Lee F. Peoples

Placemaking in the Academic Law Library

Public and university libraries have embraced placemaking theories to develop user-centric library spaces. Placemaking has largely been overlooked in the context of academic law libraries. This article explores the range of space planning choices available to law libraries as they downsize their print collections. The benefits of reimaging law library space using placemaking concepts are explained.

Testing the Limits of WestlawNext

Law students in Advanced Legal Research courses at two law schools completed a series of exercises designed to explore several discrete aspects of WestlawNext. Professor Peoples reports the results of this study concerning the impact of WestlawNexts pricing model, user interface, and search algorithm on research results. The article concludes with suggestions for improvement to WestlawNext and a call for librarians to become more involved in training students to use WestlawNext.

Controlling the Common Law: A Comparative Analysis of No-Citation Rules and Publication Practices in England and the United States

Finding a balance between growth and restraint has been a central tension in common law countries. Various practices have been employed to achieve a balance between growth and restraint. The nineteenth century legal treatise tradition, the American Law Institutes Restatement, the West Digest System, uniform laws, legal encyclopedias, and other devices have been used in the United States in an effort to bring order to the rapidly expanding common law. The Law Commission, Law Reform Committee, Digest, and Halsburys Laws of England are examples of similar efforts in England. Publication practices and no-citation rules play an important and controversial role in controlling the growth of the common law. These practices seem fundamentally in conflict with a system that bases its very existence on widely available judicial decisions that are presumptively citable. Common law systems have employed these measures in part to satisfy a bench and bar who complain of drowning in a sea of cases. England and America have taken drastically different approaches to publication practices and no-citation rules. The English approach is found in a combination of rules limiting the rights of lawyers to cite unreported judgments and giving judges the power to prospectively declare the precedential value of their judgments. In contrast, American federal appellate courts are free to issue unpublished opinions and to decide their precedential value, but are prohibited from imposing any restrictions on the citation of unpublished opinions. This Article examines why England and America took divergent approaches and explores the potential consequences for the common law. Part I of this Article establishes a context for the discussion through a historical survey of publication and citation practices in England and the United States. Part I concludes with an explanation of the current rules in both jurisdictions. Part II examines efficiency arguments advanced to justify the practices employed in England and explores why these arguments were accepted in England and rejected in the United States. Part III addresses policy arguments made in each country over no-citation rules. Part III also compares the substantial differences in both the volume and substance of policy arguments made in each country. Part IV predicts the impact no-citation rules will have on the future of the common law through an examination of the precedential value of unreported and unpublished cases, the role of the judiciary in controlling the growth of the common law, jurisprudential theories, and the degree no-citation rules will be enforced in both jurisdictions.