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Additional Historical Statutes at Large Added to Law.gov

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Two years ago we added historical Statutes at Large to our Digitized Material page. Years 1789-1950 have been available there in a large PDF download, but we have been working steadily to add more functionality to the website.

salWe continue to add details to each Congress page that show the titles and dates of each statute, along with a smaller download for just that statute. Currently, we have years 1826-1919 (Congresses 19-65) available with chapter details. Years 1919-1923 (Congresses 66 and 67) will be posted by the end of 2016. And then we will continue to fill in the gaps in our coverage.

c40Be sure to read our Beginner’s Guide to Federal Statutes for more information on tracking down statutes and my previous blog post that will remind you how to best search the statutes.

And a special thanks to all of the interns, volunteers, and employees that have helped add the metadata to make this addition of the statutes possible: Latesha McCalip, Faith Hamby, Allegra Chilstrom, Everett Wiggins, Emily Johnson, Ashley Breymaier, Kevin Sitarski, Jennifer Proctor, Sara Hoover, Laura Fry and Megan Martinsen.

FALQs: The Swedish Detention Order Regarding Julian Assange

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The following is a guest post by Elin Hofverberg. Elin is a foreign law research consultant who covers Scandinavian countries at the Law Library of Congress. Elin has previously written for In Custodia Legis on diverse topics including Iceland – Global Legal Collection Highlights, Alfred Nobel’s Will: A Legal Document that Might Have Changed the World […]

Congress.gov Homepage Highlights, Alerts, and More Enhancements

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This has been an exciting and successful year for Congress.gov.  We accomplished a major milestone when we retired THOMAS in July.  Over the course of 2016, we completed a number of enhancements to Congress.gov.  In April we expanded quick search to include the Congressional Record, Committee Reports, Nominations, Treaty Documents, and Communications. In May we launched several new RSS feeds and […]

Law and Literature Event—Lawyer and Poet Monica Youn

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What is the relationship between law and literature? The Law Library of Congress and the Poetry and Literature Center recently explored that question during an evening event on Thursday, October 20. The event featured lawyer and poet Monica Youn, who read from her new book of poetry, Blackacre, and participated in a discussion with law […]

An Interview with Abdalrahman Alangari, Foreign Law Intern

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Describe your background. I was born and raised in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I attended elementary, middle, and high school there. In 2008, I graduated from Al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in Islamic law. What is your academic/professional history? After graduating from college in 2008, I was nominated […]

Modern Tribal Law on the Shelf

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Modern Tribal Law On the Shelf During National Native American Heritage Month, Law Library staff trawl the Library’s vast holdings for pertinent material to showcase for its online and onsite visitors. Researchers interested in the month’s origins can also visit the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) page for more information about the history of the […]

Ethical Considerations Related to the Representation of Someone Accused of Witchcraft

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If you find yourself representing someone accused of witchcraft, you will want to consult the Malleus Maleficarum. This treatise, housed in the Law Library of Congress Rare Book Vault, contains everything you need to know to identify a witch, or at least what two theologians and inquisitors believed constituted evidence of witchcraft in 1486 (the […]

The Volkswagen Litigations

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In September 2015, the German automaker Volkswagen (VW) admitted that it had manipulated software in around eleven million diesel vehicles worldwide to cheat on emissions tests. As more and more details emerged in the ensuing weeks and months, VW’s share value rapidly declined by 30 percent. U.S. regulators levied heavy fines of up to US$15.3 billion […]

New Report on Laws of Foreign Governments Lifting Sovereign Immunity

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The following is a guest post by Luis Acosta, chief of one of the Law Library’s foreign, comparative, and international law divisions.  Luis also recently wrote a post about a report on education as a constitutional right in foreign countries. The doctrine of sovereign immunity, or state immunity, is an international law principle that limits […]

Records & Research on the House of Representatives History, Art & Archives Website

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The following is a guest post by Alison M. Trulock, an archival specialist in the Office of Art and Archives within the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. In October 2016, the Clerk’s Office of the U.S. House of Representatives launched Records Search on the History, Art & Archives website. The website is a […]