Who Owns This Article? Applying Copyright’s Work-Made-for-Hire Doctrine to Librarians’ Scholarship

The Copyright Act of 1976 provides that works—including scholarship—written within the scope of employment belong to employers. But copyright law and actual practices widely diverge. The academic community generally allows librarians to claim ownership of their writing, even when that ignores copyright law. Mr. Hellyer supports copyright ownership by librarians, and calls for the law and common practices to be harmonized

Free Websites for Virginia Legal Research

It’s no secret that free websites give away content sold by high-cost subscription databases, but you might not know how useful free sites are. If you think there’s always a trade-off between cost and quality, think again. Some free resources for Virginia legal research are as good as—or better than—subscription sites. And some free resources aren’t quite as good as what you can buy, but are an option

U.N. Documents in U.S. Case Law

Mr. Hellyer explores the role pLayed by U.N. documents in the opinions of United States courts. He examines the subject matter of opinions in which U.N. documents were cited, the types of documents that were cited, the purpose of the citations, the treatment received by the cited documents, and the time periods in which the citations occurred

Evaluating Shepard’s, KeyCite, and Bcite for Case Validation Accuracy

This study evaluates and compares how accurately three legal citators (Shepard’s, KeyCite, and BCite) identify negative treatment of case law, based on a review of 357 citing relationships that at least one citator labeled as negative. In this sample, Shepard’s and KeyCite missed or mislabeled about one-third of negative citing relationships, while BCite missed or mislabeled over two-thirds. The citators’ relative performance is less clear when examining the most serious citator errors, examples of which can be found in all three citators

Assessing Parliament’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Parliament had to discharge its constitutional role in unprecedented conditions following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. How did it fare? This article assesses Parliament’s response to the pandemic across its core constitutional functions of legislating, scrutinising, financing, representing and providing a government. It argues that Parliament’s response was remarkably effective and resulted in meaningful permanent changes to the legislature’s operation. Nonetheless, the response also highlighted opportunities for further institutional strengthening regarding Parliament’s role in a national emergency