Thursday, March 28, 2013
New Library Policy: 4th & 5th Floors of the Fred Parks Law Library Now "Ultra Quiet"
Starting April 1, 2013 the 4th and 5th floors of the Fred Parks Law Library will be designated as "Ultra Quiet" throughout the entire year. This means that cell phones, pagers, and conversations are forbidden in the study rooms, the book stacks, and at all the carrels and tables on these floors. The library asks that all noise and conversations be taken to another floor or into the stairwells. Exceptions to this rule will be made for class tours and reference assistance.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Following the Same-Sex Marriage Cases in the Supreme Court
By Jessica R. Alexander, J.D., M.L.S., Reference Librarian
Here is a short list of sources for following the same-sex marriage case arguments in the Supreme Court. The arguments are scheduled for tomorrow (CA Prop 8) and Wednesday (DOMA).The cases:
Hollingsworth v. Perry - the California Proposition 8 case
United States v. Windsor - the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case
United States Supreme Court briefs and filings
Oyez project at Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago Kent College of Law has a "deep dive" website on the cases.
SCOTUS BLOG
South Texas College of Law Professor, Josh Blackman's blog has insight on the issues and legal actors in the controversies.
Listen to National Public Radio legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg's, clear and incisive review of the arguments and personalities involved in the cases at http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=2101289
The Legacy of Lawrence v. Texas
by Heather Kushnerick, Special Collections Librarian
This week two cases concerning gay rights will be argued
before the Supreme Court. The first, Dennis
Hollingsworth, et al. v. Kristin M. Perry, et al. (12-144), seeks to strike
down California’s voter-approved ban on same sex marriage and declare that gay
couples can legally marry not just in California but nationwide. The other, United States v. Edith Windsor (12-307), challenges the Defense of
Marriage Act. These important cases could change the lives of countless
citizens, providing not just equal protection, but equal recognition of their
relationships and families.
Ten years ago this week another
landmark case was heard by the Supreme Court. In Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), the United States Supreme Court voted 6-3 to
strike down the sodomy law in Texas and reversed the Court’s own decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986),
where the Court held that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
did not confer a fundamental right on homosexuals to engage in consensual
sodomy. The majority, consisting of
Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer, held that the
convictions under the Texas statute violated the petitioners’ vital interests
in liberty and privacy, protected by the due process clause, for several reasons, among
them that the statute sought to control a personal relationship between two
consenting adults. Lawrence thus invalidated similar laws throughout the United States
that criminalized sodomy between consenting same-sex adults acting in private
and invalidated the application of sodomy laws to heterosexual sex based on
morality concerns. Justice O’Connor
agreed that the Texas statute was unconstitutional, however she based her
decision on the equal protection clause, not on the due process clause, as the
statute discriminated against homosexuals as a distinct class of persons. She did not join the majority in overruling Bowers.
The dissent was written by Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice
Rehnquist, who did not believe that Bowers
should have been overruled, that the Texas statute did not violate due process
nor did it infringe on a fundamental right, and it did not deny the equal
protection of the laws. Justice Thomas
believed that the statute was “uncommonly silly” and should be repealed by the
state legislature, however the Supreme Court was not empowered to help as there
is no general right of privacy in the Bill of Rights or in any other part of
the Constitution.
On
display now in the Fred Parks Law Library lobby is The Legacy of Lawrence v. Texas, an exhibit that contains some of
the briefs presented in the Lawrence case
as well as materials on gay rights and marriage equality from the Library’s
main collection. The Special Collections Department houses the records of the Lawrence case, which were graciously
donated by one of the attorneys on the case, South Texas alumnus and Adjunct
Professor Mitchell Katine. The whole
collection can be viewed online in our digital collections. This exhibit will be up until August 31, 2013.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Legal Websites: Houston Public Library Law Databases
While the Fred Parks Law Library has an extensive collection
of over 90 databases for students and patrons to take advantage of, it’s
important to be aware of other resources that are available. This may become especially relevant upon
graduation when access to certain resources provided by the library may be
limited. One such freely available resource is the selection of law related
databases provided by the Houston Public Library. The collection includes resources you may already be familiar with through the
Fred Parks Law Library such as Congressional Universe. It also includes
practitioner oriented databases such as Gale Legal Forms. All one needs to
access them is a library card through the Houston Public Library. Here is
information on obtaining one.
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