Learning the rules of legal citation is a challenge for new and seasoned legal researchers alike. Good instruction and practice are required to master these rules. Think about the first sport you learned to play. Did you master all the rules the first time you played the game? Do most people even read a rule book when learning to play a new sport? Initially, it is a challenge for any player learning the game to follow all of the rules correctly. Generally, only coaches study the rule book. The rules of the game are very important so coaches and players know what is and is not permitted “on the field.”

Most rules are disseminated orally and learned through practice. Law professors who teach legal research or supervise legal writing are the coaches in the game of legal citation; they must disseminate the rules to their students. The professors have a duty to stimulate a student's mastery of legal citation rules to meet the proficiency required of legal writing in the profession. Law students who do not master the rules of legal citation are more likely to plagiarize.

The issue of whether constitutional courts should refer to foreign law has become the subject of debate and discussion around the world. In the US in particular, a heated judicial and academic debate on the issue has spilled into a political controversy extending to the introduction of federal and State Bills to prohibit judicial citation of foreign law and to Congressional proposals for such citation to be an impeachable offence. The use of foreign law, for some, is in tension with national sovereignty: one Congressman claimed that citation amounted to a surrender of lawmaking ‘to the control of foreign courts and foreign governments', and potentially represented the start of an internationalist slide in foreign policy and security and military strategy as well. However, these normative debates about foreign law play at best a muted role in Australian jurisprudential and political life, and we do not directly engage with them here. Rather, we consider to what extent, and how, Australian High Court judges engage with foreign and international legal materials in constitutional cases. In this article we track the frequency of citation in constitutional cases and provide a substantive analysis of the ways in which those materials are used.

Consultants are retained to assist libraries in identifying, designing, and implementing solutions to a wide variety of strategic, management, operational, and human resources issues. The goal of the library-consultant relationship is to improve the operations of the organization. Although often unrecognized as such, law librarians are natural consultants. Librarians are problem solvers, and as such develop and use many of the same skills as consultants in their everyday roles in the law library.

For those versatile librarians skilled in change management and interested in pursuing these challenging professional opportunities, this article discusses best practices for library consultants and provides advice on how to avoid pitfalls in the context of an international case study. Part I of the article provides an introduction to professional consulting. Part II discusses the author's case study, a six-month fellowship with the Legal Resources Centre of South Africa. Part III then concludes the article with an articulation of the skills and talents exhibited by successful consultants to enable interested readers to better understand if consulting is an opportunity matched to their professional interests and skills.

This contribution deals with the evolution of the traditional Catalan legal system after the end of the Spanish War of Succession (early 18th-Century) up to the late 20th-Century. It shows how the traditional Catalan legal system survived and evolved through the end of the Old Regime to the 19th-Century constitutional system, and focuses on the traditional Catalan legal system (and law compilations) that survives beside the brand new Spanish Civil code, along with other Spanish existing regional legal regulations (due to historical surviving legal systems from pre-existing kingdoms).

There is a difference between voluntarily giving somebody an amount of money and having the same amount of money taken away from one, maybe even without one noticing it at first. Even though the economic situation might be the same, it is the loss of control, of sovereignty over one's own affairs, which we find troublesome. Likewise, hardly anyone, when buying something from a complete stranger, would assent to the idea that one is to hand over one's wallet, let the seller take whatever he or she sees fit, and return the wallet, with the buyer only being able to find out much later, how much was taken.

In September 2008, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced the United States’ intention to join Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei, and Chile in what was then called the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, a preferential trade agreement. Since then, the agreement has grown in scope and ambition. The negotiations to create what is now known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have expanded to include seven other nations. The USTR wants the TPP to be “an ambitious, next-generation, Asia-Pacific trade agreement that reflects U.S. economic priorities and values.” According to the USTR's webpage dedicated to the agreement, the administration is “working in close partnership with Congress and with a wide range of stakeholders, in seeking to conclude a strong agreement that addresses the issues that U.S. businesses and workers are facing in the 21st century.”

This paper provides an overview of the Catalan law at the European context. How the Catalan institutions can tackle on the Spanish Government policies and decisions in front of the European Union. And how the European Union Law and policies are implemented in a decentralized country such Spain where Autonomous Communities have their own Governments and Parliaments. There will also be examined how this Spanish territorial decentralized structure affect the implementation of such EU norms and its control. Finally, there will be exposed how Catalan institutions manage to participate in front of the European Union institutions. Which are the instruments that can guarantee this participation and which are the EU responses to them.

This is an interdisciplinary article focusing on the interplay between information and communication technology (ICT) and international law (IL). Its purpose is to open a dialogue between ICT and IL practitioners that focuses on the ways in which ICT can enhance equitable participation in international legal structures, particularly through capturing the possibilities associated with big data. This depends on the ability of individuals to access big data, for it to be structured in a manner that makes it accessible and for the individual to be able to take action based on it.

Information Literacy (IL) has been defined by the ACRL as the ability to identify, access, evaluate, and apply information in an ethical manner. However, IL skills are not an ossified set of behaviors, and IL skills cannot evolve in an intellectual vacuum, without the content that allows for such skills to emerge from practice. As such, IL should be contextualized within the structures and modes of thought of particular disciplines. In response, a burgeoning IL in law movement has arisen, applying the standards of identification, accessing, evaluation, application, and ethical analyses to legal information and the research methods and tools unique to the practice of law. This article traces the development of this movement in three distinct jurisdictions: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.

In 1995, Robert Ambrogi, former columnist for Legal Technology News, wrote about the Internet's potential to revolutionize the accessibility and delivery of legal information. Almost 25 years later, Ambrogi now describes his initial optimism as a “pipe dream.” Perhaps one of the greatest problems facing the legal industry today is the sheer inaccessibility of legal information. Not only does this inaccessibility prevent millions of Americans from obtaining reliable legal information, but it also prevents many attorneys from adequately providing legal services to their clients. Whether locked behind government paywalls or corporate cash registers, legal information is simply not efficiently and affordably attainable through traditional means.

This paper provides an overview of the legal regulation of intestate succession in Catalonia. In particular, it explores the principles that govern its operation and the main novelties introduced in it by the Law 10/2008, of 10 July, which enacted Book IV of the Catalan Civil Code, on the law of succession.

This Bibliographical Calendar focuses on a general armed conflict within Europe that spread to most parts of the world. It started during the second decade of the twentieth century. In this context the present Calendar offers an overview of the chronology leading up to the First World War. It is also a documented survey of official transactions relating to the World War with particular attention to the sources of record. The main focus of the work is on diplomatic acts of the belligerent and neutral parties that accompanied the military dimension of the conflict.

The Calendar assumes the form of a compilation of related kinds of information situated between a bibliography and a repertory, with the aim of elucidating the course of World War One from the perspectives of international law and diplomacy.

“Data protection” law refers to the legal scheme governing the collection, holding, processing, disclosure, and transfer of individuals’ personal information online … and off. Data protection is a fast-changing and increasingly important supranational, international (including transnational), and national topic that touches on a numerous core political concerns, including the freedom of expression, public safety, and international trade. One recent study found that “data privacy laws are spreading globally, and their number and geographical diversity accelerating since 2000.”