News Travels Fast

Good morning all you Law Buffs and Calves,

Welcome to week 4 of the 2022 Spring Semester! Remember, if you need reference or circulation help, be sure to reach out to your friendly neighborhood law librarian.

The following are 10 interesting articles from the previous week. These articles were pulled from either the: ABA Newsletter, AALL Newsletter, vLex Newsletter, Law360, Law Practice Magazine Newsletter, LexisNexis’ Practical Guidance Newsletter, and/or Frontiers Newsletter. Enjoy!

“A panel of Fifth Circuit judges was told during oral arguments Wednesday that a group of medically vulnerable Texas children who secured a permanent injunction against the governor's ban on school mask mandates lack standing and should have their lawsuit dismissed and the injunction undone.”

Introduction: “Imagine a law school law review accepting blog posts from their law school’s students for an aggregated and curated publication. […] I get for those at law schools who are not very familiar with legal blogging this may all seem quite a stretch. However, when you look at how publishing has been democratized over the last twenty years, it’s really not a stretch. It may even be common sense.”

Excerpt: “The main database sections focus on COVID-19’s Economic Impact, Health Care Impact, and Societal Impact in America, as well COVID-19’s wider Global Impact. Two other database sections are on Past Pandemics, covering HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, influenza outbreaks, and other biological disasters, and Vaccination, covering past vaccine mandates, current COVID vaccination issues, and vaccine-related debates.”

Introduction: “Inflated expectations around the capabilities of AI technologies may lead people to believe that computers can’t be wrong. The truth is AI failures are not a matter of if but when. AI is a human endeavor that combines information about people and the physical world into mathematical constructs. Such technologies typically rely on statistical methods, with the possibility for errors throughout an AI system’s lifespan. As AI systems become more widely used across domains, especially in high-stakes scenarios where people’s safety and wellbeing can be affected, a critical question must be addressed: how trustworthy are AI systems, and how much and when should people trust AI?”

Excerpt: “This Legal Sidebar discusses recent legislative proposals and litigation that may affect the cost of public access to PACER.”

Excerpt: “Today’s blog post focuses on five African Americans who have had a significant impact on public health, despite working “in a system which historically subjugated and exploited black Americans” and ‘denied access to the very systems and institutions that they helped improve.’”

Excerpt: “Based on the advanced Patents End-to-End (PE2E) search tool USPTO examiners use to identify prior art, this free, cloud-based platform combines the capabilities of four existing search tools scheduled to be retired in September 2022: Public-Examiner’s Automated Search Tool (PubEAST), Public-Web-based Examiner’s Search Tool (PubWEST), Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT), and Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT)."

Introduction: “Being ‘called in’ is ultimately an act of care for all parties involved, but it can still feel uncomfortable.”

Summary: “An Oregon church has sued the town where it's located over a new local ordinance that restricts the number of times the church can dole out free meals each week to those in need. St. Timothy's Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon say in a federal lawsuit against the city of Brookings that the ordinance limiting them to two free meal giveaways per week violates their constitutional right to free religious expression. "We've been serving our community here for decades and picking up the slack where the need exists and no one else is stepping in," the Rev. Bernie Lindley said in a statement.”

Excerpt: “Firefox is taking a significant step ahead of other browsers in terms of VPN functionality by adding support for its Multi-Account Containers feature, as announced in a blog post by Mozilla. Having the ability to switch between VPN servers quickly makes Firefox a terrific browser option for anyone who regularly connects to a VPN (specifically, to Mozilla’s VPN).”