place. Herrington began with the law program’s early years as a class offering in a Lawn pavilion and a collection of law books in the Rotunda Annex. He then chronicled how the school became its own place at Minor Hall, but overcrowding and a passion for murals soon led to the building of the more spacious Clark Hall. The Law School continued to grow and eventually moved to North Grounds, where several expansion projects transformed the structure into the place it is today. Elizabeth Ladner, also a Law Library fellow, illustrated U.Va. Law School as a curriculum, exploring how Thomas Jefferson’s uncommon hiring of a single law professor for undergraduates evolved over time into free standing professional graduate school. Kristin Jensen then explored U.Va. Law School as a story, as told
through student and faculty memorabilia and writings. Among the interesting artifacts Jensen shared were letters home from Elizabeth Tompkins, the Law School’s first female graduate, which revealed her struggle to find her place among the men of her 1L class.
At the close of the program, Director Taylor Fitchett issued standing invitation to alumni to share their own U.Va. Law stories and memorabilia. She shared her hope that our past students will come to regard any law school books or class notes stored in their attics, as well as their personal stories, as welcome future additions to the U.Va. Law School history. If you’re an alumnus or past faculty member with something to share about your U.Va. Law experience, please contact Taylor Fitchett at tf2u@virginia.edu or at http://libguides.law.virginia.edu/alumni.
Hungry law students are invited to stop by MyLab on Tuesday, April 30 at 6 p.m. for a grilled cheese study break. Librarians Ben Doherty and Micheal Klepper will flip sandwiches until 7 p.m. or for as long as the cheesy goodness lasts.
The library staff wishes students best of luck with exams!
The
first step to success with a research paper assignment is to develop a research strategy. What resources are
available to help you choose a good topic? Once you’ve found a topic, how do
you locate the best sources for research on that topic? How do you know when you’ve done enough
research?
Our law librarians are specialists at helping students
answer strategic questions like these. You may already know that you can get
help by emailing lawlibref@virginia.edu
or by stopping by the reference desk for quick help during reference hours. When you
need to develop a research plan, you can now use our new online calendar system to schedule an in-office consultation with a librarian.
Just sign up for any available time that works with your schedule. Once you've submitted your request, a librarian will email you with details about the meeting.
Charlottesville
is hosting the Virginia Festival of the Book through March 24.
The festival brings together a variety of authors and literature lovers for
programs that span many interests. A number of the events are free and spread
across many venues in Charlottesville. Yesterday the Law School hosted "The Human Face of Modern Slavery – Sex Trafficking at Home
and Abroad," where Law alum Corban Addison ’04 discussed his novel, A Walk Across the Sun. The
Law School’s own Molly Shadel discussed her book Finding Your
Voice in Law School at the UVA Bookstore and received a glowing notice in the Daily
Progress. Law Professor Chris Sprigman will speak about his book, The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation(co-authored with Kal Raustiala), for the program "The Global
Economy: Innovations and Transformations" (Friday at 4pm; UVa Bookstore). Other programs on the schedule include "American
Icons" at the Paramount with the Honorable John Lewis and Dr.
John Carlos ($5 ticketed event on Saturday at 8pm), and "Big Blue Door: True Storytelling Jam" (tonight
at 8pm; $5, The Bridge PAI).
March Madness is upon us. Every March the best teams in
college basketball are seeded in a tournament with the goal to crown the
national champion. While we know that the players may go on to successful
professional basketball careers, quite a few college basketball stars head off
to law school. Jay Bilas (former Duke Basketball player and Duke Law alum) may
be familiar to folks as an ESPN analyst and Bill Walton spent two years at
Stanford Law during a break in his NBA career. It was UVa's own Richard Warren
“Buzzy” Wilkinson who made headlines in the 1950s.
“Buzzy” Wilkinson turned down Kentucky to play
at Virginia
and his jersey became the first number retired in the University of Virginia
basketball history. Sports Illustrated called Buzzy the “best but certainly the least-known star in
the country.” Mr. Wilkinson was recruited by the Celtics (and their famous
coach Red Auerbach) in 1955, but turned it down to attend law school
at UVa. Mr. Wilkinson graduated law
school in 1962 and began a career in banking in his home state of West
Virginia. He still holds the season scoring record for UVA
basketball with 898 points, and he made
"Honorable Mention" on a list of Top
Five Lawyers Who Were Great College Hoopsters.
While a number of UVA Law alums have served as clerks in all levels of the judiciary, it is probably a good guess most were not thinking about the documents they generated in their clerkships as providing insight for future scholars into the inner workings of the court. The work clerks do, however, has an effect on jurisprudence as they help their justices research, form positions, and draft opinions that may have a lasting impact. The final product created by the court, the opinion, often obscures the amount of work that was dedicated to creating the document. The University of Virginia Law Library’s Special Collection is fortunate to have the Prettyman Papers, which provides a peek into the behind-the-scenes work done by the United States Supreme Court on the seminal Brown v. Board of Education cases.
E. Barrett Prettyman graduated from the law school in 1953 and served as a law clerk to Justice Robert H. Jackson, and upon Justice Jackson’s death he clerked for Justice Felix Frankfurter. The Brown v. Board of Education cases were a vital part of the Court’s agenda during Prettyman’s clerkships. The archival papers in the library’s Special Collections provide access to the justices’ debates and dialogues as they grappled with how much they would require of the states to end segregation and how quickly they would ask the states to meet those requirements. The Prettyman Papers show the amount of research the law clerks did to help inform the justices on disparate issues involved with the cases, and the papers also highlight the role the clerks played in informing the dialogue between the justices. While the Brown II decision, which implemented the Court’s decision in Brown I, was unanimous, the documents show how much work was needed to bring about unanimity.
UVA Law Professor Risa Goluboff provides insight into the importance of the Brown v. Board of Education decisions and the wealth of information available on the Brown II case from the Prettyman papers. The Prettyman Papers, which are available in the library’s Special Collections and have been digitized on the library’s Special Collections website, highlight the important role of the clerks and provide insight into the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of the Supreme Court, and are a fascinating example of the scope of materials to be found in the library’s manuscript collections.
You’re probably already used to using HeinOnline to quickly look up cite-check-worthy PDFs of law journal articles or U.S.
Supreme Court cases. Did you know you can now do the same thing with United
Nations treaties? If you have a citation for the United Nations Treaty Series
or the League of Nations Treaty Series, you can get a PDF reproduction of that
treaty through Hein’s UN Law Collection. Go to “Enter a United Nations Treaty Series Citation” under
Finding Aids and type in the volume and page number just as you would to get a
law review article. No more having to figure out how to navigate the UN’s own online collection of treaties. The
Hein UN Law Collection also includes the International Court of Justice’s official
Reports of Judgments, Advisory Opinions
and Orders back to 1947, along with UN publications on international trade,
the Law of the Sea, disarmament and other issues.
Still not finding the treaty or international document
you need? Try our International Law Guide, or check with a librarian (come to the reference desk or email lawlibref@virginia.edu).
The
first release of the new NAACP Papers collection is now
available to students, faculty, and staff through the ProQuestHistory Vault
database. The material now available includes records from the national office
and documents emanating from the NAACP’s efforts to promote equality in education,
voting, housing, employment, and the armed forces. Later this year, documents relating to Scottsboro, lynching, criminal justice,
peonage, labor, and segregation and discrimination complaints will be added, as well as the
Legal Department’s working files for over 600 cases from the 1950s through
early 1970s. A full
description of content is available on ProQuest’s website. Materials that
are not yet available online can be found at Alderman Library on
microfiche.
Exam time is stressful so we
thought we would help our hard working students feel at home with some
comfort food. On Monday evening, the library held its first ever Flash Pancakes
Mob, providing fresh-cooked pancakes, sausage and bacon to students in the
MyLab area of the library. Librarians Micheal and Ben said that “we estimate
that in the one hour that we were open, we cooked about 957
pancakes. About. Plus bacon and sausage.” The library is thinking
maybe grilled cheese for next semester.
Like
you, Arthur has been very busy lately. The holidays are approaching, as well as
exams. There never seems to be enough hours in the day to get everything done,
especially in December. Arthur will be tempted to pull all-nighters to squeeze
in more study time before exams, but it turns out that this strategy is
actually counterproductive. We think of sleeping as a passive activity, yet research
has shown that our minds are in fact quite busy during sleep. Sleep helps
strengthen our memories and “practice” the skills we’ve learned while
awake—this process is called “consolidation." So once he’s crammed in all the info
he can, Arthur plans to put away his coffee and books long enough to get a
decent night’s sleep. We hope you will, too!
