The World Digital Library Has Launched
"The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."

New on LLRX.com: FIT for Purpose – The New FLARE Index to Treaties
FIT for Purpose – The New FLARE Index to Treaties: Dr. Peter Clinch and Steven Whittle describes the background development, various ways in which the service can be used, and technical issues of this fully searchable database. Launched in March 2009, it indexes and lists over 1,500 of the most significant multilateral treaties concluded from 1856 onwards. It was conceived to fill a gap in the range of information finding tools available on the internet for the international lawyer.

Google Announces News Timeline
Google News Blog: Google News Timeline--a new feature on Google Labs that organizes many different types of search results on a zoomable, graphical timeline. Google News Timeline presents search results from a wide range of sources. You can search and browse results from Google News, including headlines, quotes, photos from our Hosted News partners, and YouTube partner videos. You can also search for thousands of archival newspapers and magazines from Google News Archive Search and Google Book Search.

After the United States and The Republic of Texas were unable to reach a Treaty agreement, Congress passed a Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States [3]. The Republic of Texas' Annexation Convention then submitted the Ordinance of Annexation[4] to popular vote in October 1845 and the public approved the measure. This Ordinance of Annexation was submitted and approved by the House and Senate of the United States and signed by the President on December 29, 1845 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Annexation

The Avalon Project is a collection of documents in law, history and diplomacy maintained by the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School. Go to http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp and type “joint resolution” texas to see another view of the joint resolution admitting Texas to the union and giving them the right to divide into four more states. The Avalon Project groups documents into ancient, medieval, and 15th through 21st centuries.

Merit Selection and Retention Elections
Long favored by the American Bar Association, the American Judicature Society and others, this process would replace direct election of state judges, but also not rely solely on appointment by a governor and confirmation by the legislature. Although only several states use merit selection for all of their judges, about two-thirds of states use variations of this system, albeit limited to only a few judgeships. Called the “Missouri Plan,” because that state adopted this system in 1940, it is a hybrid of both appointment and elections. Such a system was proposed in 2005 to replace Pennsylvania’s system of partisan elections for state judges. Backed by the Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, allied with the Justice at Stake Campaign and other legal organizations, it would establish a bi-partisan, citizen-based nominating commission appointed by the governor and legislative leaders. The commission would screen candidates and compile a list of the most qualified, from which list the governor would fill a judicial vacancy. The judges would face voters every six or ten years, depending on the level of their court, in unopposed retention elections. Voter approval has been an obstacle to amending state constitutions to establish or expand merit selection systems. Utah, in 1984, was the last state to approve such a system, which has failed to win approval in several state referenda since then. For example, in 1998, Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission won approval for a local option to extend the system of merit selection and retention currently in place for state appeals court judges and Supreme Court justices to also apply to trail judges in local circuit and country courts but voters in every one of sixty-seven counties rejected it in separate referenda in 2000 and continue to select trial judges in nonpartisan elections; the average vote for the change was only thirty-two percent. State minority and women’s bar associations campaigned against merit selection worried that the change would reverse the progress they recently made in gaining judgeships.
http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/12/elections/index5.html

American Bar Association information on judicial elections
http://www.abanet.org/judind/pdf/hod-final.pdf
http://www.abanet.org/litigation/litigationnews/top_stories/judicial-elections.html

Court addresses and structures: http://www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/info_court_web_sites.html

The same title may be used for more than one book. Example: The Music of the Spheres (2001) by Elizabeth Redfern and Music of the Spheres (1961) by Guy Murchie

Does the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee attach to opinions doled out by credit-rating agencies? Historically, the answer has been yes. But that protection is being questioned amid allegations that the firms had conflicts that encouraged them to give unduly rosy opinions about the creditworthiness of securities backed by subprime mortgages. Click here for the story, from the WSJ's Nathan Koppel.
WSJ Law Blog April 21, 2009

moirologist (moy-ROL-uh-jist) noun: a hired mourner
While researching this word, I came across websites that offer "eulogy packs". One such site lists a "Mother's Eulogy pack" that includes "9 speeches, 3 poems, 3 free bonus". Only $25.95. Fathers go cheaper: $19.97. Let's not be too smug and look down upon those who buy these packs. When we go to the neighborhood card store to buy a greeting card or a sympathy card, we're also hiring someone to package words to help us convey our feelings. Professional mourners are not a new thing either--there's a long tradition going back to ancient Greece and beyond. As late as 1908 a New York Times article reported on a professional mourners' strike in Paris. Then there is claque, a group of people hired to applaud a performer at a show. A.Word.A.Day

April 24 is the birthday of novelist Anthony Trollope, born in London (1815). Many of his novels originated from daydreams that he had as a child. He worked for the post office, and became a postal surveyor. And every morning before breakfast, he sat down to write 1,000 words, publishing about three books every two years.
April 24 is the birthday of novelist and journalist Clare Boylan, born in Dublin (1948). She is best known for her work Emma Brown (2003), in which she set out to finish a novel that Charlotte Brontë had begun. Boylan had been fascinated with Charlotte Brontë for a long time, and she had even tried to write a play about the end of Brontë's life. Then she found an 18-page fragment of a manuscript that Charlotte Brontë had begun writing in the 1850s, shortly before her death. It was two chapters of a novel featuring a protagonist named Emma, and Clare Boylan set out to finish the novel that Brontë had started. The Writer’s Almanac