The Pappas Law Library has just recently added this database to our extensive collection.  The collection includes primary law as well as secondary sources and Massachusetts and various other states’ Bar publications. It also has a LawWatch alert service as well as GlobalCite, a citator tool.   To download the Quick Reference card to get started, click here.

1. the employee’s claim was covered by the Wage Act
2. the forum state court would not apply Massachusetts law and
3. the law the forum state court would apply would deprive the employee of a substantive right guaranteed by the Wage Act.

For more information on this case, see this post by Constangy, Brooks & Smith, LLP.

To see the list, 

LAW RELATED

Career-Related

• The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law (Annex KF 300 .L48 2010)
• The Ultimate Guide to Your Legal Career: What Every Young Lawyer Must Know to Avoid the Mistakes and Maximize the Value of a Career in the Law by K. Charles Cannon
• The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Robert I. Sutton
• The Associate as Rainmaker: Building Your Business Brain by David King Keller
• The Art of Practicing Law: Talking to Clients and Colleagues and Others by James M. Kramon

Legal Fiction

• Bleak House by Charles Dickens (Mugar PR 4556 .A2 P3 1971)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Annex PS 3562 .E353 T6 1999)
• Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver (Mugar PS 3543 .O6 A6 F58)

Legal Nonfiction

• The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin (Annex KF8748 .T66 2007)
• Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, & Political Manipulation at America’s Largest Charitable Trust by Samuel P. King (Annex KF 228 .K36 K56 2006)
• Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas by Dale Carpenter  (Annex KF 224 .L39 C37 2012)
• A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr (Annex KF 228 .A7 H37 1995)
• Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives by Robert Draper
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (Law Reserve HV 9950 .A44 2010)

Political Nonfiction

• The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
• All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (Annex E 859 .B47 1974)

NON-LEGAL TITLES

FICTION

Action-Adventure

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Education: Young Adult PZ 7 .C6837 Hun 2008)
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (Mugar PR 5486 .A2)
• The Lost World by A. Conan Doyle (Mugar PR 4622 .L6 F12)
• The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling (Mugar PR 4854 .M16 1987)
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Mugar PR 6013 .O56 L6 F62)

Classics

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (available as an e-book through the library catalog)
• The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (Education: Young Adult PS 1408 .A25 1950)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (Mugar PS 3561 .E667 O5 2003)
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Education: Juvenile Collection PZ 7 .C262 Al 1988)
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck (Mugar PS 3537 .T3234 P4)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Mugar PR 4167 .J3 1993)
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Mugar PS 1868 F69)

Fantasy

• Stardust by Neil Gaiman
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Historical Fiction

• The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani
• Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln by Janis Cooke Newman
• Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff (Mugar DT 92.7 .S35 2010)

Horror

• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
• Watchers by Dean Koontz

Mysteries

• Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Romances

• On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves

Science Fiction

• The God of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Thrillers

• Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith

Children’s

• I am a Pole and So Can You by Stephen Colbert

NONFICTION

Biography

• Prague Winter by Madeline Albright

Self-Help

•   The 14 Day Stress Cure: A New Approach for Dealing With Stress That Can Change Your Life by Morton C. Orman
•  Lawyers, Anger and Anxiety: Dealing With the Stresses of the Legal Profession by Rebecca Nerison (Annex KF 300 .N47 2010)
• The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter – And How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay

The Ballad of Robert L. Brock

by Maximilian Lee

based on Brock v. Angelone, 105 F.3d 952 (4th Cir. 1997).

Locked away in a Virginia prison,

With all the time to complain in derision

Robert Lee Brock did just that, bringing dozens of 1983 suits

The trial judges ruled the cases were frivolous

They cried what a crock!

But this would not deter the unique Mr. Brock.

No extra meat meant cruel & unusual punishment, he maintained!

Poisoned by pancake syrup is just another one of his claims,

Which included a suit against himself!

For violating his own civil rights and religious beliefs

By drinking too much and committing bad deeds.

It sounds like a hug is all he needs.

Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), in the style of P.G. Wodehouse by Priya-Alika Elias

You know the tale. A drunken feller

(who went by the unfortunate name of Schmerber)

got into a rather gory

car crash – long story –

but the chappie said he was sober!

So the jolly old doc at the hospital took

A blood sample to see if they were mistook –

And by Jove, it turned out

There never was a doubt -

That S was soused, the crook.

“ Hold on,”  he yelped.  “I RESENT

This violation of my 4^th Amendment

Rights! The 5^th, too…

YOU BETCHA I WILL SUE!”

…he lost. Remember, kiddies, cops can do anything. THE END.

Best of luck this summer, and remember that if you run into trouble, don’t be afraid to ask a librarian (here or at your place of employment) for help!

It is a remarkable story: how the unlikely 1998 arrest of two men for having anal sex in a private bedroom–an act that, Carpenter shows, the defendants almost certainly didn’t commit– resulted in the most important gay rights victory in American legal history.

The book has been compared to other classics that provide a definitive account of other landmark cases: Anthony Lewis’ Gideon’s Trumpet (Gideon v. Wainwright) and Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice (Brown v. Board of Education). The comparison seems appropriate, as it is hard to imagine another book telling this story in a fuller or more compelling way.

Carpenter interviewed many of the people involved in the case and writes in detail about all of the principals: John Lawrence and Tyron Garner (the defendants who pleaded “no contest” while contending they had not committed the act constituting a crime under state law); the arresting officers (who gave conflicting accounts about whether Lawrence and Garner were engaged in sex, or if so, the kind of sex they were having); the Houston activists and courthouse staff who knew enough to understand the potential importance of the charges; the lawyers on both sides of the case; the justice of the peace and appellate judges in the Texas state courts; and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.

One of the book’s great strengths is Carpenter’s skillful explanation how attitudes and assumptions rooted in political and religious views had a crucial impact at every stage of the case. He places the arrest of John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in the context of homophobic political and religious culture of Houston. He shows how partisan politics lead to the reversal of an initial appeals court panel decision overturning the conviction of Lawrence and Garner; that decision was reversed en banc by the appellate court, under heavy political pressure from the state Republican party. Ironically, this anti-gay decision kept the case alive, thus creating the opportunity for an historic gay rights victory at the Supreme Court. And Carpenter explains how the Justices greater familiarity with the lives of gay people, including a significant number among their judicial clerks, created a dramatically different environment when Lawrence was argued in 2003 than when Bowers was decided 17 years earlier.

The chapter on the oral argument, “Mismatch at the Supreme Court,” could  be read profitably by anyone interested in appellate advocacy. It brings the transcript to life, with observations about the styles of the Justices (notably Kennedy, Souter and Scalia), the lawyers’ strategies in responding to challenging questions, and a more complete account of the mood in the courtroom than has appeared in print before. It also shows how busy local prosecutors (largely unassisted except by amicus curiae briefs that may have harmed their position more than helped) were overmatched by a coordinated effort from Lambda Legal and its allies among LGBT academics, public interest legal organizations and crucially, Paul Smith, a veteran appellate specialist from Jenner & Block.

In its final sections, Carpenter describes the legal landscape after Lawrence. As suggested by the book’s subtitle–”How A Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans”–the impact of the decision went far beyond rarely enforced sodomy laws. By defining “sodomy” in a way that classified millions of LGBT Americans as presumptive criminals, these laws had an impact in cases ranging from child custody to employment discrimination to professional licensing. And as Justice Scalia predicted in his dissenting opinion, the ruling striking such laws down may have opened to door to a future constitutional ruling on same-sex marriage.

Before this book, Carpenter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was perhaps best known for his regular posts on The Volokh Conspiracy, the popular blog on law and public affairs. Now, that is likely to change.

Bloomberg Law subscription remains active throughout the Summer and can be used to research federal and state cases, statutes, rules and regulations.  Bloomberg Law also includes foreign and international law databases, U.S. congressional information, federal and selected state court dockets, news and corporate information.  Bloomberg encourages law students to use their academic access to Bloomberg Law as much as possible, even when working for law firms. (For those of you graduating, BL is available for 6 months following graduation.) Sign up here if you have not yet done so.

Lexis Summer use begins on June 1st and is restricted to Lexis Advance. (This is a change from previous years’ policy.) If you have not yet registered for your Advance ID and PW, check your email(s) for notice from Lexis, and if you don’t see it – contact michael.campion@lexisnexis.com, to obtain your Advance temporary ID and PW.( Graduating students have access through August 31st on Advance.) Access restrictions include these points:

Lexis Advance:

• Summer course preparation and assignments
• Research associated with Moot Court, Law Review, or Law Journal
• Research associated with pursuing a grant or scholarship
• Service as a paid or unpaid research assistant to a professor
• An internship, externship or clinic position for school credit or graduation requirement
• Study for the bar exam
• Research skill improvement for educational purposes

Westlaw Summer access begins on June 1st and ends on August 1st.

You are eligible to register for a Summer extension if you are:
· enrolled in summer classes,
· working for a law review/journal or moot court,
· working for a faculty member as a research assistant, or
· working in an unpaid public interest internship/externship (excluding court and government settings).  Unpaid means ANY form of compensation (including stipends, fellowships, or expense reimbursements) invalidates the qualification.
The link for requesting extensions is here.

If you do not qualify to request an extension as explained above, your access will be limited to 40 hours of access in each of the months of June and July.

Graduating Students may apply to extend their passwords beyond May 31st for 5 hours of access per month in June and July.