Wisconsin State Law Library

The May issue of the WSLL @ Your Service newsletter has been published. 

Contents include: 

• What's New: Law Day events; upcoming classes; new look for public computers; National Library Week wrap-up; WSLL speaking engagements; and upcoming holiday closures;
• This Just In…: Newly received and updated books and other materials;
• Click to It: Logging into HeinOnline: Quick tips for using this valuable resource from your home or workplace with a State Law Library card;
• Tech Tip in Brief: How to deal with user tracking and targeted ads online;
• WSLL Recommends: Wharton's Criminal Law
• Odds 'n' Endings: Miscellaneous news and May events.

Tuesday, May 1 is Law Day - the annual celebration of the rule of law created by President Eisenhower in 1958. In recognition of Law Day 2012, the Dane County Circuit Court and the Dane County Bar Association have planned events from 3-4:30 p.m. in the Dane County Courthouse.

The Dane County Legal Resource Center (Dane Co. Courthouse Rm L1007) will host volunteer attorneys providing free consultations in English and Spanish from 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. This service is only available in person on a first-come, first-served basis. No appointments will be taken.

Consultas gratuitas con un abogado voluntario; Ayuda disponible en inglés y en español. Martes, 1◦ de mayo, 2012, 10 am – 4:30 pm. Centro de Recursos Legales (Legal Resource Center), cuarto L1007, en La Corte del Condado de Dane. Se atiende por orden de llegada - no aceptan citas!

Greeters will be in the lobby of the building handing out guides to the afternoon's activities, which will kick off with remarks from Chief Justice Abrahamson at 3 pm in the Themis Cafe (LL1), followed by cake and refreshments, "open" courthouse stations on the various floors of the building, a mock trial, and tours. People interested in courthouse tours or middle and high school students who want to be jurors for the mock trial should register by contacting Bob or Le Jordan from the Dane County Bar Association (law@dcba.net or (608) 848-1950).

For more information about Dane County's Law Day events, see:

As part of the Data.gov open government data initiative, Federal ethics information is now searchable at https://explore.data.gov/ethics/.  

This site is the central source for United States government data on topics like lobbyist disclosures, campaign finance, and more. In addition to the prominent search box, visitors to this site can opt to browse the datasets by main category, like "Lobbying disclosure reports," or by type of information, agency, or category. 

This page is included on our Politics and Elections, as well as our Ethics and Professional Conduct legal topic pages.

This month the State Law Library recommends Whartons Criminal Law. This 4-volume set is published by West. It was last updated with 2011-2012 supplements and is supplemented annually. The author, Charles E. Torcia, has been a law professor at Dickinson School of Law, the Marshall-Wythe School of Law of the College of William and Mary, and New York University School of Law.

This respected resource is a great starting place for criminal law research, as it covers the history of various criminal law principles, developments, and the present status of the law. It also contains an extensive list of defenses - both generally and as they apply to specific offenses such as burglary, forgery, libel, homicide, and more. One of the assets of this set is the thorough primary and secondary law annotations, with a particular focus on A.L.R articles. It also provides both state and federal analysis, as well as an in depth look at the Model Penal Code.