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Daily Archives: April 10, 2019

The Power of Judicial Review

In Custodia Legis: The following is a guest post by Janeen Williams, a Legal Reference Specialist with the Public Services Division of the Law Library of Congress. “The federal judiciary has the authority to review actions of the legislative and executive branches to verify that they comport with the Constitution see Marbury v. Madison). However, judicial review does not extend to all issues. A case is justiciable if it is the type of dispute that a court can properly adjudicate. Justiciability is determined by examining a variety of factors or requirements. One factor that determines justiciability is the subject or issue at the heart of the dispute. The dispute must be an actual case or controversy between two adverse parties in order to be justiciable. The “Political Question Doctrine” is another justiciability factor.  Political questions are non-justiciable because Congress and the executive branch, or the political branches, are in a better position to resolve question that are political in nature. Historically, the judiciary has deemed disputes that are political and require examination of powers given to the other branches by the Constitution to be outside the realm of judicial review. The modern political question doctrine first emerged in Baker v. Carr, which was decided in the early 1960s.  The Court in Baker established a six-factor test to determine if the issue in question in a controversy is a political question. A podcast episode from Radiolab’s More Perfect takes a deep dive into the Baker case and its lasting implications…”

Systematic Reviews of Our Metadata

Hanging Together – The OCLC Research Blog: “That was the topic discussed recently by OCLC Research Library Partners metadata managers, initiated by Melanie Wacker of Columbia University, Roxanne Missingham of Australian National University, and Sharon Farnel of University of Alberta. Librarians and administrators are well aware of the tension that exists between delivering access to… Continue Reading

How the Law Can Boost Recession Recovery

Knowledge@Wharton – “In the Great Recession, the two key tools for rescuing the economy — fiscal and monetary policy — had big limitations, according to Yair Listokin, author of a new book: Law and Macroeconomics: Legal Remedies to Recessions. The big increases in government spending needed to get the economy cooking again were mostly a… Continue Reading

Obama’s Presidential Library Is Already Digital

The Atlantic – The question now is how to leverage its nature to make it maximally useful and used…”The debate about the Obama library exhibits a fundamental confusion. Given its origins and composition, the Obama library is already largely digital. The vast majority of the record his presidency left behind consists not of evocative handwritten… Continue Reading

Transparency tool on FB inadvertently provides window into confusing maze of companies who have your data

BuzzFeedNews – “On Facebook under Settings, there’s a page in the Ads section where you can view your Ad Preferences. Most of this is fairly straightforward — choices about how you’ll allow ads and how advertisers target you based on things like what pages you’ve liked. But there’s one section there that will probably surprise… Continue Reading

To Purge Some of Social Media’s Ugliness, an Unlikely Lesson From Wall St.

The New York Times Deal Book – A simple rule that bolsters the banking system – “know your customer” — could help combat fake news and hate speech online if companies like Facebook and Twitter embraced it. “…The concept is “know your customer” — or KYC, as it’s called on Wall Street — and it’s… Continue Reading

Lifting Journalism by Knowing What Readers Are Looking For

The New York Times: “Claudio E. Cabrera, who specializes in search engine optimization, describes how he keeps track of what’s hot in search and how that informs coverage — and what the limits are…How do you keep track of search trends? A lot of it really starts with taking a dive into the journalism your… Continue Reading

Trump moving to dismantle OPM

Washington Post: “If the Trump administration succeeds at dismantling the Office of Personnel Management, the closure could be a blueprint for shuttering other departments as it tries to shrink government….The agency would be pulled apart and its functions divided among three other departments. An executive order directing parts of the transition by the fall is… Continue Reading