Screening of RBG Documentary in the Law Library

To celebrate Women’s History Month the Law Library is hosting another movie event on Friday March 22nd at 2:30 PM. Copyright & Research Services Law Librarian Stephen Wolfson will give an introduction to the 2018 documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, followed by a screening of the 96 minute film in Classroom L. All members of the law school community are invited to attend. There will be free popcorn! For those who can’t make it to the event, the library has multiple copies of this DVD available for checkout. Stop by the media collection near the front of the library and search for KF8745.G56 R34 2018 or locate in our online catalog: http://gavel.law.uga.edu/record=b2052227

More about the film:

“At the age of 84, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior’s rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans – until now. RBG is a revelatory documentary exploring Ginsburg ‘s exceptional life and career from Betsy West and Julie Cohen, and co-produced by Storyville Films and CNN Films.” – Rotten Tomatoes

Spring Break Movie Recommendations from the Law Library

In the past we have shared librarian and staff reading and watching recommendations during summer and spring breaks. This spring break we asked for everyone to share their favorite movie’s or series, their funniest and the most recent thing they watched. Remember, we have a wide selection of movies and television series available for checkout in the Law Library media collection. All UGA ID cards also allow you to check out items from the Main Library’s media collection (located on the basement level). What have you been watching this spring break?

David Rutland, Collection Services Manager

Favorite: The Big Lebowski

Funniest: The Life Of Brian

Recent: The Godfather, Part II

Favorite Romance: TIE between Maurice and Call Me By Your Name

Favorite Drama/Action: No Country For Old Men

Favorite Classic: The Third Man

Marie Mize, Access Services Manager

Favorite #1: Die Hard – also my favorite Christmas movie

Favorite #2: Before Midnight

Funniest #1: The Gods Must Be Crazy 

Funniest #2: Groundhog Day

Recent: Coelette

Jananne Napoli, Circulation Assistant

Funniest: Friday (with Chris Tucker and Ice Cube)

Recent: Fantastic Beasts – Good, but not as good as Harry Potter

Szilvia Somodi, Access Services Associate

Funniest: Ace Ventura 

Recent: Wonder Woman

Jason Tubinis, I.T. Law Librarian

Favorite: Groundhog Day

Funniest: Wizard People, Dear Reader

Recent: Captain Marvel

Sharon Bradley, Special Collections Law Librarian

Favorite: The Magnificent 7

Recent: The Mummy

Stephen Wolfson, Copyright & Research Services Law Librarian

Funniest: There’s Something About Mary

Victor Lawrence, Web Developer

Favorite: Punch Drunk Love

Hands down, my favorite Adam Sandler movie that feels nothing like the movies he is known for. It’s touching, surreal, and kinda artsy-fartsy, but not opaque.

Funniest: Airplane!

Although I have had enough “What’s your vector, Victor?” jokes to last a lifetime, thank you.

Recent: Losers (Netflix Documentary Series)

This series is pretty darn amazing. I’m not usually a “sports” guy, but the stories that they explore are fascinating and human.

Rachel Evans, Metadata Services Librarian

Favorite: Three Colors: Blue – Just gorgeous. 

Funniest: Some Like It Hot – Still the only movie I’ve seen with Marilyn Monroe in it. This was so funny my sides were hurting! Hilarious!

Recent: 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days – A heavy film, but so very good. An honest work.

Upcoming Event: Edith House Lecture

Portrait of Edith House painted by Alison Free Schneider and presented to the School of Law by the Women Law Students Association in 1984. The portrait is on display in Hirsch Hall.

By Sharon Bradley

Audrey Boone Tillman, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel for Aflac, Inc., is the 2019 Edith House lecturer. The Edith House Lecture Series brings outstanding female legal scholars and practitioners to Athens.

• Tuesday, March 19, 2019 – 3:30pm
• Hatton Lovejoy Courtroom, Hirsch Hall

Edith House is credited as the first female graduate of the law school. But as she explained it, she was actually the second. Her classmate Gussie Brooks technically graduated first as they went in alphabetical order. Ms. House did graduate with honors, was the co-valedictorian, and the first female UGA Law graduate to practice law. After a brief career in private practice and a judicial clerkship, she became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Jacksonville, FL. In 1963 she was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, the first woman to hold the post in Florida. The Edith House Lecture Series was established in 1983 to honor this modest woman from Winder, GA and her series of “firsts.”

• Read more about Ms. House and view the scrapbook compiled by the Women Law Students Association: https://libguides.law.uga.edu/edith_house

Spring Break Hours and Facilities Work

This week the law library reading room is getting new lights over the cafe and surrounding area of shelving. During the next few days please use the bathrooms in the law school or library annex instead. The annex will also be much quieter if you are searching for a place to study over spring break. Later this week, after lighting updates are completed in the main reading room, another project will require water to be shut off throughout the library annex. This separate project is only temporary (in advance of a forthcoming upgrade of all library annex bathrooms to take place over the summer). At the end of the week please use bathrooms in the main part of the library as all bathrooms in the law library annex will be unavailable. Everything returns to normal in time for classes next week.

Spring break hours are also different today through the weekend, and will resume next Monday March 18th. For full hours anytime, visit http://www.law.uga.edu/library-hours-operation:

• MONDAY March 11th through SATURDAY March 16th – 8 AM to 5 PM
• SUNDAY March 17th – 10 AM to Midnight

Featured Scholar: Alan Watson

By Anne Burnett, Rachel Evans, Marie Mize & David Rutland

Alan Watson, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Roman law, comparative law, legal history, and law and religion, passed away on November 7, 2018, at the age of 85. A former Distinguished Research Professor and the holder of the Ernest P. Rogers Chair, he taught at the University of Georgia School of Law for more than 20 years before retiring in 2012. In honor of Watson, the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law published several articles about his life and work, both before and after his retirement, including:

• Alan Watson: Some Reflections on a Great Legal Scholar and Teacher, and a Wonderful Friend
• Reflections On the Life and Times of Alan Watson
• Dedication: Articles in Honor of Professor Alan Watson
• Watson, Walton, and the History of Legal Transplants
• Alan Watson’s Controversial Contribution to Legal Scholarship

Alan Watson’s typewriter, gifted to Marie Mize in the Law Library.

 

Watson leaves behind a tremendous legacy and was an incredibly prolific author, having published more than 150 articles and books. More than 90 works are in our library catalog, and a few of these are currently on display at the circulation desk. Other scholarship (more than 100 entries) has been archived in the law school’s institutional repository by visiting Watson’s author page in Digital Commons.

A memorial service for Watson will be held on March 8, 2019 at 10:30 am in UGA’s Chapel with a reception following in the law school’s Eversheds Sutherland Courtyard. For more information or for links to other obituaries and memorials visit:

• University of Georgia School of Law memoriam
• Dean Rusk International Law Center memoriam
• University of Glasgow School of Law Blog memoriam
• University of Edinburgh memoriam
• University of Oxford memoriam
• Roman Legal Tradition memoriam
• Athens Banner-Herald obituary

Celebrating a History of Rebels: Library Resources for Women & the Law

By Rachel Evans, David Rutland, Marie Mize and Sharon Bradley

Stop by the media collection the next time you pass through the reading room. Librarians and staff have worked together to feature a collection of items related to women and the law. Among the books you will find titles by and about female judges, lawyers and educators as well as several items from our Career Resources collection. Alongside these books for check out we have also included items from special collections including Edith House’s scrapbook assembled by the Women Law Students Association containing old photographs, newspaper articles and past House lecture programs. One of our two portraits of House are also on display. This particular portrait was painted and gifted to the law school by House’s sister-in-law Frankie House in 1989.

For more information, visit our archive of the House Lecture Series in Digital Commons, view the extensive tribute to House in our research guides, explore her life and accomplishments with this timeline, and look out for a future post about House and the next lecture in the series dedicated to her by our special collections librarian Sharon Bradley.

Here are a few highlights you will find in our current display celebrating Women’s History Month:

Justice Leah Ward Sears: Seizing Serendipity

By Rebecca Shriver Davis

KF373.S417 D38 2017

Balcony

“This is the first full biography of Justice Leah Ward Sears. In 1992 Sears became the first woman and youngest justice to sit on the Supreme Court of Georgia. In 2005 she became the first African American woman to serve as chief justice of any state supreme court in the country. This book explores her childhood in a career military family; her education; her early work as an attorney; her rise through Georgia’s city, county, and state court systems; and her various pursuits after leaving the supreme court in 2009, when she transitioned into a life that was no less active or public. As the biography recounts Sears’s life and career, it is filled with instances of how Sears made her own luck by demonstrating a sharpness of mind and sagacious insight, a capacity for grueling hard work, and a relentless drive to succeed. Sears also maintained a strict devotion to judicial independence and the rule of law, which led to decisions that would surprise conservatives and liberals alike, earned the friendship of figures as diverse as Ambassador Andrew Young and Justice Clarence Thomas, and solidified a reputation that would land her on the short list of replacements for two retiring U.S. Supreme Court justices.”

Rebels at the Bar: the Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers

By Jill Norgren

KF367 .N67 2013

Balcony

“Long before Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg earned their positions on the Supreme Court, they were preceded in their goal of legal excellence by several intrepid trailblazers. In Rebels at the Bar, prize-winning legal historian Jill Norgren recounts the life stories of a small group of nineteenth century women who were among the first female attorneys in the United States. Beginning in the late 1860s, these determined rebels pursued the radical ambition of entering the then all-male profession of law. They were motivated by a love of learning. They believed in fair play and equal opportunity. They desired recognition as professionals and the ability to earn a good living. Through a biographical approach, Norgren presents the common struggles of eight women first to train and to qualify as attorneys, then to practice their hard-won professional privilege. Their story is one of nerve, frustration, and courage…. Rebels at the Bar expands our understanding of both women’s rights and the history of the legal profession in the nineteenth century. It focuses on the female renegades who trained in law and then, like men, fought considerable odds to create successful professional lives. In this engaging and beautifully written book, Norgren shares her subjects’ faith in the art of the possible.”

Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers

Edited by J. Clay Smith Jr

KF299.A35 R43 1998

Balcony

“Black women lawyers are not new to the practice of law or to leadership in the fight for justice and quality. Black women formally entered the practice of American law in 1872, the year that Charlotte E. Ray became the first black woman to graduate from an American law school. Rebels in Law introduces some of these women and through their own writing tells a compelling story about the little-known involvement of black women in law and politics. Beginning with a short essay written in 1897, the writing collected by J. Clay Smith, Jr., tells us how black women came to the practice of law, the challenges they faced as women and as blacks in making a place for themselves in the legal profession, their fight to become legal educators, and their efforts to encourage other black women and black men to come to the practice of law. The essays demonstrate the involvement of black women lawyers in important public issues of our time and show them addressing the sensitive subjects of race, equality, justice and freedom. Drawing together many writings that have never been published or have been published in obscure journals or newspapers, Rebels in Law is a groundbreaking study.”

Resource Spotlight: Faculty Scholarship at UGA Law Library

One of the many purposes of the School of Law’s institutional repository Digital Commons is preserving and promoting the scholarship of our faculty. The repository is part of a larger network of university libraries featuring works which span all niches of the law as well as other interdisciplinary topics. With more than 12,000 scholarly works uploaded to date, our repository platform bepress works with SSRN to track faculty impact and improve discovery across the web, including popular search engines like Google. Since it was established, more than 550,000 faculty works have be downloaded by more than 30,000 different institutions from a variety of industries and from more than 200 locations across the globe. Faculty are featured in more than 25 collections in our repository. In addition to scholarly works, other important contributions can be found in “Conferences & Symposia”, “Scholarly Works“, “Popular Media”, “Faculty Colloquia”, and “Faculty Books”.

One of the more recent additions to our faculty book collection, Healthism: Health Status Discrimination and the Law, written by our own Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Elizabeth Weeks will be discussed later this month on Wednesday February 27^th at 3:30 PM in Classroom A. The event will feature a panel including Ani Satz (Emory University), Jennifer Bennett Shinall (Vanderbilt University), Nicholas Terry (Indiana University) and Stacey Tovino (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) and will be followed by a reception. This is the first in a series of book events hosted by the School of Law this year to celebrate faculty publications.

Research and Copyright Services Law Librarian Stephen Wolfson discussed Healthism and the recent scholarship efforts of UGA Law’s faculty with Dean Weeks earlier this month in an episode of the library’s podcast On Reserve. Listen to that conversation in iTunes.

• To explore the breadth of our faculty’s scholarship visit: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/
• The law library’s podcast On Reserve and the faculty podcast Speaker Sidebar can also both be found in Digital Commons at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/podcasts/
• Copies of Weeks’ Healthism and other faculty books are also a part of the law library collection. Check out a copy today!