Please join us on November 21, 2024, at 2 p.m. EST for our next foreign, comparative, and international law webinar, “Review of LLC Research Reports Published in 2024.” This webinar is the latest installment in the Law Library’s Foreign and Comparative Law Webinar Series.
Stephania Alvarez is a foreign law specialist at the Law Library of Congress. She conducts research and writes reports on a wide range of topics relating primarily to the laws of Central and South American jurisdictions. Stephania has a Bachelor of Laws from Icesi University in Colombia. She completed a dual degree program at Sciences Po in Paris, France, and Georgetown University Law Center earning a master’s in environmental policy and a Master of Laws in environmental and energy law respectively.
Louis Gilbert is a foreign law specialist at the Law Library of Congress. He conducts research and writes reports on topics relating to the laws of French-speaking jurisdictions. He holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Essex, England, and a master’s in comparative law from the Université Paris X, France, and a J.D. from American University.
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Standardized time zones are something most Americans take for granted. Yet they are the result of an ambitious project, brought about by the coordinated efforts of transportation officials, railroad engineers, and scientists all over the country. To call this project important would be an understatement in my view; it created the organizational scaffolding upon which long-distance transportation could advance and exemplifies how new technology has restructured human society.
Time for Trains
Time in the late 19th century was a regional affair. Cities would set their clocks by measuring the path of the sun across the meridian. Across latitudinal distances, however, these times would vary, creating a patchwork of localized time zones, over 144 in North America! This presented challenges for long-distance travel, which was becoming more commonplace thanks to the explosive growth of railroads. Much of this growth can be attributed to the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, which funded the construction of a transcontinental railroad stretching from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. By 1865, there were an estimated 35,000 miles of track spanning the United States.
Railroads had developed their own internal system of precise timekeeping well before a larger system was ever implemented. Most adhered to the time zone of their home city, or another major city along the line. While many lines began to merge under common regional time zones, there were still an estimated 80 different time zones by the early 1880s. This made traveling by train a confusing ordeal; passengers needed to keep track of the different time standards used for the arrival and departure of trains, and stations used multiple clocks to keep track of the standards used by each railroad. As Charles F. Dowd wrote, “[t]he traveler’s watch was to him but a delusion; clocks at stations staring each other in the face defiant of harmony either with one another or with surrounding local time and all wildly at variance with the traveler’s watch, baffled all intelligent interpretation.”
Proposals at Play
Charles Dowd was the first to propose regional standardized time zones as a solution to this traveler’s dilemma. In 1870, he published a pamphlet entitled “A System of National Time and its Application, by Means of Hour and Minute Indexes, to the National Railway Time-table,” which detailed a plan to divide the country into four time zones, each set one hour apart. The first zone was centered on the 75th meridian west of Greenwich, with the others assigned at the 90th,105th, and 120th meridian. Dowd presented his plan to railroad officials but faced great hurdles in getting his plan approved. Sir Sanford Fleming, the chief engineer of the Governmental Railways of Canada, also proposed a universal time standard in his 1876 memoir Terrestrial Time. Unlike Dowd, Fleming sought to create an international time standard, operating on a 24-hour clock. In 1879, the American Meteorology Society established the Committee on Standard Time at the behest of Cleveland Abbe, who advocated for standardized time as a means of ensuring accurate weather forecasts.
Faced with mounting pressure to adopt a uniform time standard, the rail companies feared a government intervention that might undercut their profits. In October of 1881, railroad officials brought the issue to the General Time Convention, an organization of American railroad companies. Convention secretary and Traveler’s Official Railway Guide publisher, William F. Allen was commissioned to develop a proposal for standardized time. Allen drew from the ideas of Dowd, Fleming, and Abbe to devise a system of regional time zones. However, he also sought out the opinions of railroad engineers and officials, printing a notice in the Traveler’s Official Railroad Guide soliciting opinions on the subject. On October 11, 1883, the General Time Convention gathered at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago, and Allen presented his plan. He called for the adoption of five time zones based upon the mean sun-time on the 75th, 90th, 105th, and 120th meridians west of Greenwich, each set one hour apart. The majority of the railroad officials voted in favor of his plan, and it was decided that railroad clocks across the country would be set to the new standard at noon on November 18, 1883.
The Day of Two Noons
Once they had agreed on a plan, the railroad companies needed to ensure the cooperation of the American public. Railroad officials visited city governments to persuade them to adopt the new time standard. Newspapers across the country detailed instructions for adjusting watches and clocks, and printed maps outlining the new time zones. Both the United States Naval Observatory and the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh agreed to send out a telegraph signal to help the railroad companies synchronize their clocks. On November 18, 1883, the clock struck noon twice in several cities: once at the previous local time, and once at the new standard time. Thus it was colloquially referred to as the “Day of Two Noons.”
Thanks to the meticulous planning of railroad officials, the transition into standardized time was almost seamless. Most cities adopted the new time standard immediately, and many more converted within the next year. However, public opinion was divided. While most found the new system convenient, some objected to what they considered a violation of the natural order. The Indianapolis Sentinel published a particularly scathing condemnation of railroad time, as follows:
“People will have to marry by railroad time and die by railroad time. Ministers will be required to preach by railroad time—banks will open and close by railroad time—in fact, the Railroad Convention has taken charge of the time business, and the people may as well set about adjusting their affairs in accordance with its decree…We presume the sun, moon and stars will make an attempt to ignore the orders of the Railroad Convention, but they, too, will have to give in at last.”
While these concerns were clearly hyperbolic, the Indianapolis Sentinelhad struck upon a very real truth: the operations of businesses would increasingly organize the lives of the American people. Standardized time was here to stay.
Living in Standardized Time
The system created by railroad officials remained the standard until 1918 when Congress passed the Standard Time Act (40 Stat. 450). This act incorporated standardized time into federal law and placed the authority to set time zone boundaries in the hands of the Interstate Commerce Commission. It also created Daylight Savings Time (DST), although this was repealed after World War I. However, in 1942, Congress enacted the War Time Act (56 Stat. 9), reintroducing DST year-round as a means of conserving energy until the war ended. At that time, the issue of DST was left with local governments, again creating a convoluted patchwork of regional time zones. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Uniform Time Act (89 Stat. 387), ending the confusion by “promot[ing] the observance of a uniform system of time throughout the United States.”
The current system of standardized time in the United States remains largely the same as that first introduced by the railroad companies, although the boundaries of time zones have shifted here and there as counties have appealed for relocation. Despite passenger trains gradually falling out of fashion in favor of the automobile and airplane, time zones are an enduring legacy of the railroad.
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The following is a guest post by Mary-Claire Sarafianos, a former intern with the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. She isa second-year Ph.D. student in English at the University of Missouri. She studies silence and structure, both as problems in archives and as features of 19th-century American women’s writing.
In the village of Nyack, New York, an 18-room Victorian estate perches on the edge of the road, looming big and blue above the Hudson River. Local legend proclaimed that the house was haunted. Many a ghost story had been told about this home–a Navy lieutenant from the American Revolution lurking around the basement, an invisible force shaking beds, and a spirit floating and rocking in the middle of the living room. The house and the various spectral presences within it were well-known by the local people of Nyack, but these stories have gone beyond local legend–unlike any other house in American history, 1 La Veta Place was declared, as a matter of law, haunted.
But before the house’s ghosts became a matter of legal record, 1 La Veta Place was considered haunted by locals. The house was even “included in a five-home walking tour of Nyack and described in a November 27th newspaper article as ‘a riverfront Victorian (with ghost).’” (Stambovsky v. Ackley, 169 A.D.2d 254, 256 (N.Y. App. Div. 1991.) During her time living at 1 La Veta Place, Helen Ackley not only spoke publicly about the ghosts, she wrote about them on both a local and national level. Ackley wrote a story detailing her house’s various phantasmal residents in a local newspaper in 1982, in addition to an article she wrote for Reader’s Digest in 1977 that described the ghosts and their relationship to the human inhabitants of the home. (Stambovsky at 256.) Apparently, the ghosts at 1 La Veta Place were an odd but friendly group of phantoms, but when the house went up for sale, these ghost stories were confronted with the looming figure of the law, leading to the case of Stambovsky v. Ackley, or what is colloquially known as “The Ghostbuster Ruling.”
When Ackley put the home up for sale, she hired Ellis Realty, who would become her co-defendant in the ensuing legal trouble. Jeffrey Stambovsky, a New York City resident who was unfamiliar with the Nyack folklore and the reputation of the Ackley home, made an offer on the home for $650,000. (Stambovsky at 256.) But some time between making the down payment and closing on the house, Stambovsky discovered the reputation of 1 La Veta Place. According to the majority opinion, when Stambovsky discovered that he was purchasing an allegedly haunted house, he “sought to rescind the $650,000 contract of sale and obtain return of his $32,500 down payment without resort to litigation.” (Stambovsky at 261.) When this did not work, Stambovsky brought his complaint to court and requested not only to cancel the contract to purchase the home but also to request damages for fraudulent misrepresentation by Ackley and her real estate broker, Ellis Realty. (Stambovsky at 256.) And just like that, the house became less of a local legend and more of a legal entanglement.
The appeals court found that caveat emptor did not apply to Stambovsky’s case. As the majority opinion states, “[a]pplying the strict rule of caveat emptor to a contract involving a house possessed by poltergeists conjures up visions of a psychic or medium routinely accompanying the structural engineer and Terminix man on an inspection of every home subject to a contract of sale.” (Stambovsky at 257.) The appeals court allowed Stambovsky to seek rescission of the contract for sale of the home. (Stambovsky at 260-261.) What the case affirms is not that ghosts exist in a legal sense, but that if the house can be considered haunted enough to merit being a stop on a tour of haunted houses and be the subject of an article in Reader’s Digest, then that spooky reputation must be disclosed to potential buyers.
This verdict presents both sellers and buyers of real estate with complicated questions about the reputations and histories of property and, though not everyone believes in ghosts, houses are often haunted by the crimes, tragedies, and misfortunes that have happened within their walls. Such houses are considered stigmatized properties, which are properties that have been “psychologically impacted by an event which occurred, or was suspected to have occurred, on the property, such an event being one that has no physical impact of any kind.” Whether there is a reputation for ghosts, crime, or misfortune, the public perception of stigmatized property can make it difficult to sell, regardless of the quality of the land or structure. In the case of Stambovsky v. Ackley, the stigmatized nature of the property could actually attract buyers; 1 La Veta Place drew the attention of The Amazing Kreskin, a mentalist who wanted to buy the house, despite its haunted reputation.
The legal responsibilities of both sellers and buyers of stigmatized property vary from state to state. In New York today, deaths, crimes, or stigmatizing features of a property are not required to be disclosed to a seller, but the buyer may inquire as to any of these concerns and the seller may “choose whether or not to respond to the inquiry.” Pennsylvania law has upheld similar requirements, particularly in the case of Milliken v. Jacono, which concluded that “psychological damage to a property cannot be considered a material defect in the property which must be revealed by the seller to the buyer.” (Milliken v. Jacono, 60 A.3d 133, 138 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2012).) While many states follow New York and Pennsylvania, other states require that sellers disclose to buyers whether certain violent crimes were committed on a property. In Alaska, if a licensee knows that a murder or suicide occurred on the property within the last year, they are obligated to disclose this information to the buyer before an offer is made or accepted. In South Dakota, a similar law is in place that requires a property disclosure statement that includes the question: “Since you have owned the property, are you aware of a human death by homicide or suicide occurring on the property?”
Some states have no requirements or laws on the books that indicate whether a property’s tragic or torrid history needs to be disclosed to the buyer, but certainly no other states have put their caveat emptor doctrines to the test against ghosts in the way that New York has. In the interest of ending on a slightly more humorous note, I turn again to the majority opinion of Stambovsky v. Ackley, which brought a level of humor to the conclusions of the case that have earned it the nickname “The Ghostbusters Ruling.” The majority opinion references the movie Ghostbustersby name and uses even more ghostly puns than I have employed throughout this blog post. (Stambovsky at 257.) The humor of the majority opinion even weaves its way into the logic of the case where the judge states that “if the language of the contract is to be construed as broadly as defendant urges to encompass the presence of poltergeists in the house, it cannot be said that she has delivered the premises ‘vacant’ in accordance with her obligation under the provisions of the contract rider.” (Stambovsky at 260.) In keeping with the humor of the court opinion, this case remains a spot of humor in contract law curricula across the country. Stambovsky v. Ackley and cases like it continue to spark conversation and legislation around caveat emptor and stigmatized property.
If you are interested in learning about how English law handles the disclosure of hauntings, see the previous In Custodia Legis post, “Revealing the Presence of Ghosts.“
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One of the perplexing aspects of the surge in witch trials that took place in Europe between the 15th and the 18th centuries is the question of how much the personal experiences of that era’s legal personnel influenced the practice of criminal justice throughout the period. In a previous post on this blog, we saw that the political philosopher and witchcraft theorist Jean Bodin cited the existence of a (mostly) invisible guiding spirit that helped to steel his resolve against demonic foes. In this post, we will take a look at Joost de Damhouder, the author of an important 16th century handbook on criminal law, who described an anomalous experience involving an amulet that shaped his views on the use of torture, a story that seems actually to have taken place.
In the first half of the 16th century, the legal field underwent a process of professionalization throughout much of Western Europe. This was driven in part by the expansion of the use of the printing press, which gave legal practitioners access to a much wider body of legal texts and information than was possible before the age of printing. That change also triggered new demand for small-format general practice guides that could put immediate and practical knowledge in the hands of the lawyers, magistrates and lower officials that managed the daily business of the law in Renaissance Europe.
Within a couple decades, the market for subject-specific practice books and treatises began to expand as well. On the subject of criminal procedure, two important examples of this literature appeared in Venice, Italy to solid commercial success, Practica causarum criminalis of Hippolytus de Marsiliis [Venice, 1529] and Practica Nova Causarum Criminalium of Lodovico Carerio (Venice, 1546). These were joined by others in short order. For example, Joost de Damhouder (1507-1581), a lawyer from Bruges who had worked in criminal law and who was a member of the fiscal council of the Netherlands in Brussels (which is now in Belgium), seized the opportunity to capitalize on this trend. He published in 1554 a work that captured the current state of criminal practice law in his home region of Flanders. (Dauchy et. al., ch. , 3sect. 26.) That work was Praxis rerum criminalium (Criminal Matters Practice).
Damhouder’s book contains images of various categories of crime, one of which, depicted here in this full-page woodcut illustration from Damhouder’s 1554 Enchiridion rerum criminalium, is the crime of parricide. Photo by Nathan Dorn.
Damhouder first published Praxis rerum criminalium under the title Enchiridion rerum criminalium (Guidebook of Criminal Matters) in Leuven in 1554 and changed the title in subsequent editions. It went on to be printed many times and became over a handful of years perhaps the most influential short handbook on the subject of criminal law in Europe. (Dauchy et al., ch. 3, sect. 26.) In some respects, this was because of the qualities of the text, which presented succinct and clear statements on a number of areas within the subject of criminal law, including rules governing accusation, investigation of crime, torture, incarceration, and various categories of criminal activity. Some of these categories are very familiar: theft, fraud, assault and battery, murder, rape, arson, and more. Others sound antiquated: throwing waste out of a window, adultery, banditry, and grave robbery, for instance. (Dauchy et al., ch. 3, sect. 26.) Some belong to a world that is distinctly alien to most of the audience of this post: blasphemy, sacrilege, treason against God, and witchcraft. Categories along these lines sufficed, apparently, to make the book widely useful.
A large measure of its success, however, must also be due to the 57 wood engravings that Damhouder commissioned for the book’s publication. Unlike many books of that format and price point, Praxis rerum ciminialium was more-or-less festooned with images. These depicted crimes, tribunals, and penalties suffered by the convicted. Illustrations of this or any quality were more typically found in books that sold at luxury prices. This title, however, was both offered in a less expensive format and illustrated with fascinating images of the world of crime and punishment. (Dauchy et. al., ch. 3, sect. 26.)
This image from Damhouder’s 1554 Enchiridion rerum criminalium depicts the crime of harming passersby through carelessly hurling waste out of the windows of city houses. Photo by Nathan Dorn.
An interesting point about Damhouder’s book is that it is, almost in its entirety, a Latin translation of a pre-existing manuscript that was written by another author. The original that stands behind Praxis rerum criminalium, was a Flemish work by Philips Wielant (1441 or 1442-1520), a magistrate who served on the Council of Flanders. That book was called Corte instructie in materie criminele. (Dauchy et al., ch. 3, sect. 26.) Wielant prepared a first version of the text in 1510 and a second, augmented version, in 1515. A French version dating to 1519 also exists. (Monballyu, p. 293.) Wielant, who was a couple generations older than Damhouder, never had the book printed, and it did not appear in print until an edition of Wielant’s works was made from existing manuscripts in 1872. That publication led to the discovery that Damhouder’s book cannibalized Wielant’s text. (Dauchy et al., ch. 3, sect. 26.)
The originality of Damhouder’s work has to do first with its publication in the Latin language, which made it far more accessible to the overall European community than the Dutch original, and secondly with the images that he added, which had something like the same effect. But we do see a flash of independence in another area, in a place in which Damhouder deviates from Wielant’s text. That is regarding the crime of witchcraft. (Monballyu, p. 299 and following.)
Damhouder places witchcraft in the category of lèse-majesté divine, treason against God. This image from Damhouder’s 1554 Enchiridion rerum criminalium depicts blasphemous acts. Photo by Nathan Dorn.
Where Damhouder provides a bit of original material is in his chapters on torture. (Monballyu, p. 293.) Of interest to him is that people who practice magic sometimes use magical means to avoid suffering the pain of torture. And if the torture victim suffers no pain from the ordeal, then she will not be compelled to answer the investigator’s questions. This renders the magistrates helpless to produce a confession. If this is allowed to take place, many accused will escape punishment. To avoid this, Damhouder makes a particular plea that investigators should never neglect to shave the entire body of a person accused of witchcraft. The purpose of this surprising measure is simple: one must expose to sight any place on the body of the accused where she might hide a talisman or a charm, since magical objects were often used to nullify the pain that the investigators were trying to inflict. Damhouder is especially insistent that shame and embarrassment should not prevent investigators from shaving the accused entirely. (Monballyu, p. 293.) In the French version of the book, Pratique judiciaire des causes criminelles, published in Anvers in 1564, Damhouder relates an experience he claims to have had that convinced him of the need for this precaution. The story appears in chapter 37 of the 1564 work, from paragraph 19 onward (ff. 38v.-41r.).
This image from Damhouder’s 1554 Enchiridion rerum criminalium depicts a tribunal attempting to extract a confession from the accused by torture. Photo by Nathan Dorn.
The story he tells took place when Damhouder resided in Bruges, a period between 1537 and 1550, during which time he was a city alderman. There was an old woman living in town who was said to be able to effect miraculous cures for people who had injuries or illnesses. In general, she was highly regarded by the public, which valued her healing skills and tended to think of her as a quite devout, even saintly, Christian, “an apostle of Christ,” in Damhouder’s telling. This reputation did not impress certain aldermen of Bruges who sought to have her investigated on grounds she might be using illicit magic to work her cures. In consequence of this, she was apprehended in the middle of the night and incarcerated with a view to questioning her. The interrogation was, at first, entirely useless, despite the investigators’ use of torture. The old woman insisted throughout that she was doing nothing at all out of line and that she was a devout Christian. In a strange episode, the mayor of Bruges, who was present, gasped several times on account of suffering a severe case of arthritis. When the woman commented on it, he offered her payment to cure him. She agreed, and when one of the men present asked what means she would use, she assured the mayor that he needed to do nothing but believe that she could heal him. These were fateful words. Upon hearing them, the men who were present warned the mayor that her answer revealed that she was not relying on God, but on some other power to effect her cures and that he should have nothing to do with it. Apostles of Christ, they said, always mention God’s name.
What followed was a series of fruitless interrogations assisted by torture. In the third session, Damhouder tells us, she mocked her captors and even fell asleep during the questioning. At length, it was noticed that while her hair was shaved in preparation for the fourth round of questioning, that the interrogators had neglected to shave all of her body hair before continuing. When they finally did so, they discovered, hidden on her person, a small parchment on which was written strange writing and the symbol of the cross. Once it was removed from her body, she was returned to be tortured again. During that session, she confessed to relying on the aid of the devil to perform her cures. In view of her age and gender, the authorities agreed to subject her to a brief public humiliation and then to banish her from the city rather than to execute her. In time, she was arrested again, this time by magistrates in Middlebourg, a town in Zeeland. There she was burned at the stake.
Some facts of this story can be verified. History scholar Jan Monballyu has identified a woman whose fate matches the fate of the woman in this story, both in the details of her detainment and questioning – and subsequent banishment – in Bruges. The person depicted in the account is likely Catherine Onbaerts, a widow of a laborer in Westkapelle named Boudin Baarnaert. She was banished from Bruges on August 26, 1538, and later sentenced by a tribunal of aldermen in Vlissingen to death by burning on January 20, 1541. (Monballyu, pp. 305-306.) Some details of the story – for example, the discovery of the amulet or the turnaround in the woman’s resistance to questioning – cannot be corroborated.
I repeat Damhouder’s tale here only in scant detail. Monballyu has paraphrased in modern French the entire story that Damhouder tells in his article cited below. The original French of the 1564 edition, however, is manageable for French readers. The story is remarkable, since Damhouder shares almost no other details about his life in any edition of this book. How to interpret it is an open question, but it does offer a window into how a person of those times who had active involvement in a particularly terrible chapter in European history, and whose book led many others to follow his example, tried to make sense of his own actions.
Monballyu, J. “La théorie sur la sorcellerie chez Wielant et Damhouder,” Houd voet bij stuk. F. Stevens en D. Van Den Auweele (eds.), Xenia iuris historiae G. van Dievoet oblata, Leuven, 1990, 291-313
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Spooky season is here, and people are telling stories of ghosts and witches to get ready for Halloween. Many Americans think of Salem, Massachusetts, when they think of witches and witch trials, not realizing that there were witch trials in colonial Virginia. It is believed that there were 2 dozen witch trials in Virginia between 1626 and 1730, although specifics are not known because many trial records of the Commonwealth were lost during the Civil War. Penalties in Virginian witchcraft cases were generally not as severe as the penalties imposed in the Massachusetts cases, as apparently no one died in the Virginia cases. In the most notable Virginian witchcraft case, however, the accused, Grace Sherwood, was held in the county jail for a trial in the colonial capitol, and it seems likely that her property was seized.
Grace Sherwood and her husband, James, brought two separate suits for slander against neighbors in 1698; one neighbor accused her of bewitching their pigs and their cotton, and another claimed she visited them in the night, turned into a black cat and left through the keyhole. The Sherwoods lost both suits and had to pay court costs and transportation for the defendants (Hudson, 91). James Sherwood died in 1701, not long after their unsuccessful suits. Grace Sherwood was left a propertied widow worth 3000 pounds of tobacco; she never remarried (Hudson, 91). In late 1705, Grace Sherwood and a neighbor, Elizabeth Hill, got into a fight and on December 7, 1705, Mrs. Sherwood sued Luke and Elizabeth Hill for assault and battery; she won the judgment. A short time later, on January 3, 1706, Luke Hill and his wife accused Sherwood of witchcraft. On February 7, 1706, “Whereas a complt [complaint] was brought agt Grace Sherrwood on Suspition of witchcraft by Luke Hill, etc.; and the matter being after a long time debated and order that the s[ai]d Hill pay all fees of this Compl[ain]t and that the s[ai]d Grace be here next Court to be Searched according to the Compl[ain]t by a Jury of women to decide the s[ai]d Differr: and the Sherr is Likewise ord[e]r to Soman able Jury accordingly.”
Sherwood’s body was inspected by a jury of women; the women stated that she had “two things like titts with: severall other spots (Cushing, 74).” It was common practice in England and Scotland to search for witches’ marks on the bodies of those accused of witchcraft, as these moles, birthmarks, scars and warts were then believed to be a mark of a pact with the devil. Following the find of Sherwood’s moles, the court tried to assemble a jury of women, but they failed to appear; the court asked the sheriff to assemble another jury of women, but he could not do so (Cushing, 71).
Grace Sherwood Statue. Photo by Flickr user Jimmy Emerson, DVM. May 13, 2016. Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/.
Subsequently the Princess Anne County court decided “being willing to have all means possible tried either to acquit her or to give more strength to ye. Suspicion [that] she might be dealt with as deserved therefore It was Order. yt. ys. day by her own consent to be tried in ye. water by ducking (Cushing, 71).” The first proposed day for the ducking, July 5, 1706, the weather was “very rainy & bad s[u]n…might endanger her health” and so the ducking trial was saved for the following Wednesday, July 10, 1706, when she would be taken to “Jno. Harpers plantacon”, which was on a branch of the Lynnhaven River, and put in “above mans debth & try her how she swims therein” (Cushing, 77); witch ducking stopped in England in the 17th century. Sherwood either floated, or was able to swim to safety. After the ducking test, she was examined again for witches marks by five women who said again on oath that she had two black moles on her private parts, like no other woman (Cushing, 77). The justices of the county decided that she should be taken into custody and sent to jail to wait for a future trial, presumably in Williamsburg at the colonial government seat. There are no records of a second trial. Scholars know that Sherwood paid a debt to the county court in 1708, and in 1714 she petitioned for a reinstatement of her land; if she was sentenced to prison, she must have been released by then. Her will was proved in 1740, so that is commonly believed to be the year she died. The fact that she had property to leave to her sons demonstrates that her final years may have been more peaceful.
In recent years, Grace Sherwood has become a popular figure; a street has been named Witchduck Road and the area where she was tested is now called Witchduck Point. There is a statue of her and a memorial plaque in Virginia Beach; the mayor declared July 10, 2006 as Grace Sherwood Day, and then-Governor Tim Kaine informally pardoned Sherwood, as a woman who had suffered a miscarriage of justice. She is known as the Witch of Pungo, after her birthplace. She remains the only person trialled by water for witchcraft in Virginia.
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Did you know there is a bank in Italy that accepts wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral on loans? If, like me, you are now contemplating leaving your current career and getting a job as a bank teller for Credito Emiliano (commonly referred to in the region as Credem), read on.
Most of the time, when we think of collateral, we think of something like the mortgage on a house. If a homeowner is unable to make payments on the house, the bank that holds the mortgage may seize the collateral (the house) and sell it to satisfy the debt (we call this liquidating the assets). So, how does this work with big wheels of cheese?
First, it is important to note that Parmigiano Reggiano is no ordinary cheese. True Parmigiano Reggiano can only be produced in one of five provinces within Italy: Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena, Bologna, or Mantova. While the ingredients that go into a wheel of Parmigiano are simple – just cow’s milk, salt, and calf rennet (a natural enzyme from cow intestines that helps form curds) – the strict process, which has remained largely unchanged for eight centuries, takes time. After the cheese has aged for 12 months, the Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano Reggiano (the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium), which is the governing body that regulates standards for Parmigiano Reggiano, inspects each wheel. As an aside: each wheel of Parmigiano is the same size to ensure consistent texture – and each wheel weighs over 80 pounds! If a wheel passes the 12-month test, it receives a literal stamp of approval and the protected designation of origin label (PDO or DOP in Italian). The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium helpfully provides links to legislation and guidelines surrounding Parmigiano in English on its website, here.
So now, back to Credem, the bank that accepts wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral on small-business loans it makes to dairy farmers in the Emilia Romagna region. Wheels of Parmigiano can go for anywhere between $900 and $2500. Parmigiano only gets more valuable as it ages. But often, farmers will sell off less mature wheels to have more immediate access to money, even though this turns into a loss of revenue in the long term. In 1953, Credem saw an opportunity to help local farmers maximize their profits by offering loans of up to 70 or 80% on wheels of Parmigiano. That way, the farmers could get the cash they needed up-front and the bank could ensure the wheels of cheese would have time to age and reach their highest value. Credem takes its role seriously, storing the wheels of cheese it accepts as collateral in climate-controlled vaults that are inspected by Parmigiano Reggiano experts for the duration of the loan.
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I am a legal trainee and Ph.D. student from Germany, currently completing a three-month internship at the Law Library of Congress.
What is your academic/professional history?
I studied law at the University of Bonn, Germany. Participating in the Erasmus program allowed me to spend a semester abroad at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. I passed the first German state exam in 2020 and finished law school, specializing in capital markets law. Following a year of work at a law firm, I began my doctoral studies on the European regulation of crowdfunding under the supervision of Professor Dr. Moritz Renner at the University of Mannheim. In 2024, I started a two-year legal traineeship program to qualify for the bar exam in Germany. After working for the local court and the public prosecutor’s office in Bonn, the program provided me with the opportunity to work at the Law Library of Congress.
How would you describe your job to other people?
In my position as a foreign law intern at the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress, I assist my supervisor, Jenny Gesley, with delivering legal insights on matters concerning German-speaking countries and the European Union (EU). My responsibilities include conducting thorough legal research and drafting comparative legal analyses in response to inquiries from Congress, judicial bodies, and executive agencies, while also supporting public research efforts. Additionally, I contribute to the Library’s Global Legal Monitor.
Why did you want to work at the Law Library of Congress?
Having studied law in both Germany and Switzerland, I gained knowledge in German, European, and international law. My work at the Law Library of Congress presents an invaluable opportunity to broaden my perspective by engaging with the U.S. legal system, while critically assessing national law and EU law from a comparative viewpoint. This experience allows me to deepen my legal understanding and provides meaningful insights into the interplay between different legal frameworks.
What is the most interesting fact you have learned about the Law Library of Congress?
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Law Library of Congress is its unparalleled global reach and comprehensive legal collection. It holds the largest collection of legal materials in the world, encompassing legal systems from nearly every country and jurisdiction. This vast resource allows researchers to compare diverse legal traditions and developments, providing a unique platform for understanding how law functions across different cultures and political systems. The ability to access such a breadth of international legal knowledge in one place is truly remarkable.
What’s something most of your co-workers do not know about you?
One thing my co-workers may not know about me is that I am a huge fan of U.S. sports. While I am here in Washington, I plan to catch games from all the major teams—the Nationals, Commanders, Capitals, and Wizards!
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I am a native Ohioan who attended The Ohio State University and later Boston University for law school. I have been working in non-partisan legislative work for about a decade – I started my career in the Ohio General Assembly as a bill drafter. After about a year of that, I was offered the chance to move to another legislative agency that was in the process of rolling out software to fully digitize the lawmaking process. I had no background in tech but they promised me if I knew the legislative process, they would teach me everything I needed to know about being a business analyst.
I had no idea what I was getting into but I loved it! I served as the liaison between the clerks in the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives and the team designing and developing the software. I learned so much about communication – both the unique language used in software development but also how to confront and address problems in a productive and congenial way, particularly in high stress situations. At the time, I had no idea how much those skills were going to help me in the future.
A few years later, I joined the Office of the Senate Parliamentarian in Congress, another non-partisan role but one that was more traditionally connected to my legal training. I have been here for about six years and love it. The people who work on Capitol Hill are what make this job so great – from the Secretary of the Senate staff I work with every day to the folks at the Library of Congress who engage with us on Congress.gov.
How would you describe your job to other people?
The Senate Parliamentarian is kind of like the referee of the Senate. We interpret and apply the rules of the Senate on a daily basis.
What is your role in the development of Congress.gov?
It just so happened that when I started working in the Senate, there was an opportunity to join the Secretary of the Senate’s Congress.gov team and because of my past experience, my boss suggested I join. I was definitely excited to be able to dip my toes back into some of the type of work I had been doing in Ohio. At that time, Congress.gov was live but so was the previous resource, LIS, which was a website only accessible to Congress with some additional features that the public-facing site THOMAS did not have. There were a lot of growing pains getting Congress.gov to the point where it could provide the same level of service to users that LIS had . . . and a lot of staff who were always going to like LIS better no matter what. So we had a big challenge working to gain the trust of the internal users while also continuing to work on bettering Congress.gov.
Fortunately, we were able to gather a great group of staff, both on the Secretary of the Senate side of things and on the Library of Congress side, and were able to get buy-in from some important, but previously uninvolved, stakeholders and then things really started to improve.
All of that to say that I think of my role in two parts – provide important feedback on how data is used and presented from the perspective of my office, but also to help facilitate the good conversations and working relationships that are critical to the success of Congress.gov.
One thing I do take great satisfaction in is fixing errors in really old data – we recently fixed one from five years before I was born – you know the errors have been out there for decades and maybe no one has looked at that particular piece of legislation or maybe they did not notice the misspelled word but fixing it is one more tiny step to getting Congress.gov to be as perfect as we can make it and I find that so satisfying.
What is your favorite feature of Congress.gov?
I think someone described the folks in my office as “power users” of Congress.gov, which sounds much more impressive than I ever actually feel on a daily basis. But I do use the search functions on Congress.gov every single day, so my favorite feature is absolutely one of the advanced searches. The command line search lets the user input search terms and connectors to tailor the results to be very specific without having to click a lot of boxes or choose from dropdown menus. There is nothing more satisfying than getting good search results on the first try!
What is the most interesting fact you’ve learned about the legislative process while working for Congress?
I have been working in the legislative branch for about a decade at this point, so I am not entirely sure I can pin down one in particular. Something I have started to spend time learning, however, is the history of the legislative process, and by extension, the history of the people working in the legislature.
One of my favorite anecdotes is that before the Russell Senate Office Building was named for Richard Russell, it was just called the Senate Office Building and Senator Harry Truman would joke that his constituents could address his mail to “Harry Truman S.O.B.” and the Post Office would know where to deliver it.
One of the important things I have learned about the legislative process is that it is made up of all of the people who have worked and served here, not just the elected members. For example, last year I read the obituary of former Senate Committee on Foreign Relations staffer Bertie Bowman and immediately went in search of his autobiography. He started working at the Capitol in the 1940s when he was 13 years old and did not fully retire until 2021. His story of service to his country is just one example of why so many people have done this work over more than two centuries and serves as an inspiration for those of us currently doing it.
What’s something most of your co-workers do not know about you?
This is the opposite of something people do not know about me, I am telling everyone because it makes me laugh! I just got a kitten and I named him John Quincy Catams.
John Quincy Catams, picture courtesy of Christy Amatos.
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Union Island Gecko, photo by the Union Island Environment Alliance (UIEA) photographer Jeremy Holden. Used with UIEA permission
The impact on the ecosystem is also of concern. On the Grenadine island of Union Island, there lives a rare, bejeweled, and beautiful lizard called the Union Island Gecko (Gonatodes daudini), also known as the Grenadines clawed gecko. It was described as “wholly irreplaceable” by the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute in their report titled “The Caribbean Islands Biodiversity Hotspot.” From its discovery in 2005, the Union Island Gecko was so named because it is only known to live in about 123 acres (50 hectares) of the Chatham Bay Forest area of Union Island. It is not only unique but also tiny, as it is considered to be about the size of a paperclip. It is listed as “Critically Endangered” by the IUN Red List. The Wildlife Protection Act of 1987 protects wildlife from being removed from St Vincent and the Grenadines. However, there was no protection on the gecko under international law. In 2019, at the 18 Meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Geneva Switzerland, a decision was taken for the endemic lizard to be added to Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to protect its survival, prevent over-harvesting for the international pet trade, and destruction of its habitat.
However, due to the devastating impacts of the recent passage of Hurricane Beryl on Union Island, as of July 2024, according to the Director of Forestry, Fitzgerald Providence, the Chatham Bay Forest area was seen to have total defoliation and the status of the Union Island gecko population is unknown. After the recent assessment carried out by the forestry department, Wildlife supervisor Glenroy Gaymes stated that with the forest destruction, the gecko is impacted, as it has shown signs of distress and habitat disruption. As a result, the forestry department is looking at the way forward, which is to mitigate the impact by restoring the gecko’s habitat, community engagement and monitoring programs.
Another endemic specie, the Amazona Guildingii—the national bird of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has also had its fate tested by natural disasters affecting its habitat on mainland Saint Vincent. Most recently, it has suffered from the April 2021 series of explosive eruptions of the La Soufriere volcano. The Amazona Guildingii is an exotic multicolored parrot whose habitat includes the northern forest of the island, near the slopes of the volcano.
The Amazona Guildingii is also listed in Appendix 1 of CITES. According to the Director of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Forestry Department, their assessment showed that while in 2021, there was an Amazona Guildingiiparrot that suffered and later died due to ash inhalation, many of the parrots managed to survive by migrating from the Red Zones to the safer zones.
Long live the Union Island Gecko and the Amazona Guildingii!
For more information on CITES and endangered species protection on a national and international level, please consult the following selected In Custodia Legis resources:
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Continuing our series on modernizing the legislative data exchange behind Congress.gov, we are going to look at the next phase of the project – modernizing the exchange of Senate measures and amendments data.
The Legislation collection is comprised of bills and resolutions, along with associated actions (including Action Codes), titles, sponsors, cosponsors, and committee-related activity. Legislation text is a separate collection on Congress.gov.
When we began the process of modernizing the legislative data exchange, we worked closely with colleagues in the Secretary of the Senate and the Senate Sergeant at Arms. The complexities of legislation moving through the chambers had to be considered. To assist with this, testing scenarios were developed to ensure that action codes, committee referrals, amendments associated with Senate measures, cosponsor data, and action text were rendered properly in Congress.gov. We devoted considerable efforts to ensuring that updates to legislation were displayed properly, as well. With these vital elements in mind, we decided to utilize unique identifiers in the modernized data. Unique identifiers in the data exchange support specific and precise updates as measures or amendments move through the legislative process.
We completed several rounds of testing to confirm that more unique scenarios were accounted for within the new data exchange. A variety of cases were presented to colleagues in the Senate, and their feedback and knowledge were essential in refining the modernized data exchange.
You can search current Congress collection items, metadata, and full-text documents from the search bar by entering your search terms in the search entry box and pressing Enter on your keyboard or clicking the magnifying glass icon. By typing into the search bar, you are given the option to search only in the legislation collection. Bills may be searched by number or keyword from the search bar, search form, or Advanced search, which includes an advanced form optimized for legislation, a query builder for customized searches, and a command line search using SOLR query syntax. See Search Tools for details on using operators and fields in your search query. Legislation fields can be used in the search bar and the advanced search command line.
Senate legislation and amendment data is also available via the Congress.gov API, where users can view and download data in a machine-readable format. To learn more about Congress.gov collections in the Congress.gov API and how to get started using the Congress.gov API visit the Congress.gov API GitHub.
The modernized data exchange has empowered us to be able to move to a new phase of enhancements in Congress.gov. We look forward to sharing those with users as work is completed. Until then, happy searching!
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On January 26, 2023, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed for the Women’s Empowerment Project (WEP) International Programme. WEP was sponsored by the Government of Taiwan in collaboration with the Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Nine participating organizations were selected to participate in the WEP. They were the Kingdom Life Tabernacle, Vincyklus Inc., Caribbean Women in Leadership (CIWiL), Bequia Threadworks, RedRoot SVG Inc., SVG Girl Guides Association, National Council of Women, WAM/Vincyklus Inc. and Generation Next.
According to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Mobilization, Catherine De Freitas, the Project is about assisting small businesses, mostly owned by females, that were adversely affected after the 2021 explosive eruptions of the La Soufriere volcano and the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines welcomes the program as it supplements other social protection initiatives by the Government. Ambassador of Taiwan, His Excellency Peter Sha Li-Lan also pledged Taiwan’s continued assistance to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and urged the participating organizations to continue the hard work as WEP “is all about empowerment.”
In continuing the journey of empowering women and the young generation, on March 26, 2024, the Taiwanese Embassy hosted a WEP showcase in Kingstown, St. Vincent, where more than 50 female entrepreneurs participated. The Taiwanese Ambassador to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Her Excellency Fiona Fan, expressed her delight with the progress made with the WEP. She stated that through 16 vocational courses, the WEP empowered 306 female bakers with a diverse set of skills ranging from hotel hospitality to beauty treatments, sewing, and computer maintenance. According to Minister of National Mobilization Dr. Orando Brewster, the display exhibited many success stories, including start-up businesses and the valuable skills gained especially in the hotel and tourism industry.
Coincidentally, in September 2024, two foreign female legal interns situated next to each other met at the Law Library of Congress, Global Legal Research Directorate: Jai-Len Williams from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Yu Chen Tsai of Taiwan. Their friendship has blossomed into a thriving one.
Cheers to International Relations and the Global Research Directorate!
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As Legislative Counsel, Wade Ballou oversees the House Office of the Legislative Counsel (HOLC). HOLC provides legislative drafting services to the committees and Members of the House of Representatives on a nonpartisan, impartial, and confidential basis.
I am from Roanoke, Virginia. During my youth I was active in sports, Scouting, and the YMCA. I earned a B.S. in forestry (industrial forestry operations with cooperative education certificate) from Virginia Tech in 1980. At Tech, I was active in Alpha Phi Omega. APO is the coed national service fraternity affiliated with Scouting. I met my wife in APO. We’ve been married for 41 years and have two married sons and two grandchildren. I am an Eagle Scout and have served as an adult leader in Scouting, both as cubmaster and scoutmaster.
What is your academic/professional history?
After Virginia Tech, I went to the University of VirginiaSchool of Law and earned a J.D. in 1983. I joined the Office of the Legislative Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives in the fall of 1983, where I am presently employed. The Office is a non-partisan, career office responsible for drafting legislation for the House, its committees, members, and leadership. After completing training, during which I drafted federal law generally, I worked with foreign affairs legislation. Due to needs of the Office, in 1986, I moved into the areas of Native American issues (including health care and land claims), federal land issues (including natural resources, water reclamation and irrigation, public lands, and forestry), and intelligence, and later picked up parts of veteran’s affairs. In 1996, I changed to the tax team, again due to the needs of the Office. As a member of the team, I drafted in all areas of federal tax law, specializing in pensions, health care, bonds, and excise taxes. Alongside of tax, I have worked in public debt, ERISA, health care, and social security.
I earned a graduate certificate in spiritual direction studies from Washington Theological Union in 2013 and a certificate in spiritual formation from the Avila Institute in 2015.
In 2016, I was appointed the 8th Legislative Counsel of the House of Representatives, effective August 1. During my time as the head of the Office, there has been significant change in both the House and the Office, including a 45% increase in the number of attorneys and a significant increase in demand for draft legislation. The Office now has some 90 personnel, including 68 attorneys. Some of the changes include improving the recruiting system and modifying the training methodology for new attorneys and transitioning the Office to a new Sharepoint site and digital leave management system.
I have also been fortunate to be able to work with other institutions in the legislative branch, especially through participation in the Congressional Data Task Force. This includes:
Partnering with the Clerk of the House and the Government Publishing Office to develop and update the Comparative Print Suite, a software tool that provides on-demand comparisons of how a bill changes law, how amendments change a bill, bill-to-bill differences, and a bill viewer; and
Working to provide educational opportunities concerning the legislative process and drafting software applications.
How would you describe your job to other people?
My official job title is Legislative Counsel of the House of Representatives. The fun way to describe my job is that I am responsible for producing paper for the House. This is a throwback to my forestry days where the job of a procurement forester is to ensure that the mill never runs out of timber.
Additionally, I meet with members and staffs of parliaments around the world to discuss and share ideas for improvements in legislative process and drafting. These opportunities include working through the House Democratic Initiative, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. I am an associate member of the Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel and a frequent speaker and contributor to webinars on improving legislative drafting organized by Bússola Tech, an international leader in this arena.
What is your role in the development of Congress.gov?
I do not think of this as a role, but I brought to the attention of Congress.gov various research and document needs that are useful to drafters. They developed features to meet those needs. It is interesting to me that most of my draft files are on Congress.gov in the form of bills and resolutions.
Well, there are two features that I use a lot. Whenever a drafting request requires beginning with a public version of a bill or resolution (introduced, reported, passed, etc.), we begin with the version that is posted on Congress.gov in the XML format. So, the download feature that allows me to save this version on my computer system is a big hit for me. In addition, I use the tables of public laws and appropriations a lot. I will get to these either from links on the website or from searches and filters.
What is the most interesting fact you’ve learned about the legislative process while working for Congress?
Ha. The legislative process happens. Sometimes it is textbook. Sometimes it is a bit convoluted. Sometimes a bill is conferenced before it is introduced. But, the formal steps are acknowledged, even if it is by discharge or unanimous consent. So, it is important to know the ideal path to how a bill becomes law so that you can place a question in the context of this ideal.
What’s something most of your co-workers do not know about you?
During high school and college, I was a member of forest fire fighting teams. Today we would call these wildland fire teams.
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We are excited about what the changing of the season has brought us so far and with that, the Law Library of Congress is offering more educational webinars in November. The Law Library of Congress’s next offerings will be a Lunch and Learn webinar concerning the use of secondary sources, an Orientation to Legal Research webinar on federal legislative history, and an Orientation to Law Library Collections webinar with a special guest from the Alaska State Court Law Library. We hope you can join us.
Flyer announcing the Lunch and Learn Webinar titled, “Using Secondary Sources in Legal Research.” The webinar will take place on November 5, 2024 at 1:00 PM EST. Created by Taylor Gulatsi.
A Lunch and Learn Webinar: Using Secondary Sources in Legal Research
Date: Tuesday, November 5, 2024, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST
Content: This webinar will provide an overview of secondary sources such as legal encyclopedias, treatises, and dictionaries. In addition, the webinar will provide examples to show how these resources are used in practice. The presentation will demonstrate how secondary sources are an important step in the legal research method and how they can guide researchers to primary sources. Many of the materials and content for this webinar have come from the Law Library’s research guide, Legal Research: A Guide to Secondary Resources.
An Orientation to Legal Research Webinar: Federal Legislative History
Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST
Content: This entry in the series provides an overview of U.S. federal legislative history resources, including information about the methods of identifying and locating them. In tackling this area of research, the focus will largely be on finding these documents online.
An Orientation to Law Library Collections Webinar feat. the Alaska State Court Law Library
Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST
Content: This 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. Some of the resources attendees will learn about include the Law Library’s research guides, digital collections, and the Guide to Law Online, among others. This Orientation to Law Library Collections webinar will feature a special appearance by Susan Falk, State Law Librarian for the Alaska State Court Law Library as part of our 50 State Outreach Program.
To learn about other upcoming classes on domestic and foreign law topics, visit the Legal Research Institute.
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Please join us on October 29, 2024, at 2 p.m. EDT for our next foreign, comparative, and international law webinar titled, “What’s in a Legal Gender? A Guide to European Gender Determination Laws.“ This webinar is the latest installment in the Law Library’s Foreign and Comparative Law Webinar Series.
This webinar will describe and discuss the regulation of gender self-determination in select jurisdictions in Europe. In particular, the webinar will focus on the existence of gender self-determination laws, the possibility of identifying as a third gender, the rules for changing legal gender, and the use of “X” as a gender marker in passports, among other topics. Similarities and differences in the countries’ approaches will be highlighted.
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On September 18, 2024, the Library of Congress held a Congress.gov Public Forum that was available in-person and online. This Forum provided attendees with an update on the enhancements that have been made to the site over the past year and served as a listening session to learn more about how the Library can better serve your legislative information needs.
Jim Karamanis, director of IT Design and Development for the Office of the Chief Information Officer, provided a welcome.
Aslihan Bulut, the Law Librarian of Congress, provided opening remarks.
Andrew Weber, the Congress.gov product owner, moderated the event.
Kimberly Ferguson, the head of Legislative Information Systems Management for the Library of Congress, kicked off a panel discussion on legislative data interoperability that included Arin Shapiro, Senate webmaster, Office of the Secretary of the Senate; Kirsten Gullickson, coordinator, Congressional Data Task Force and director, Analysis, Quality Assurance, and Product Support, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives; and Lisa LaPlant, program manager for the Government Publishing Office. This panel discussion was followed by a question and answer segment.
Cassidy Charles, a legislative data analyst for the Library of Congress, discussed the appropriations-tracking resources available on Congress.gov. This presentation was followed by a question and answer segment.
Abbie Potter, a senior innovation specialist at Library of Congress Labs, discussed the use of artificialintelligence at the Library of Congress.
Stephen Dwyer, director, Office of the Chief Administrative Officer at the U.S. House of Representatives and Addie Adeniji, deputy chief information security officer, Office of the Chief Administrative Officer at the U.S. House of Representatives, provided a panel discussion on the use of artificial intelligence at the U.S. House of Representatives.
Grant Scrits, a Congress.gov API user, demonstrated REPSCOUT. After this presentation, we hosted an open discussion with the audience, both in-person and remote.
Judith Conklin, the chief information officer for the Library of Congress, provided closing remarks.
You can watch the recording of the Forum below.
If you have any additional feedback on enhancements you would like to see made to Congress.gov, please click here.
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The Law Library of Congress invites applications for the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Scholars Program.
The purpose of this program is to fund a scholar whose research will draw upon the Law Library’s world-class collections, target new acquisitions, and leverage the Law Library’s staff expertise. The focus of the program is to create new research at the intersection of demography, technology, and criminal justice. This research will generate benchmarks, metrics, best practices, and possible solutions to some of the emerging legal issues that fall at the intersection of these fields. The program will encourage a multidisciplinary and multinational approach for the greatest impact.
Graphic by Taylor Gulatsi.
Eligibility
Scholars who have received a graduate degree or have equivalent experience within the past seven years in criminal justice, law, demography, data science, or data analytics are eligible to apply.
This fellowship is open to U.S. nationals, non-U.S. residents, foreign nationals, and non-resident aliens. While non-U.S. residents, foreign nationals, or non-resident aliens may apply for the Guggenheim Scholars program, receipt of an award will be contingent on an individual’s eligibility for and the ability to secure any necessary visas prior to starting the program and receiving payment.
Program Expectations
The scholar must spend a minimum of five days on-site at the Law Library to conduct their research in June, July, or August of 2025.
At the conclusion of their research over the course of June, July, and August of 2025, we ask that the scholar produce a presentation, publication, or article that summarizes their findings.
The scholar will receive a stipend of $5,000 for their research that may be used to fund their travel to the Library of Congress.
The scholar may receive assistance from Law Library staff and also have the opportunity to participate in a Law Library of Congress event panel discussion, such as Human Rights Day.
How to Apply
To apply, please send the following application materials to lawresearch@loc.gov:
A current CV/Resume
A list of publications
A list of references
A one-page project proposal that includes details on how the Law Library of Congress’ collections can support your research
Deadline
Application materials must be received by January 7, 2025, to be considered for the program in the summer of 2025.
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Over three decades ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman in United States history appointed to the Supreme Court. Women make up more than one-third of the Court today, a sweeping change ushered in by Justice O’Connor and her jurisprudence. With the opening of a substantial portion of her papers to the public in April 2024 and a new Court term on the horizon, please join us on October 4, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. EDT, for a panel of distinguished legal experts to discuss Justice O’Connor from varying perspectives, from clerking for the justice to arguing in front of her. The panel will feature journalists, jurists, and judges who are described in more detail below.
Center Court: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the Supreme Court
Kimberly Atkins Stohr (moderator), senior opinion writer, Boston Globe, cohost of Sisters in Law podcast, and host of Justice by Design podcast
Neomi Rao (panelist), judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, 2001-2002
Julie Rose O’Sullivan (panelist), Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor, Georgetown Law School, and former clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, 1985-1986
Joan Biskupic (panelist), CNN’s senior Supreme Court analyst and author of Sandra Day O’Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice
Theodore Olson (panelist), partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, L.L.P., and former solicitor general of the United States, 2001-2004
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Carlisle Indian School Students, Outside YMCA Building. Photo by Flickr user House Divided Project, Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. Uploaded Feb. 21, 2011. Used under CC BY-NC 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/.
The report is not a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). However, it contains data, testimony, and eight recommendations for action very similar to a TRC. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, described the South African commission as “an incubation chamber for national healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness“, and perhaps this document can help achieve those goals. It is noted in the report that the research, reporting, and data gathered can aid the formation of a future national truth and healing commission; “[the] most important thing is that our work to tell the truth about the Federal Indian boarding school system be paired with action” (Report, V. 2, p. 6).
Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.
Arbre du café dessiné en Arabie sur le naturel. 1716. Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b36921.
Federal Law
Before the International Coffee Agreement, how was the sale of coffee regulated in the United States? The Tariff Act of 1930, also known as the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, (46 Stat. 590) contains a mention of coffee. As of today, California, Hawai’i, and Puerto Rico are the only places in the greater United States where coffee may be commercially cultivated (though California does not have explicit regulations on the trade).
The 2002 Hawaiian Grown Coffee Law (§ 486-120.6) amended chapter 486 (now repealed) of the Hawai’i Revised Statutes to update the language on labels of Hawaiian coffee products. Specifications include the listing of coffees in a blend by weight and region of origin.
In May 2024, the Hawaiian legislature passed a law (H.B. 2298) that will require all types of coffee beverages containing Hawaiian-grown and processed coffee to contain “no less than fifty-one per cent coffee by weight from the Hawai’i geographic origin.” The law will enter into force July 1, 2027.
[Trademark registration by G. W. Earhart for Coffea Arabica brand Coffee, Either Green or Roasted]. Apr. 7, 1885. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/trmk.1t12096.Puerto Rico
“the bush belonging to the Rubiaceae family, Coffea genus, with perennial, coriaceous, single leaves and [opposing] white, aromatic axillary flowers whose fruit is a berry, red, white and yellow in color, that generally contains two seeds from which the beverage known by the same name…” Puerto Rican official definition of coffee. (P.R. Laws tit. 5, § 320.)
In 1966, a “coffee zone” was developed as an agricultural and industrial project in Puerto Rico (P.R. Laws tit. 5, § 318). In 2019, the Coffee Office of Puerto Rico (la Oficina de Cafés de Puerto Rico) was established as a part of the Department of Agriculture by law (Ley Núm. 78 de 27 de julio de 2019.)
Section 319 of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff outlines the responsibility of the Puerto Rican legislature to administer tariffs and collect duties on any foreign coffee imported into the territory, and 19 USC § 1319 guarantees duties for any coffee products imported into the territory.
[Coffee drying, Puerto Rico]. Between 1890 and 1923. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c01300.This International Coffee Day, take a moment to consider where in the world your cup of coffee came from. Was it from a domestic farm, or perhaps from the coffee farms of Kenya, another international coffee producer? Either way, enjoy a sip and savor the unique flavor – as we can see from the regulations, different blends are regionally exclusive!
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