The goal of the project is to record the oral histories of as many former legislators as possible; the purpose is to learn from the interviews how the legislature functions as a forum for determining public policy, what enables it to work well, and what prevents it from functioning better.

Each interview is about two hours long. The LRB will publish the entire series on DVDs and will eventually make them available as streaming video from their Web site. Brief excerpts are already viewable at the LRB's YouTube channel.

Thanks to LRB Chief, Steve Miller for sharing the news.

Jon Groth's Wisconsin Personal Injury Weblog points to a useful site called SEARCH which contains contact info for the legal departments of various Internet service providers (ISP) and similar information services. This information may be useful for service of subpoena, court orders, and search warrants.

Jotwell, short for The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), is housed on a set of inter-linked blogs on the following subjects:

• Administrative Law
  
• Constitutional Law
  
• Corporate Law
  
• Criminal Law
  
• Cyberlaw
  
• Intellectual Property Law
  
• Legal Profession
  
• Tax Law

You can view each section individually or view them all on the Jotwell main page. If you wish to subscribe by RSS or email to specific subject sections or to all Jotwell posts.

Jotwell is sponsored by the University of Miami School of Law. As you can see below, UW Law School's Allison Christians is one of the editors for the Tax section.

Arizona's Supreme Court, in a surprising but welcome ruling, has declared that electronic metadata is part of the public record under state law, in a case involving an Arizona police officer who suspects his superiors of backdating a document related to his work performance....

The city argued that metadata -- digital information that can reveal when a document was created and subsequently accessed or modified -- was not part of the public record..... But the state Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that "if a public entity maintains a public record in an electronic format, then the electronic version, including any embedded metadata, is subject to disclosure under our public records laws."

Hat tip to Steve Miller, Chief of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau

For the first time, the guidance covers blogs and other social media platforms:

The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

The guidelines offer several illustrations of endorsements that do and don't fall under the Act. This one specifically speaks to bloggers.

• A consumer who regularly purchases a particular brand of dog food decides one day to purchase a new, more expensive brand made by the same manufacturer. She writes in her personal blog that the change in diet has made her dog's fur noticeably softer and shinier, and that in her opinion, the new food definitely is worth the extra money. This posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides.

• Assume that rather than purchase the dog food with her own money, the consumer gets it for free because the store routinely tracks her purchases and its computer has generated a coupon for a free trial bag of this new brand. Again, her posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides.

• Assume now that the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so. If she receives a free bag of the new dog food through this program, her positive review would be considered an endorsement under the Guides.

Source: Wisconsin Law Journal

• Coping with Uncertainty: The Role of Contracts in Russian Industry During the Transition to the Market by Kathryn Hendley

• Risking Health: Failing to Balance Access to Essential Medicines and the Protection of Intellectual Property in Developing Countries Facing a Continuing HIV/AIDS Disaster by Heinz Klug

• Talking Originalism by Andrew B. Coan

• How the Conservatives Canonized Brown v. Board of Education by Brad Snyder

Twelve prisoners have been freed by the Wisconsin Innocence Project. Six of them were there Friday to be honored and watch for the first time an emotional 25-minute video about their cases...

Wisconsin's program started at a time when there were just a handful of such projects. [Innocence Project co-directors, Keith Findley and John Pray, associate professor Byron Lichstein] work with law students to investigate and litigate possible innocence cases among the 400 or so requests that come in each year...

"If there's anything we've learned from the DNA exonerations of the past 20 years is that our best intentions and most firmly held beliefs can be wrong," Findley said. "No one can ever be too sure. We all have to be open-minded and skeptical and willing to re-examine everything."

The website allows the researcher to search businesses in over 25 states. It also supports an index to browse by company name or a person's name....

One tool that can be very useful is the "relationship visualizer." It is a graphic display of how companies and individuals are interconnected.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a screen shot of the relationship visualizer for Harley Davidson Motor Company. Note how the business names and officer names intersect. Very nice for visual learners like me.

There is one problem with CorporationWiki, however, and it could be a pretty big one if you don't recognize it. As Bev notes, the page lacks an "about us" link.

It is important for me (and should be to you) to confirm how the material is collected, who is gathering the information, etc. So, I use the site to collect information and then turn to other resources to verify it.

She's grouped them by Up and coming, Big names, and Home-grown talent. I'm honored to be included in the latter group.

Reminding the federal district court of the need to develop an evidentiary record in the constitutional challenge to Wisconsin's "diploma privilege," the state attorney general criticized the plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment and permanent injunctive relief as premature....

The attorney general criticized the plaintiffs for misunderstanding the rationale of the diploma privilege.

"Plaintiffs' contention that Wisconsin violates the Constitution by testing general legal principles on its bar exam is based on the erroneous presumption that only instruction in Wisconsin law justifies the diploma privilege," the attorney general wrote. "From this premise, plaintiffs ask the Court to reach the erroneous conclusion that the bar exam can only test Wisconsin law."

"The premise and the conclusion are wrong," the attorney general argued. "The diploma privilege is only extended to graduates who have completed a curriculum mandated by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which includes instruction in particular legal subject areas, as well as in Wisconsin law, and whose completion of that curriculum has been certified by the deans of the University of Wisconsin or Marquette University law schools."

Accordingly, the attorney general said, the plaintiffs make a second erroneous assumption that all graduates of ABA-accredited law schools have received an identical education. No out-of-state law school is directed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to certify that all of its graduates have successfully completed the curriculum set forth in the supreme court's rules. The attorney general informed the court of its intention to elaborate further on the curricular differences in the course of developing its evidentiary record....

The attorney general noted that in its remand order, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals remarked that the state prevails if the diploma privilege is found to be "at least minimally reasonable." This is because the state's power to regulate admission to the practice of law is subject only to "narrow" constitutional limitation, the attorney general asserted.

"'Minimally reasonable' is a low hurdle," the attorney general said. "The Justices' greater familiarity with graduates of Wisconsin law schools, their greater familiarity with the deans and faculty at these schools, their practical ability to ensure compliance with SCR 40.03's curriculum requirements at those schools, and their greater involvement in educational activities at those schools are alone sufficient to surmount it."

According to the bill, violators would be charged a fine between $100 and $400 for a first offense, and $200 to $800 for further offenses.

Two other proposals limiting text messaging while driving have been introduced also - Assembly Bill 496 and Senate Bill 355. Both of these would ban texting for all drivers, not just those under 18.

See Google News for articles about the bills. Image from Spinvox.com

Wisconsin Senate Bill 336 requires law enforcement agencies to collect a biological specimen for DNA analysis from every adult who is arrested for a felony and every juvenile who is taken into custody for certain sexual assault offenses that would be felonies if committed by an adult. The bill further requires the crime laboratories to analyze the specimens and include information obtained from the analyses in the DNA data bank.

There have been several news stories about this bill. For a sampling, see Google News.

"It certainly sounds plausible since after all this is the Dairy State, but the answer is no.

"The 1935 Laws of Wis., ch. 106 came close; it required serving a small amount of cheese and butter with meals in restaurants (effective from June 1935 to March 1937).

"And, by the way, that was the first Wisconsin law with a sunset provision, i.e. a legislated ending time. Interestingly, Vermont just passed a law in 1999 designating the apple as the state fruit and apple pie as the state pie. It also requires a good faith effort to serve either a glass of cold milk, a 1/2 ounce or larger slice of Cheddar cheese, or a large scoop of vanilla ice cream with a slice of apple pie. (Title 1 Vermont Statutes Annotated, secs. 512 & 513, eff. July 1, 1999)"

Source: The Wheeler Report
Image from CakeSpy.com

The Good: "It's not going to be quite as easy to get into trouble as it has been in the past," says Michael Johnson, finance instructor at Madison Area Technical College.

The Bad: "Those low, promotional rates -- like zero-percent interest -- are going to be a lot harder to find, even for those with good credit. Experts also say that it's likely that annual fees, which most credit card company have strayed from, will be making a comeback."