This Week in the Law Library ... April 28, 2025
This week in the Law Library we're teaching Advanced Legal Research and how to increase accessibility of course materials, preparing for exams, raising awareness for Sexual Assault Month, celebrating Arab American Heritage Month and Scottish American Heritage Month, and previewing US Supreme Court oral arguments.
This Week's Research Sessions
Monday, April 28, 2025
Advanced Legal Research: Transactional
Instructional & Reference Services Librarian Laura Dixon-Caldwell
Room 135
9:00am – 9:55am
Advanced Legal Research: Ohio
Associate Director Susan Boland
Room 135
10:05am – 10:55am
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Technology Tuesdays
Shannon Kemen, Legal & Technology Research Instructional Services Librarian
12:15pm - 1:15pm
Zoom
Increasing Accessibility
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Advanced Legal Research: Fiction and Fact
Research Instructional Services Librarian Shannon Kemen
Room 107
10:05am – 11:00am
Final Exams Are Coming and We Can Help!
Stressed about exams? The Law Library can help! The Law Library has many resources to help you prepare for final exams, including 24/7 access to online study aids. These study aids can be an important tool to help you succeed in law school but the different types of study aids serve different purposes. Check out our Exam Study Guide for a look at the different study aid types to which we subscribe and how they can help you with exams.
Looking for a place to study? Reserve a study room through TWEN or study in the carrels in the basement, the second floor Law Library Reading Room, the fourth floor Quiet Reading Room, or the open seating on the fifth floor.
When you’re ready for a short break or need to decompress, the Law Library offers puzzles and coloring pages and colored pencils in room 110, the Law Library Services Suite. Best of luck to everyone!
Accessing Law Library Study Aids
CALI
If using CALI, you will need to create an account (if you have not already done so) using a Cincinnati Law authorization code. You can obtain this code from a reference librarian.
LexisNexis Digital Library (OverDrive)
If accessing study aids from the LexisNexis Digital Library, you will need to login using your UC credentials.
West Academic
To create an account, click the Create an Account link at the top right corner of the Study Aids Subscription page. Use your UC email as the email address. Once you have filled in the required information to set up an account, you will need to verify your email address (they will send you a confirmation email that you will need answer to verify the email address — be sure and check your junk mail). Once you have created an account and logged in, you can use the links below to access individual study aids or you can access all study aids through https://subscription.westacademic.com.
Aspen Learning Library
If accessing study aids from the Aspen Learning Library subscription, you will need to login using your UC credentials.
Sexual Assault Awareness
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
More Resources to Raise Awareness about Sexual Assault
Handbook of Sexual Assault and Sexual Assault Prevention (e-Book)
Increased understanding that sexual assault often occurs within relationships has led to efforts to prevent men from assaulting or abusing their partners, efforts to teach young people healthy relationship skills, and efforts to teach bystanders how to safely intervene to prevent sexual assault among their friends and acquaintances. The focus of this handbook is the integration of theory, research, and practice, guided by a vision of developing policies and programs to facilitate healing, promote healthy relationships and prevent sexual violence within society. The handbook compiles much of what research has taught us about sexual assault, as well as to identify a path forward in the understanding and prevention of sexual assault. It is divided into 7 major sections that explore prevention, intervention, risk factors, and other topics related to sexual assault victimization and perpetration. The first section, Theories of Sexual Assault, conceptualizes sexual assault using separate theoretical frameworks. The second section, Culture and Society, is dedicated to chapters focused on how culture as well as societal issues and policies explain sexual assault. Next, the third section, Risk Factors of Sexual Victimization and Perpetration, presents literature on multiple risk factors related to the perpetration of sexual assault, as well as risk of victimization. The fourth section, Victimology, discusses the after effects victims of sexual assault often suffer from post-assault. The fifth section, Prevention and Intervention, is an expansive section presenting literature and recommendations on effective methods of both preventing and intervening in crimes of sexual violence. The sixth section, Sexual Assault and Law, focuses on how sexual violence is examined at various levels of the legal system. The final section, Special Populations, explore themes addressed in other sections but provide considerations about how these factors and processes differentially occur across specific populations.
Sex Without Consent: Rape and Sexual Coercion in America
Sex without Consent explores the experience, prosecution, and meaning of rape in American history from the time of the early contact between Europeans and Native Americans to the present. By exploring what rape meant in particular times and places in American history, from interracial encounters due to colonization and slavery to rape on contemporary college campuses, the contributors add to our understanding of crime and punishment, as well as to gender relations, gender roles, and sexual politics.
Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance: Theory, Research, and Practice (eBook)
Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance explores the theory, research, and practice of sexual assault risk reduction, resistance education, and self-defense programs for women and other vulnerable groups, including sexual minorities, individuals with disabilities, and those with histories of victimization. Following an ecosystemic perspective, the book examines individual risk and protective factors for sexual victimization, as well as peer-, family-, community- and societal-level factors that influence risk for sexual violence and inform the content of programs.
Sarah E. Ullman, Talking about Sexual Assault: Society's Response to Survivors
Sexual assault is a traumatic experience for any woman. Furthermore, many victims who tell others about their assault must endure a "second assault" in the form of negative reactions, such as victim blaming and disbelief. One third to two thirds of victims may experience such reactions, which have negative mental and physical health effects on the victims. This book provides a comprehensive look at women's rape disclosure, addressing such issues as why, how often, and to whom women disclose their sexual assault; how people respond to disclosures; what factors influence how they respond to disclosures; and how these responses affect survivors. With an ecological approach, the book considers the social context of rape, arguing that negative social reactions emanate from broader social norms and attitudes about rape. Multiple perspectives are considered, including those of survivors, informal support providers (family, friends, and intimate partners), and formal support providers (therapists, victim advocates, and others). Finally, recommendations for research, treatment, and intervention are provided. Powerful, insightful, and provocative, this book is essential reading for everyone who works with sexual assault victims, including therapists, health care workers, victim advocates, rape researchers, policy makers, and students in any of these fields.
Yeung takes readers on a journey across the country, introducing us to women who came to America to escape grinding poverty only to encounter sexual violence in the United States. In a Day’s Work exposes the underbelly of economies filled with employers who take advantage of immigrant women’s need to earn a basic living. When these women find the courage to speak up, Yeung reveals, they are too often met by apathetic bosses and under resourced government agencies. But In a Day’s Work also tells a story of resistance, introducing a group of courageous allies who challenge dangerous and discriminatory workplace conditions alongside aggrieved workers—and win.
Celebrate Scottish-American Heritage Month!
About Scottish-American Heritage Month
April is also Scottish-American Heritage Month, celebrating the contributions of the Scottish-Americans who have had an impact on U.S. society. Tartan Day is observed on April 6th to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320. This document was Scotland's Declaration of Independence.
Resources to Learn More About Scottish-Americans
Adams and Somerville provide a thorough account of emigration from Scotland during the 17th and 18th centuries. Their chronicle fits into the saga that dates "From the beginning of human history," in which "men, women and children, driven by hunger, oppression or pressure of population, have been forced from their homes to seek new lands from which to wrest a living." Focusing primarily on economic conditions, the authors characterize emigration from Scotland "as the last desperate remedy taken by sufferers of an incurable disease."
For almost half a century scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have worked hard to highlight the distinctively Scottish contribution to the emergence of America's national culture. In particular the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment on the educational, political and cultural life of the USA in the 18th and early 19th centuries has been widely studied. But the map of Scottish-American cultural relations extends far beyond the confines of the Enlightenment. What this book does is offer a series of explorations of the map in a variety of directions and periods from the 18th century to the early 20th. The importance for America's cultural history of Scottish educators, philosophers, historians, rhetoricians and scientists is recognized, but attention is also paid to the literary aspect of Scotland's cultural contribution to America, and the author takes in major figures from both sides of the Atlantic from Walter Scott to William Faulkner.
James Hunter, A Dance Called America: The Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada
James Hunter, one of Scotland's leading historians, provides the first comprehensive account of what happened to the thousands of people who, over the last 300 years, left Skye and other parts of the Scottish Highlands to make new lives in the United States and Canada. The product both of painstaking research and extensive travels in North America, this is the definitive story of the Highland impact on the New World, the story of how soldiers, explorers, guerrilla fighters, fur traders, lumberjacks and pioneer settlers from the north of Scotland found, on the other side of the Atlantic, freedoms and opportunities denied to them at home.
Celeste Ray, Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South
Ray explores how Highland Scottish themes and lore merge with southern regional myths and identities to produce a unique style of commemoration and a complex sense of identity for Scottish Americans in the South. Blending the objectivity of the anthropologist with respect for the people she studies, she asks how and why we use memories of our ancestral pasts to provide a sense of identity and community in the present. In so doing, she offers an original and insightful examination of what it means to be Scottish in America.
Ferenc Morton Szasz, Scots in the North American West, 1790-1917
Although Scots have never been an exceptionally large immigrant group in North America, their presence to the West proved significant in a variety of arenas. In this unique and engaging new book, Ferenc Morton Szasz outlines the many contributions Scots have made to the development of the region. This book illuminates the many Scottish explorers, traders, adventurers, ranchers, artists, photographers, and writers who helped forge what is perhaps America’s greatest cultural export–the myth of the West.
Celebrate Arab American Heritage Month!
About National Arab American Heritage Month
April is National Arab American Heritage Month (NAAHM) and celebrates the heritage, culture, and contributions of Arab Americans. Immigrants with origins from the Arab world have been arriving to the United States since before our country’s independence and have contributed to our nation’s advancements in science, business, technology, foreign policy, and national security. The Arab American Foundation and Arab America initiated the National Arab American Heritage Month in 2017. States and other organizations began recognizing April as National Arab American Heritage Month and last year President Biden issued an official proclamation.
The Arab American Institute estimates there are 3.7 million Arab Americans. Arab Americans are found in every state, but “[n]early 75% of all Arab Americans live in just twelve states: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania …”
Resources to Learn More on Arab American Heritage
Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal (e-Book)
Arab American women have played an essential role in shaping their homes, their communities, and their country for centuries. Their contributions, often marginalized academically and culturally, are receiving long- overdue attention with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Arab American women’s studies. The collected essays in this volume capture the history and significance of Arab American women, addressing issues of migration, transformation, and reformation as these women invented occupations, politics, philosophies, scholarship, literature, arts, and, ultimately, themselves. Arab American women brought culture and absorbed culture; they brought relationships and created relationships; they brought skills and talents and developed skills and talents. They resisted inequities, refused compliance, and challenged representation. They engaged in politics, civil society, the arts, education, the market, and business. And they told their own stories. These histories, these genealogies, these narrations that are so much a part of the American experiment are chronicled in this volume, providing an indispensable resource for scholars and activists.
Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora
This multifaceted study of Syrian immigration to the United States places Syrians- and Arabs more generally-at the center of discussions about race and racial formation from which they have long been marginalized. Between Arab and White focuses on the first wave of Arab immigration and settlement in the United States in the years before World War II, but also continues the story up to the present. It presents an original analysis of the ways in which people mainly from current day Lebanon and Syria-the largest group of Arabic-speaking immigrants before World War II-came to view themselves in racial terms and position themselves within racial hierarchies as part of a broader process of ethnic identity formation
Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American women in the United States
This book tells the long neglected story of the bint arab―the Arab woman―in the United States. Drawing on primary sources such as club minutes, census records, and dozens of interviews, the book explores the experience of late 19th- and early 20th-century immigrants―mostly Christian peasants from Lebanon and Syria―and their American-born daughters. Later, the book moves on to the well-assimilated granddaughters (many of whom have reidentified with the Arab community and begun to fight its political battles). The work concludes with those women―most of them Muslim―who have emigrated over the last quarter century from many Arab countries, particularly Palestinians.
The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship
Tracing the forgotten histories of the Free Syria Society, the New Syria Party, the Arab National League, and the Institute of Arab American Affairs, the book restores a timely aspect of our understanding of an area (then called Syria) that comprises modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. Hani Bawardi examines the numerous Arab American political advocacy organizations that thrived before World War I, showing how they influenced Syrian and Arab nationalism. He further offers an in-depth analysis exploring how World War II helped introduce a new Arab American identity as priorities shifted and the quest for assimilation intensified. In addition, the book enriches our understanding of the years leading to the Cold War by tracing both the Arab National League’s transition to the Institute of Arab American Affairs and new campaigns to enhance mutual understanding between the United States and the Middle East.
Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects
Bringing the rich terrain of Arab American histories to bear on conceptualizations of race in the United States, this groundbreaking volume fills a critical gap in the field of U.S. racial and ethnic studies. The articles collected here highlight emergent discourses on the distinct ways that race matters to the study of Arab American histories and experiences and asks essential questions. What is the relationship between U.S. imperialism in Arab homelands and anti-Arab racism in the United States? In what ways have the axes of nation, religion, class, and gender intersected with Arab American racial formations? What is the significance of whiteness studies to Arab American studies? Transcending multiculturalist discourses that have simply added on the category “Arab-American” to the landscape of U.S. racial and ethnic studies after the attacks of September 11, 2001, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than as a beginning, in Arab Americans’ histories.
April Arguments at the United States Supreme Court
US Supreme Court by Jarek Tuszyński CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
From SCOTUS Blog:
Monday, April 28, 2025
Soto v. United States - if a claim for compensation under 10 U.S.C. § 1413a is a claim "involving " retired pay" under 31 U.S.C. § 3702(a)(1)(A), does 10 U.S.C. § 1413a provides a settlement mechanism that displaces the default procedures and limitations set forth in the Barring Act.
A.J.T. by & through A.T. v. Osseo Area Sch., Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 279 - whether the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Rehabilitation Act of 1973 require children with disabilities to satisfy a uniquely stringent "bad faith or gross misjudgment" standard when seeking relief for discrimination relating to their education.
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Martin v. United States - (1) whether the Constitution's supremacy clause bars claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act when the negligent or wrongful acts of federal employees have some nexus with furthering federal policy and can reasonably be characterized as complying with the full range of federal law; and (2) whether the discretionary-function exception is categorically inapplicable to claims arising under the law enforcement proviso to the intentional torts exception.
Lab'y Corp. of Am. Holdings v. Davis - whether a federal court may certify a class action pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) when some members of the proposed class lack any Article III injury.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Okla. Statewide Virtual Charter Sch. Bd. v. Drummond - (1) whether the academic and pedagogical choices of a privately owned and run school constitute state action simply because it contracts with the state to offer a free educational option for interested students; and (2) whether a state violates the First Amendment's free exercise clause by excluding privately run religious schools from the state"s charter-school program solely because the schools are religious, or instead a state can justify such an exclusion by invoking anti-establishment interests that go further than the First Amendment's establishment clause requires.
Posted April 28, 2025 by Susan Boland