This Week in the Law Library ... Feb. 24, 2025

This week in the Law Library we're teaching advanced legal research, teaching administrative law, celebrating Black History Month, and previewing US Supreme Court oral arguments.

Monday, Feb. 24, 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, Feb. 25, 2025

Lawyering II, Advocacy, Cohort 6
Research Instructional Services Librarian Shannon Kemen
Room 245
9:00am – 10:35am
Introduction to Administrative Law

Lawyering II, Advocacy, Cohort 3
Instructional & Reference Services Librarian Ashley Russell
Room 135
10:40am – 12:05pm
Introduction to Administrative Law

Lawyering II, Advocacy, Cohort 5
Associate Director Susan Boland
Room 245
10:40am – 12:05pm
Introduction to Administrative Law

Lawyering II, Advocacy, Cohort 1
Instructional & Reference Services Librarian Ashley Russell
Room 245
3:00pm – 4:30pm
Introduction to Administrative Law

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025

Advanced Legal Research: Fiction and Fact
Research Instructional Services Librarian Shannon Kemen
Room 107
10:05am – 11:00am

Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025

Lawyering II, Advocacy, Cohort 4
Instructional & Reference Services Librarian Laura Dixon-Caldwell
Room 230
10:40am – 12:05pm
Introduction to Administrative Law

Lawyering II, Advocacy, Cohort 2
Electronic Resources Instructional Services Librarian Ron Jones
Room 230
3:00pm – 4:30pm
Introduction to Administrative Law

Civil Rights Stories

Available via the West Academic study aid subscription, this book provides students with a three-dimensional picture of the most important cases that are addressed in civil rights courses. These stories give the students and faculty members a deeper understanding of the historical and cultural background of the cases and an insight into their long-term impact on the development of civil rights law.

​CALI Lesson: Race and Equal Protection

Available via CALI, this lesson considers race under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as under other constitutional provisions. It begins with an overview of slavery in constitutional law; Part II proceeds to the early cases under the Reconstruction Amendments; Part III concentrates on the development of the strict scrutiny standard; Part IV considers how seemingly neutral classifications may be deemed to be racial classifications; and the Conclusion in Part V contains questions to solidify the Lesson. If law students have not created a CALI account and need the school authorization code, contact a reference librarian.

Understanding​​ Civil Rights Litigation

Available via the LexisNexis Digital Library study aid subscription, this book provides an overview of the doctrine, policy, history, and theory of civil rights and constitutional litigation under Section 1983 and its Bivens federal counterpart. It explores the doctrinal areas that have undergone substantial changes or challenges since the prior edition, including the retraction of Bivens; the extension, criticism, and cross-ideological calls for reform of qualified immunity; the narrowing of abstention; debates over the scope of injunctive relief; and the Supreme Court’s increasing engagement earlier in constitutional cases. It also includes new applications of long-standing doctrines, including controversies over when social-media companies and public officials act under color of state law in controlling who has access to sites and pages.

Civil Rights Litigation Guide

This guide explores resources on the history, text, structure and policy of federal civil rights statutes, with a focus on 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 42 U.S.C. § 1983 creates a civil action for deprivation of rights.

HeinOnline’s Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law

Available via HeinOnline, this collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. These cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from slavery. The library has hundreds of pamphlets and books written about slavery—defending it, attacking it or simply analyzing it. The collection features every English-language legal commentary on slavery published before 1920, which includes many essays and articles in obscure, hard-to-find journals in the United States and elsewhere. It provides word searchable access to all Congressional debates from the Continental Congress to 1880. It also includes many modern histories of slavery.

Civil Rights Actions

Available on Lexis, this treatise analyzes every aspect of civil rights — for background, insight, and perspective. It provides coverage as well as case-critical information, from statutes that Congress enacted in the late 1950’s to the latest developments in civil rights legislation. Learn from the authors’ discussion of absolute and qualified immunity, the relationship between state and federal courts, and the procedural framework of civil rights actions, as well as coverage of such specific areas as: The Americans with Disabilities Act; Employment discrimination; Age discrimination; Privacy issues; Property rights; Fair housing; Prisoners’ rights; and Voting rights. It also includes Use the practice forms for your civil rights matter.

PBS, Celebrating Black History & Culture

PBS is celebrating Black History Month 2025! This collection is curated to showcase Black excellence through contributions, achievements, and ideas across core subjects and eras.

Library of Congress Civil Rights History Project

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. The project was initiated in 2010 with the survey and with interviews beginning in 2011. This site guides researchers to collections in several Library divisions that specifically focus on the movement as well as the broader topic of African American history and culture. The Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039) contains more than 1200 items consisting of born-digital video files, digitized videocassettes, digital photographs and full-text transcripts for all interviews. The interviews are also accessible through the Library's YouTube site and the NMAAHC website.

This year’s theme for Black History Month is "African Americans and Labor." According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, “[t]he theme, 'African Americans and Labor,' intends to encourage broad reflections on intersections between Black people’s work and their workplaces in all their iterations and key moments, themes, and events in Black history and culture across time and space and throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora..”

2025 Black History Month Proclamation

Black History Month Origins

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, founder of the organization now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History External (ASALH), began Negro History Week in 1926. In 1975, President Ford issued a Message on the Observance of Black History Week. In 1976, ASALH and President Ford extended it to Black History Month and presidents presidents continued to honor Black History Month through messages. Public Law 99-244 designated February 1986 as "National Black (Afro-American) History Month.” Since 1996, presidents have issued annual proclamations for and Congress has passed resolutions honoring Black History Month.

University of Cincinnati Events

Monday, February 24, 2025

Black FUTURE Month Uncommon Read
Viral Justice with Cassandra Jones
Join every Monday in February to read about the relationships between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, and health and justice.
12:30pm
Taft Research Center

Lift Every Voice & Sing-A-Long
Join the AACRC Choir, the Black Faculty Association, and the Department of Africana Studies in paying homage to James Weldon Johnson’s eloquent poem-turned-hymn that was recognized in 1919 by the NAACP as the “Negro National anthem,” and is today still celebrated as the "Black National Anthem."
12:01pm
TUC Atrium

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Black FUTURE Month Diaspora Studies Series
Say Her Name: Centering Black Feminism and Black Women in Sport
Letisha Brown, University of Cincinnati 
1:30-3:30pm
Taft Research Center
Say Her Name: Centering Black Feminism and Black Women in Sports offers an in-depth look into the lived experiences of Blackgirlwomen as athletes, activists, and everyday people through a Black feminist lens. With so much research on race centered on Black men and gender research focusing on white women, Say Her Name offers a necessary conversation that places Blackgirlwomen at the center of discussion. Say Her Name delves deeply into issues of gender, the politics of punishment, athlete activism, the politics of Black hair, fingernails and fashion, and the representation and commodification of Blackgirlwomen in sport and society. An entry point into the growing research in sport studies and beyond from a Black feminist lens, Say Her Name offers a clear window into the power and potential of nuanced examinations of sport. As a reflection of the larger social world, sport provides a framework for understanding larger social issues, including racism, sexism, and misogynoir. Blackgirlwomen have varied experiences in sport, and Say Her Name provides a window into those experiences. The book discusses Black women in sports including the South African runner Caster Semenya and the American runners Florence Griffith Joyner and Sha’Carri Richardson, as well as Venus and Serena Williams, Gabby Douglas, and Simone Biles. The women in this book have lived experiences that speak to the larger experiences of Black women and girls in sport and society, while also leaning into a larger discussion of the importance of the social movement #SayHerName.

The Black Future Month 2025 Mini-Movie Festival
The Black Future Month 2025 Mini-Movie Festival presents a film every Tuesday in February. This week's film, “Boogaloo: The Greatest Story Never Told,” is the culmination of an over 20 year journey to document and present the untold story regarding one of the most influential but least known music and dance phenomena of the last half century. Often categorized by names like “Popping” or “Pop-Locking”, from movies and commercials, to music videos from the world’s most famous entertainers, the Boogaloo art form has literally become an integral part of the global consciousness within Pop culture today. Through never before seen footage, exclusive interviews, and riveting accounts, go on a journey and learn the joy, the pain, the successes and the failures, the triumphs, and the struggles that gave birth to the one the greatest dance explosions that the world has ever seen.
6:30pm - 8:30pm
TUC Cinema

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Drink 'N Think S'More
Ludlow Wines will host Dr. Holly Y. McGee every Wednesday in Black History Month for a 4-part lecture series on everything you've ever wanted to know about African American History but were hesitant to ask.
Black History’s Believe It or Not!
From cow “boys” in the West to escaped slaves right here in Cincinnati, come learn incredulous truths so wild they’re barely believable.
6:30pm
Ludlow Wines

Annual Sip and Paint Hosted by SIS and Soul Palette
6:30pm
60 W Charlton
2710 Commons Way , Cincinnati , Ohio
This year’s Sip and Paint theme is "Crowned and Confident," where we’ll be painting a beautiful woman adorned with a crown to symbolize strength, grace, and self-confidence.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Black FUTURE Month Diaspora Studies Series
The Boogaloo Brothers
Levant Obulie and Brice Hill
1:30-3:30pm
Taft Research Center

"Get Your A&S On the Bus!" to the Aronoff Theatre
to the Aronoff Theatre to see the full dress rehearsal of Revolution Dance Theatre's Black History Month performance
6pm-9pm
(Bus departs AACRC)

Friday, February 28, 2025

Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity
Christopher Tounsel, University of Washington
1:30-3:30pm
Taft Research Center
Bounds of Blackness explores the history of Black America's intellectual and cultural engagement with the modern state of Sudan. Ancient Sudan occupies a central place in the Black American imaginary as an exemplar of Black glory, pride, and civilization, while contemporary Sudan, often categorized as part of "Arab Africa" rather than "Black Africa," is often sidelined and overlooked. In this pathbreaking book, Christopher Tounsel unpacks the vacillating approaches of Black Americans to the Sudanese state and its multiethnic populace through periods defined by colonialism, postcolonial civil wars, genocide in Darfur, and South Sudanese independence. By exploring the work of African American intellectuals, diplomats, organizations, and media outlets, Tounsel shows how this transnational relationship reflects the robust yet capricious terms of racial consciousness in the African Diaspora.

February 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, February 24, 2025

Gutierrez v. Saenz - whether Article III standing requires a particularized determination of whether a specific state official will redress the plaintiff’s injury by following a favorable declaratory judgment.

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Esteras v. United States - whether, even though Congress excluded 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(A) from 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)’s list of factors to consider when revoking supervised release, a district court may rely on the Section 3553(a)(2)(A) factors when revoking supervised release.

Perttu v. Richards - whether, in cases subject to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, prisoners have a right to a jury trial concerning their exhaustion of administrative remedies where disputed facts regarding exhaustion are intertwined with the underlying merits of their claim.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services - whether, in addition to pleading the other elements of an employment discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a majority-group plaintiff must show “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” 

Posted Feb. 24, 2025 by Susan Boland

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