Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We regret to announce the cancellation of the 2019 Kellogg Lecture. The lecture will be rescheduled to a date in 2020. Registrants have received notices via Eventbrite about the cancellation.

Announcements for the new date will be posted to the Law Library’s blog, sent via our News & Events email list, and posted as a new Eventbrite page.

We hope that you will join us next year.

The Law Library of Congress

Join the Law Library on Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 5:30 p.m. as we commemorate Human Rights Day with a viewing of the Shall Not Be Denied Exhibition and a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Colleen Shogan, the assistant deputy librarian of the Library Collections and Services Group and the Library’s representative on the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission. The panelists include Corrine McConnaughy, associate professor of political science at George Washington University and author of The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment, and Elaine Weiss, journalist and author of The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.

Register at humanrightsday2019.eventbrite.com. We recommend reserving your tickets early, as these will go quickly and space is limited! We will not livestream this event, so you will want to be in the room!

The Law Library of Congress is excited to bring you a new series of webinars focused on foreign and comparative law. The Comparative Law Webinar Series of classes is designed to shed light on some of the comparative law issues researched by the foreign law experts at the Law Library of Congress. This entry in the series provides an overview of the EU and UK perspectives on Brexit, including the UK legal and political actions for Brexit, the Benn Act, the Withdrawal Agreement, art. 50 of the TEU, post-Brexit payments, and the future EU-UK relationship. The webinar will be held on Thursday, January 23rd at 2pm.

Click here for more information and to register perspectives-on-brexit.eventbrite.com.

We hope you can join us for the 2020 Supreme Court Fellows Program Annual Lecture! The Law Library of Congress and the Supreme Court Fellows Program will present a conversation with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on Thursday, Feb. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

David M. Rubenstein, trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society and chair of the Madison Council of the Library of Congress, will moderate the program.

The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Please register via Eventbrite: https://supct2020.eventbrite.com.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

With the upcoming national election in Israel on March 2, the Law Library of Congress is holding a webinar from the Foreign and Comparative Law Webinar Series on “What You Need To Know About the Upcoming Israeli National Election.” The webinar will be held on February 27, 2020 at 10:00 am. To register to attend the webinar, use our Eventbrite link. 

The Foreign and Comparative Law Webinar Series of classes is designed to shed light on some of the foreign and comparative law issues researched by the foreign law experts at the Law Library of Congress.This entry in the series will address general principles of the Israeli government system, rules governing national election, the method of distribution in Knesset seats, government formation procedures, prime-ministerial qualifications and term limits and the legal implications of a Knesset Member’s indictment and immunity status on presidential discretion in assignment of government formation. Topics may be adjusted as warranted to address ongoing developments.

For more information on the webinar, please read our announcement blog post.

We are excited to launch Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents! Going live this week, this is the Library's first crowdsourced transcription project in languages other than English.

The Law Library of Congress invites you to help improve access to our unique collection of historic Spanish legal materials through the Library's crowdsourcing platform, By the People (BTP). BTP is a virtual volunteering website where anyone with an internet connection can transcribe digitized Library collections to improve discoverability and use while engaging with the materials.

Our aim is not to translate the collection items but to transcribe the documents word-for-word so we can make it easier for researchers to find primary source materials.

Donate your time and expertise as a virtual volunteer. Volunteers will have the opportunity to transcribe and tag these documents online and/or review other volunteers’ transcriptions. No specific time commitment or qualifications are required.

Have questions on how to transcribe these documents? We are hosting a webinar that will provide instruction on how to identify and transcribe the special scripts in the collection.

We encourage you to register in advance using the link below:

How and Why to Transcribe Herencia: Spanish Legal Documents

Thursday, February 27, 2020

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM (ET) (English Version)

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (ET) (Spanish Version)

To celebrate the launch of the Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents campaign, we will be hosting an on-site transcribe-a-thon here at the Library of Congress on March 19, 2020 at 5:00 pm ET! 

Register to join us in person in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building for a fun evening of transcribing with fellow volunteers. You do not need to read Spanish, Latin, or Catalan to participate in this project!

Can't make it to the event? We will have a virtual transcribe-a-thon happening ALL DAY on March 19! Register as a virtual attendee to join a worldwide community of transcribers.

Want to know more about how to host a Transcribe-a-thon so you can join in virtually? Register for our upcoming webinar on instructions and tips for hosting a successful transcription event! We’ll cover how to join in on March 19 and how to organize independently.

On March 19 at 7:00 p.m. in the Jefferson Building, National Book Festival Presents Jeffrey Rosen in a discussion of his new book, “Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty and Law,” with Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate. Book sales and signing to follow. Co-sponsored by the Law Library of Congress.

Click this link to register for this FREE event and purchase a copy of "Conversations with RBG" (purchase of book not required for attendance).

-------

This event is part of the Law Library's NIGHT OF LAW at the Thomas Jefferson Building. We also invite you to join our 5:00 p.m. activity, Transcribe-a-thon for Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents. Be sure to register for both events!

-------

The Library will be closed to the public, including researchers and others with reader identification cards, until Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 8 a.m. to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus. During the closure, all Library-sponsored public programs, including the National Book Festival Presents Jeffrey Rosen with Dahlia Lithwick, are postponed or canceled.

If you’ve never taken advantage of our Ask-a-Librarian service, allow us to introduce you!

Through the Library's online reference service, the Law Library can help you with:

• Legal and legislative research assistance for US federal and state, foreign, international, and comparative law
• Queries on resources unique to the Law Library of Congress

Learn more about this FREE service on this guest post by Chief of the Public Services Division Andrew Winston.

The Law Library of Congress and the American Bar Association will present the Law Day 2020 program, "Social Movement Changing America: The Legacies of the 19th Amendment" on Thursday, April 30 at 3:30 p.m. EST.

The event will be held online. Click here to be taken to the registration page.

Law Day is a national day set aside to celebrate the rule of law and an opportunity to understand how law and the legal process protect liberty and promote justice. This year's Law Day theme--“Your Vote, Your Voice, Our Democracy: The 19th Amendment at 100”--dovetails with the Library of Congress' exhibition, Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote, which celebrates the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Our Law Day 2020 event is on Thursday, April 30 at 2:00 p.m. ET. Spots are filling up for this online event, and we are almost at capacity! If you want to view it live, click this link to register now.

Law Day is a national day set aside to celebrate the rule of law and an opportunity to understand how law and the legal process protect liberty and promote justice. This year’s Law Day theme–“Your Vote, Your Voice, Our Democracy: The 19th Amendment at 100”–dovetails with the Library of Congress’ exhibition, Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote, which celebrates the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

The Orientation to Law Library Collections Webinar is designed for patrons who are familiar with legal research, and would instead prefer an introduction to the collections and services specific to the Law Library of Congress. This webinar is an online version of the one-hour onsite orientations taught by legal reference librarians from the Law Library of Congress. The webinar will be held on Wednesday, May 13th at 11am.

Click here for more information and to register orientation-law-library-collections-5-13-2020.eventbrite.com.