O'Quinn Law Library Newsletter May/June, 2007

From the desk of the Editor

This month the Library staff has experienced the warm feeling that one’s hard work is appreciated: the Library is the recipient of the Class gift of the Class of 2007. To all in this class, we want you to stay in touch, to come back to visit us, and to see the library resource the future students can enjoy because of your generosity. We also want to acknowledge the Section A, One-L students for their generous gift to the Library. In their words, they have given their fellow students indirectly “a friendly, unsolicited hug.” Giving to the Law Library provides a 100% return because all of the monetary gift is spent on acquisitions, which will benefit the law students, law faculty, and the Law Center.

A Heartfelt Thank You to the Class of 2007

To all members of the Class Gift Committee for the Class of 2007:

The staff of the O’Quinn Law Library joins me in thanking you all personally for your efforts in making possible this fantastic gift to the library.  We will give careful thought to devoting this gift to the acquisition of a Class of 2007 Collection that will do justice to your consideration for the library and give you yet another reason to be proud alumni of the University of Houston Law Center. It is not possible for us to thank each of the members of the Class of 2007 individually, but please tell one and all just how gratified we are by this impressive contribution to the excellence of the law library and to the future students who will enjoy the benefits of your generosity.

Spencer L. Simons

Director of the Law Library and Assistant Professor of Law

University of Houston Law Center

A Friendly, Unsolicited Hug

Represented by Scott Looper, the students in Section A of Class of 2009 presented the Library “a friendly, unsolicited hug” in the form of a check. This unsolicited gift is meaningful to the Library and its staff far beyond the amount donated. Thank you for acknowledging our efforts and contribution. We enjoy doing what we have been doing anyway, but it certainly feels great knowing that we are appreciated.

New Titles Authored by Our Faculty by Jenel Cotton

Fred Bosselman, Jacqueline Weaver, ... [et al.] Energy, economics, and the environment: cases and materials.  2d ed.  Foundation Press [St. Paul, Minn.] : Thomson/West, 2006. KF2120.A7B67 2006

The first edition of this title was published in 2000 to meet the need for a casebook on energy, economics, and the environment in a new century and was very well received.  This edition “builds on that effort, with a particular emphasis on recent issues such as increased attention to the environmental concerns surrounding the use of energy resources and energy reliability” (Preface of second edition). This text is organized roughly chronologically, according to the periods in history within which the issues arose. Economic and environmental issues are integrated with energy resource issues: energy policy, energy in nature, the concept of a public utility, water power, coal, oil, natural gas regulation before 1985, rate regulation, competitive markets in natural gas, introduction to electricity, wholesale electric power competition, stranded costs, retail competition in electric power, nuclear energy, energy in transportation, international petroleum, the climate change issue, and continuing issues in economic regulation.

American Bar Association, Section of Antitrust Law. Federal statutory exemptions from antitrust law. American Bar Association, c2007. “Substantial contributions were made by...Darren Bush.” KF1649.F44 2007

“Substantial contributions were made by...Darren Bush [of the University of Houston Law Center]....”Federal statutory exemptions from antitrust law comprehensively surveys the diverse array of statutes currently in force that modify or limit federal antitrust law, and analyzes their costs and benefits. This book presents an analysis of the statutory exemption practice and its effects on the economy and public welfare. A great resource for lawyers and economists. The substantive study itself begins with a survey of all statutory exemptions currently in force and the economic theories by which they are commonly justified. The subsequent case studies consider the applicability of these economic theories to the statutes that Congress has adopted. Next, focused exemptions, involving railroads, the broadcasting of professional sports games, and newspaper joint publishing arrangements are examined and analyses of the statutes modifying antitrust law, as applied to joint ventures and agreements among competitors on research, production and standards setting, and local government restraints on competition are provided. Finally observations are drawn from the cases studies about the legislative process of exempting from or modifying antitrust law.

Featured Library Resource

Keyword Search of the Library Catalog by Yuxin Li

A library’s catalog connects its library users and the materials in its collection. The online catalog of the UH Libraries System covers collections in the M. D. Anderson Library, Architecture & Art Library, Law Library, Music Library, Optometry Library, Pharmacy Library, UH Clear Lake Library, UH Downtown Library, and UH Victoria Library, with a total of more than 370,000 bibliographic records. It is a tremendous resource for the researcher.

As a database, the library catalog consists of individual bibliographic records of each title acquired to further the studying and researching of law. Each record contains several access points, such as author, title, or subject. In other words, one can search the catalog for the desired material if one knows the author, title, subjects and/or keywords of what one is looking for. It pays to be able to use the catalog efficiently.

If you are a frequent user of the UH library online catalog, you may be familiar with the template below, which is the first item on the first page of the UH Library Catalog (http://library.uh.edu/).

Search Catalog by

keywords title journal title author author/title subject other catalog options

Searching for an item by author and title is easy if the information you have is accurate and precise. If, however, the information you have is not accurate, or if you only have some idea of the subject area of material you need, you should employ keyword searching.

Type the WORD(S) you want, then click Search

Top of Form

Any Field: Author: Title: Subject: Note: And And not Or
Any Field: Author: Title: Subject: Note: And And not Or
Any Field: Author: Title: Subject: Note:

Bottom of Form

For example, to search for items on arbitration in the library’s thesis collection, if a patron enters “thesis” in one box and “arbitration” in another box, the search result will bring the eight titles below.

Num	Mark	KEYWORDS (1-8 of 8)	Medium	Year
1		Implementing the MBV case : Is Brazil now world-standard in transnational commercial arbitration? /	BOOK	2005
2		Provisional measures in international commercial arbitration / by Ali Yesilirmak.	BOOK	c2005
3		Lessons from chapter 11 of NAFTA for the enactment of environmental measures / by Luis F. Suarez.	BOOK	2005
4		Le droit de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce : analyse critique / par David Luff.	BOOK	2004
5		Defenses to enforcement of private international arbitration agreements under U.S. law / Reinnette M	BOOK	1994
6		The recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards in Spain : current problems / from Manuel-Julio V	BOOK	1994
7		The element of negotiation in the pacific settlement of disputes between states. An analysis of prov	BOOK	1973
8		Evidence before international tribunals [microform] / by Durward V. Sandifer	BOOK	1939

Four of these titles are theses written by the graduates from UH Law Center and located in the library’s thesis collection. The other titles were written somewhere else and located in general stacks. If a patron only searches by title or subject with “arbitration”, he/she will face hundreds of titles as a result.

In order to search more effectively, one can conduct a Boolean search by pulling down the connector menu to choose from “And”, “And not”, and “Or”. If we enter one more keyword “Houston” to the above example with three connectors “And”, the search result will be exactly the four theses about arbitration.

While so many library users turn to Google for their research, Google search cannot substitute for the library catalog. The catalog guides you to the unique resources in the Law Library. Compared to the search above, a Google advanced search similarly formulated results in 22 entries, including long lists of library acquisitions, UHLC-IPIL Degree Offerings, UHLC Fall 2007 Course Schedule, Law Center Courses, and Cullen College of Engineering CIVE Courses, and etc. But none of them includes a list of UHLC theses about arbitration. There is a good reason why expert researchers such as Mr. Peter Egler, the Head of Reference at O’Quinn Law Library, uses keyword search frequently when he searches for library material.

Case Wayback Machine for This Month

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) by Jenel Cotton

On May 2, 1927 the Supreme Court upheld a law that allowed for the government to forcibly sterilize the mentally handicapped. This case involved a woman named Carrie Buck who was committed to a Virginia mental institution with a condition that had been present in her family for three generations. The State of Virginia allowed for the involuntary sterilization of the mentally handicapped in state institutions for the “health of the patient and the welfare of society”. However before Carrie could be sterilized, the procedure needed to be approved by the board of the state mental institution to protect against abuse. Ms. Buck appealed the decision from the Supreme Court of Virginia that upheld the board’s decision concerning her sterilization on the grounds that her Fourteenth Amendment due process and equal protection rights were violated. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, had no sympathy. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used extremely harsh language when he stated, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

In 1942, however, the attitude concerning forced sterilizations had changed. In Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 US 535, the U.S. Supreme Court declared a similar law for prisoners in Oklahoma unconstitutional and recognized procreation as a fundamental right on equal protection grounds. Thus, any government attempts to impose involuntary sterilization had to meet strict scrutiny requirements. Although Buck v. Bell was not explicitly overruled, not much from this case survives from the subsequent attitude change. Some scholars believe the Nazi eugenics practices may have contributed toward the public distaste for such laws.

Library Questions and Answers by Mon Yin Lung

Question 1. Have the elevator & bathrooms cleaned—its [sic] very dirty.

Answer: Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. This message was immediately related to the Director of Facility Management for UHLC, who oversees the building and custodian operation. By the time this newsletter is published these two areas should be cleaned.

Library Fun Because of limited space, this column is suspended until next issue.