New database in HeinOnline: McGill Air and Space Law

Our HeinOnline subscription contains a new database: McGill Institute of Air and Space Law Publications. It includes complete coverage of the Annals of Air and Space Law, nearly 50 titles and 50,000 pages. The McGill Institute and Centre of Air and Space Law is a leading authority on air and space law: the Institute of Air and Space Law (IASL) is the world’s premier academic setting for teaching and research in the dual disciplines of international air law and space law, and the Centre for Research in Air and Space Law (CRASL) publishes leading literature in both disciplines including the Annals of Air and Space Law (founded in 1976), treatises, monographs, and occasional papers. The Annals, which began publication in 1976, is devoted to fostering the free exchange of ideas and information pertaining to the law applicable to aerospace activities. The Annals publishes original articles, drafted in English or French, covering the entire spectrum of domestic and international air law and the law of space applications. The contributors are academics and leading practitioners from all parts of the world.

Federal Register digitized in entirety by GPO

The Government Publishing Office and the National Archives' Office of the Federal Register announced that they have digitized every issue of the Federal Register back to its beginning in 1936, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued the first document, an Executive Order.  The complete digitized set is available at the govinfo website.
The announcement included some highlights from the early issues of the Federal Register:

•  The first Executive Order published in the Federal Register on March 14, 1936, enlarged the Cape Romain Migratory Bird Refuge in South Carolina. 
• The first war related Presidential proclamations following the Declaration of War on Japan was published in the December 10, 1941 Federal Register issue. 
• The August 25, 1958 issue contains the Executive Order outlining changes to the flag following the admittance of Hawaii as a state.

ABA announces major restructuring

The ABA journal has an article titled "Massive restructuring at the ABA will rehouse entities under 9 centers" that outlines the soon-to-be effected changes in how the organization is structured. The ABA website still reflects the "old" structure: click on "ABA Groups" and you see a list of links to commissions, committees, task forces etc. But Executive Director Jack Rives says:

“Our current structure of divisions, committees, commissions, task forces, working groups, and other creatively named entities makes the Association extraordinarily difficult to access and costly to manage,” Rives wrote. “Our organization’s complexity has also impeded effective resource allocation. We must live within our means; we must prioritize; we must focus our resources on the programs and issues that matter most to our members, the profession and society.”

The new structure has nine centers organized around the four goals of the ABA: serving members; improving the profession; eliminating bias and enhancing diversity; and advancing the rule of law. The restructuring will help the ABA operate more efficiently and cheaply; staff cuts will occur by the end of April.

Court says PACER fees misused

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has issued an opinion in the class action case National Veterans Legal Services Program, et. al., v United States (docket available here). In her opinion, Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said that the federal judiciary misused millions of dollars in PACER fees to fund programs that are not allowed. However, she wrote that "the Court rejects the parties’ polar opposite views of the statute." She rejected the plaintiffs' reasoning that PACER fees can only be used to cover the "marginal cost" of running PACER, but also rejected the government's "other extreme" reasoning that the E-Government Act allows PACER fees to fund any dissemination of information through electronic means. Under her reasoning, the federal judiciary must return approximately $200 million to people who paid PACER fees from 2010-2016.
The Freedom to Tinker blog has an extensive discussion of the decision:

"The law says that the Judiciary “may, only to the extent necessary, prescribe reasonable fees… to reimburse expenses incurred in providing these services.” The lawsuit centered on the meaning of terms like “only to the extent necessary” and “these services.” During the litigation, the Judiciary provided a spreadsheet showing how PACER fees were spent across different categories (categories invented by the Judiciary). About a quarter of these fees were spent on things that related to public access tangentially at best (for example, “courtroom technologies”). The judge decided that these were illegal. About 15% of fees were under a different heading: “Public Access Services.” The plaintiffs did not allege that these were illegal even though ~$25m per year seems an awful lot for serving digital documents to the public. Only the middle set of categories—about $100m per year—was seriously in dispute."