Week XIV

Continuing the theme of legal resources for teaching/students... Project Oyez, a website dedicated to Supreme Court Media. The United States court system is notoriously traditional when it comes to allowing media in the courtroom. The Supreme Court especially has been hesitant to allow photos, let alone audio recordings released to the public (there is an ancient audio recording device that records for the use of the Court, but is not generally released).

Sometimes, rarely, there are releases made. Other media are allowed at times too. Oyez is dedicated to archiving all of this media and information for public consumption, which I believe is a valuable tool for students, etc, trying to gain a deeper understanding about the Supreme Court.

Week XIII

After years of legal research, I've become fairly familiar with some of the most useful sites. I shared the Presidential Documents link a few weeks ago. Another hugely useful site, though its interface leaves a lot to be desired, is THOMAS, run by the Library of Congress.

Thomas contains online text for bills, resolutions, etc. proposed to the United States Congress. Its searchable, and while it has a fairly clunky interface, it is very useful, especially for people who don't have access to Lexis Law.

Week XII

Okay, this is for Week XII, but the link features National Library Week, which is April 15-21. I personally think, as educators, being aware of initiatives like this is very important because often times there are extra materials these non profit groups provide that help to highlight their cause. It can be a very good way to briefly introduce students to a wide variety of issues without the teacher having to spend an in-depth amount of time on structuring a lesson plan to overview the topic.

Week XI

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents

A rather little known site (outside of legal research), where the actual text of any presidential document is posted only a week or so after its release. This is especially useful for students wanting to do a paper on a presidential speech that may not have been televised, etc. One of its limitations though is that it only covers until 1993 digitally, though the information is available less conviently in print for earlier presidential documents.

Week X

Playing post catch-up...

Project Gutenberg

The oldest of the e-book libraries online, and still one of the best maintained. Has copies of public domain works whose copyrights have expired in the United States. I personally think this would be a great resource for lower income schools who might have computer labs, but not necessarily the money to buy all the books for reading each year. This way kids could do some of their readings in-class (maybe some kind of after school homework reading program even?).