International Legal Collections at U.S. Academic Law School Libraries
Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slissrj Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Acknowledgements This article originated as a final research project for Professor Jean Bedord's fall semester 2011 graduate course, Information and Society (LIBR 200-05). I would like to thank Prof. Bedord for her suggestions, insights, and criticism. I am also grateful to the other students in the course for sharing their own research and thoughts via on-line discussion boards over the course of the semester.
A Comparison of Four Premier Academic Law Libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom: The Findings of a Valuable International Placement
Every night for ten nights last May, I returned to room 128 in the Westside YMCA (West 63rd Street, New York City — just off Central Park) armed with more behind the scenes insights, professional secrets and first hand accounts of US law library operation and management than one slim A5 notebook could hope to hold. I was fortunate to be in the United States on a two-week placement at Columbia University, visiting some of America's great law libraries — the law school libraries of Columbia itself, New York University and Yale University. Each morning after an orange juice, toasted cream cheese bagel and cappuccino, I would head out with the commuters to join the subway at Columbus Circle — uptown for Columbia or downtown for NYU. Every evening I would admire the energy of the mostly silver-haired athletes in brightly colored lycra returning to the Westside “Y” after numerous circuits of the Jackie “O” reservoir on the upper east side of Central Park. The park is 843 acres of creative space bound by impressive hotels, apartment blocks and the streets of Harlem. In May it is in perpetual motion from dawn to dusk with joggers, roller-bladers and cyclists weaving their way around the trees, fountains and numerous statues. Indeed it appears to be a huge magic garden, complete with beautiful street lamps that seem to come from C.S. Lewis's Narnia — another world, like the City itself, at once familiar and fascinatingly different.
Transnational Perspectives Regarding the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Most first-year civil procedure books introduce the student early on to the differences between the civil law and common law systems. Professors have to avoid overstating the distinction. The traditional mantra that the civil law is “inquisitorial” and the common law is “adversarial” is no longer accurate. Today it is not possible to speak simply of these stereotypes as either dominant or distinct approaches to procedure in many countries. The two systems have increasingly influenced each other, and have, in turn, been influenced by other systems and traditions. Thus, it is necessary, early in the course when the civil versus common law distinction is made, to refer to transnational legal perspectives.The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which govern the structure of American civil proceedings, reflect distinctive American features like notice pleading, single-event trials with live testimony, broad discovery, a central role for counsel, liberal joinder and aggregation devices, and promotion of settlement. Civil law procedure differs on these points, and the differences can help students to appreciate, or question, the policies reflected in the Federal Rules. The American Law Institute, in conjunction with the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), has issued Principles and Rules of Transnational Civil Procedure which attempt to identify fundamental principles for transnational commercial litigation. Relevant portions of these rules are examined in this article. Reference to the principles underlying these rules can aid in students’ understanding of the workings of civil procedure.