BLS Library Blog

The Oxford English Dictionary is the granddaddy of dictionaries.  If you were a word, the OED lets you know when you have arrived and rolls out the carpet to welcome you to the English language.  For the English speaker, it is the place to go if you want to learn how a word got its meaning and how the meaning may have changed over the years, along with the spelling of the word.  Since putting the OED online, the publishers have added many enhancements that can bring out the word geek in all of us.

For example, the timeline feature tells us how many words entered the English language each year, beginning with the year 600.  One of the first words listed is the word town – which was spelt tuun way back in 601 and meant “an enclosed land surrounding a single dwelling.”  You can see how the word changed over time under the enty.

You can also filter the timeline by region, origin and subject.  For example, when looking at the time line, we learn that most of the words in our language were added to the English language between 1850 and 1899.  (In fact, 42,229 words were added during those years).  However, if we sort by subject – for example – law – we learn that most legal terms were recognized as English words in the years 1600-1649 (the number of new words was 1,595.

The OED adds new entries on a daily basis.  For example, today’s new words included:

♥ to heart

The new sense added to heart v. in this update may be the first English usage to develop via the medium of T-shirts and bumper-stickers. It originated as a humorous reference to logos featuring a picture of a heart as a symbol for the verb love, like that of the famous ‘I ♥ NY’ tourism campaign. Our earliest quote for this use, from 1984, uses the verb in ‘I heart my dog’s head’, a jokey play on bumper stickers featuring a heart and a picture of the face of a particular breed of dog (expressing a person’s enthusiasm for, say, shih-tzus) which itself became a popular bumper sticker.  From these beginnings, heart v. has gone on to live an existence in more traditional genres of literature as a colloquial synonym for ‘to love’.

It also included muffin top, initialisms like LOL, and lumpenintelligentsia.  What?  You don’t know what lumpenintelligentsia means?  Look it up here (remember to use the proxy server if not on campus):   http://www.oed.com

As March Madness sweeps across college basketball, the Brooklyn Law School Library has added to its collection Legal Issues in American Basketball edited by Lewis Kurlantzick (Call #KF3989.A75 L445 2011), a set of essays on a variety of legal issues facing professional basketball. The book is the second in a series dealing with the legal regulation of athletics. The BLS Library also has the first in the series, Legal Issues in Professional Baseball (Call #KF3989.A75 L44 2005). The new book has five chapters including an introduction by the editor, a law professor at the University of Connecticut School of law, and these chapters: Technology and Legal Issues in Professional Basketball; Labor Relations in the NBA: Beyond the Words and into the Practice; Thunder on the Road from Seattle to Oklahoma City: Moving from NOPA to ZOPA in the NBA; “We Got Next”: the Once and Future WNBA; An International Dimension: Player Movement, the NBA-FIBA Agreement, and Foreign League lLmitations on American Payers. The contributors are Robert C. Berry, Pofessor at Boston College Law School; Russ VerSteeg, a graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law and Pofessor at New England Law School; Jacquelyn Bridgeman, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and Pofessor at the University of Wyoming’s College of Law; and James R. McCurdy, a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law and Pofessor of Sports Law at Gonzaga University School of Law. 

BLS students looking for a study aid on sports law can review Sports Law in a Nutshell by Walter T. Champion (Call #KF3989.Z9 C48 2009) on reserve at the circulation desk. The nutshell simplifies the complex world of sports law and provides a road map to issues such as contracts, torts, antitrust, liabilities, constitutional implications, labor law, and taxes. Sports Law Practice, a two-volume looseleaf set by Martin J. Greenberg (Call #KF3989 .G74 2009),is a more useful resource for the attorney or agent in the arena of sports law with sample forms, checklists, and examples that provide invaluable assistance in drafting contracts. Contractual analysis assists in understanding contract provisions and how to structure contracts and addendums.

Brooklyn Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein and other Democrats in the New York State Assembly defeated a proposal by Governor Andrew Cuomo to place a $250,000 cap on non-economic awards for medical malpractice, such as for pain and suffering,. Stating that the cap would work against the interests of women, the elderly, children and others with lower incomes who may have a claim for a grievous injury caused by medical professionals, Weinstien said “It hurts litigants who have a diminished quality of life for which they will not be compensated”. The NY Law Journal article State Assembly Rejects Cap on Med Mal Pain, Suffering has more on the legislative process to adopt limits on malpractice awards as part of the budget. 

A task force formed by the governor, the Medicaid Reform Team, suggested the cap as one of a number of ways to address the state’s $15 billion-a-year Medicaid program. See the New York Law Journal article State Bar Blasts Proposal to Cap Medical Malpractice Awards. The governor included all the task force’s recommendations in his budget proposal for the coming fiscal year. Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, also opposed a cap on non-economic losses for pain and suffering, arguing that it would deprive deserving plaintiffs of their day in court.

Several state courts have abolished their medical malpractice caps, allowing injured patients to receive the full compensation that a judge or jury of their peers might award to them. Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hosp., 930 N.E.2d 895 (2010), that the a state cap law violated the state Constitution’s “separation of powers” clause because it took away power that should rest solely with judges. In Oliver v. Magnolia Clinic, 51 So.3d 874 (La. App. 3 Cir., 2010), a Louisiana state appeals court ruled the state’s limit on medical malpractice awards unconstitutional and included a review of case law showing that when courts have considered similar malpractice caps in response to state constitutional challenges by severely or catastrophically injured victims, they have been troubled by the disparate impact caps have on this group. See the ALR Annotation discussing statutory recovery caps by Carol A. Crocca, Validity, Construction, and Application of State Statutory Provisions Limiting Amount of Recovery in Medical Malpractice Claims, 26 A.L.R.5th 245 (2001) (password required).

As states grapple with budgetary crises, large medical malpractice awards will remain tempting targets for legislators and tort reform proponents. Courts will also continue to have a say on limiting claims. The Brooklyn Law School Library has in its NY collection Medical Malpractice in New York by Robert Devine (Call #KFN6028.M35 M43 2009) in its third edition.

The US Census Bureau has some “Facts for Features” for Irish-American Heritage Month 2011 which honors the achievements and contributions of Irish immigrants and their descendants living in the United States. For example, there are 36.9 million US residents who claimed Irish ancestry in 2009. This number was more than eight times the population of Ireland itself (4.5 million). Irish was the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry, trailing only German. See also the Library of Congress page for Irish Contributions to American Culture.

St. Patrick’s Day brings to mind shamrocks, Irish heritage, green beer, leprechauns, and perhaps most notably the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade. Dating back to March 17, 1762, the parade is associated with Guinness and other potent potables often drunk to excess. A NY Daily News article reported that, earlier this month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced boos and jeers at the Rockaway Queens St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the second-largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the city, for his comment last month at the Upper East Side headquarters of the American Irish Historical Society: “Normally, when I walk by this building there are a bunch of people that are totally inebriated hanging out the window waving.” He later apologized but still faced taunts from the crowd perhaps due to plans to lay off 4,600 teachers. 

Another Queens Parade, the “St. Pats Parade for All,” began in March 2000 as the city’s only parade to welcome lesbian and gay contingents after the Manhattan St. Patrick’s Day Parade organizers, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, banned the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) from marching as a group. ILGO, after several unsuccessful efforts to participate in the parade, sued and lost a court action seeking a permit to march. See Irish Lesbian & Gay Org. v. Giuliani, 143 F.3d 638 (2d Cir. 1998) citing the US Supreme Court decision in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group, 515 U.S. 557 (1995). 

The story of the Irish is more than controversies about public intoxication and the exclusion of gays and lesbians. The Brooklyn Law School Library has in its collection a short easily readable book, How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill (Call # DA930.5 .C34 1995), which starts with the fall of Rome and the ensuing chaos that it unleashed. As the barbarian hordes were overrunning the remains of the Western Roman Empire, it was not just knowledge of the ancients that was lost. Cahill argues that people did not have time to think on great things. But along came the Irish from the wilds of Hibernia, where barbarians dared not go as the Celts were dangerous. They abducted foreigners into slavery most famously a young Romanized Briton named Patricius. After escaping, the future St. Patrick returned as a missionary to bring Christianity to the Emerald Isle.

The book shows that Christianity brought civilization and a strong sense of peace to the warring Celts of Ireland. It argues that Christianity, a faith that objected to violence as the solution to problems, created the space for study and knowledge. Early Irish Christians (as well as the Jewish nation) preserved the written word to keep civilization alive, saving the works of the ancient Greek and Roman pagans as well as their own literature. Without that effort, much would have been lost forever. The story of how we almost lost the foundations of Western Civilization and how a small group of Irish monks kept the light burning with the world plunged in the Dark Ages is worth reading on St. Patrick’s Day.

Bicycling in New York City has become a legal topic as opponents of the newly installed two-way parking separated experimental bicycle lane (EBL) on Prospect Park West filed a petition under CPLR §78 this month against the NYC Department of Transportation in Kings County Supreme Court. The suit seeks a court order declaring the installation of the EBL as arbitrary and capricious and seeking an order directing its removal. The NY Times article, Lawsuit Seeks to Erase Bike Lane in New York City, has more details on opponents of the EBLs stating: “The lawsuit, filed by a group with close ties to Iris Weinshall, the city’s transportation commissioner from 2000 to 2007 and the wife of Senator Charles E. Schumer, accuses the Transportation Department of misleading residents about the benefits of the lane, cherry-picking statistics on safety improvements and collaborating with bicycle activists to quash community opposition.”

Last month, the City Council enacted a series of three laws requiring police to provide monthly reports of traffic accidents and summonses. The legislation requires the information to be posted on the DOT website. The three bills are Intro 0370-2010 (in relation to pedestrian safety reporting), Intro 0374-2010 (in relation to requiring the compilation of bicycle crash data), and Intro 0377-2010 (in relation to traffic study determinations). Brooklyn Law School Adjunct Associate Professor of Law Brad S. Lander, a City Council Member representing Park Slope, supported the three bills which require New York City’s Department of Transportation to begin annual reporting on the number of bike and pedestrian crashes broken down by police precincts. The Bloomberg administration worked with the City Council to produce bills that made sense of the crash data. The mayor signed all three bills into law on February 22. The local law relating to the compilations of bicycle crash data became effective immediately upon enactment.

The information collected from the new city bike-crash data law, aside from helping those injured in accidents, will be of use to both friends and foes of bike lanes as both sides think the data will support their views. A January 2011 report by the NYC DOT on the Prospect Park West bike lane shows that it has made the neighborhood safer for drivers and for cyclists. Data showed that crashes were down 16 %; those that occurred were half as likely to include an injury; cars were much more likely to drive at or below the speed limit; and no pedestrian injuries or pedestrian-cyclist crashes occurred since the lane was installed last June. The controvery over the Prospect Park West bike lane has local political implications as well as ones that go beyond Brooklyn. See this article (How one New York bike lane could affect the future of cycling worldwide) from the Guardian in the UK.

If you are interested in interdisciplinary research, then Web of Science is an excellent database to utilize for your non legal research.  Web of Science is a multidisciplinary indexing tool, which means that it provides citation information for scholarly journals, books, conference proceedings, reports, and more.  The database contains citations to over 10,000 high impact journals and over 120,000 conference proceedings. You’ll find current and retrospective coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage available to 1900.

Two useful tools available on Web of Science are the journal impact factor and the cited reference tool.  The first tool, the journal impact factor, is a measure of the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in a particular year. The impact factor helps you evaluate a journal’s relative importance, especially when comparing it to others in the same field.  Much like Keycite or Shepards, the second tool, the cited reference tool, allows you to view what sources have cited to a previously published source. 

If you identify an article from Web of Science that you would like to read, you can search the Library’s E-Journal Portal to determine whether or not the journal is available electronically.  If it is not available electronically, then you can request that the article be delivered to you through ILLiad, the Library’s interlibrary loan system.    See this previous post for more information on how to submit a request through ILLiad. 

If you have any questions about Web of Science, E-Journal Portal, or ILLiad, please contact a reference librarian.