“A podcast about the United States Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. Hosted by three badass constitutional law professors– Leah Litman, Kate Shaw, and Melissa Murray– Strict Scrutiny provides in-depth, accessible, and irreverent analysis of the Supreme Court and its cases, culture, and personalities. Each week, Leah, Kate, and Melissa break down… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Legal Research
Geospatial search for OpenStreetMap
Spot allows you to search for relations between entities in OpenStreetMap. Spot can analyse your prompt for entities, their relations and location and display the matching results on a map. Continue Reading
Search the BIRLS Database
“Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA). It provides an index to basic biographical information on more than 18 million deceased American veterans who received some sort of veterans benefits in their lifetime, including health care, disability or life insurance policies, educational benefits (the GI Bill), mortgage assistance (VA loans), and more. The BIRLS database includes… Continue Reading
ABA Free Legal Answers surpasses 400k inquiries; nearly 100,000 pro bono hours served
ABA: “Free Legal Answers, the virtual legal advice clinic sponsored by the American Bar Association, hit a major milestone, crossing the 400,000-mark in the total number of questions handled since the program’s inception in 2016. The program’s more than 15,000 attorneys registered nationally to volunteer performed over 16,500 hours of pro bono service in 2024,… Continue Reading
Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database
Wired – [unpaywalled] Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal – One of the most important AI copyright legal battles just took a major turn : “Meta just lost a major fight in its ongoing legal battle with a group of authors suing the company for copyright infringement over how it trained its artificial intelligence models. Against… Continue Reading
What’s a Fact Anyway
The New Yorker, Fergus McIntosh [unpaywalled]: “What is truly extraordinary about any fact-checking department is that it exists at all. At the time of writing, nearly 30 people work in Checking at The New Yorker, “It is labor, at scale, that produces accuracy.”…“Fake news” is not a new concept, but many Americans now register displeasure… Continue Reading
FOIA Fellows as Freedom Fighters
Jack Wroldsen, FOIA Fellows as Freedom Fighters: An Independent and Privately Funded FOIA Commission of Rotating Professionals (Oct. 31, 2024). 108 Marquette L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025), available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5043146 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5043146. “The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a hallmark of U.S. democracy, designed as an outsider element that foists transparency on a government… Continue Reading
The Depths of Wikipedians
Asterisk Interview with Annie Rauwerda – The Depths of Wikipedians – Asterisk: You’re famous for the Depths of Wikipedia account, where you share factoids from some of the most arcane, interesting, and surprising pages on Wikipedia. But you’re also now a part of the broader Wikipedia community. How did you first get interested in the… Continue Reading
LA wildfire damages set to cost record $135 Billion – 10,000+ buildings destroyed
Semafor – “JPMorgan said this morning, more than double an earlier estimate. That comes as those companies are still rebuilding their reserves from the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons, which included the deadly Camp Fire in California. Insurers have been fleeing California in recent years as weather-related catastrophes become more common, pushing more homeowners to… Continue Reading
Here is a list of every app on your phone selling your location data
Via Austin Corbett @austincorbett.bsky.social– Here is a list of every app on your phone selling your location data to advertisers, interested unknown 3rd parties, and the US government. Thanks to 404 Media and @josephcox.bsky.social There are 12, 373 apps on this Google doc as of today – the apps are used by children and adults… Continue Reading
What the data says about federal workers
Pew Research Center – “President-elect Donald Trump has focused much attention on shrinking the size and scope of the federal government for his second administration. Most notably, Trump has appointed tech mogul Elon Musk and GOP-primary-rival-turned-ally Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an advisory task force dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Musk and Ramaswamy have said… Continue Reading
Power of Community Posts: Conversation is the New Influencer
Research by Reddit, about Reddit – At CES 2025, Reddit released research outlining how conversation is becoming an influencer throughout the purchase journey. “In the last year, our research has shown that 47% of social media users say “irrelevant search terms” are the most frustrating aspects of their product research). That is in part why… Continue Reading
