Bloomberg Law discontinuing law reviews/journals

Bloomberg Law has announced that they will no longer have law reviews and law journals in the database collection. The announcement said:

"I am writing to inform you that Bloomberg Law will discontinue our limited collection of law review and journal articles. Law reviews and journals, currently available under Secondary Sources in the Browse Menu and from within Practice Centers, will be removed 12/31/2019.
We believe that removal of these materials will have a limited impact on our academic users. Law review articles are among the least used resources available on Bloomberg Law, and are readily available from other sources. Our editorial and product development teams are always primarily focused on producing highest quality practical guidance, analytics, and legal news, and this decision reflects a reallocation of resources to that end."

New titles added to our LexisNexis digital library

Several new titles have been added to Pitt Law's LexisNexis digital library:

• Free Speech on Campus 
• The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind 
• The Race Beat 
• After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, Racism and Free Speech 
• Top Secret When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark? 
• The Soul of the First Amendment: Why Freedom of Speech Matters

These ebooks can be borrowed by clicking on the "Borrow" link. Users will be required to log in through the Pitt Passport page.

HeinOnline updates

Two recent additions to HeinOnline that may be of interest:
• The U.S. Presidential Impeachment Library collection in the U.S. Presidential database includes Pres. Trump and access to the "whistleblower" documents.
• In the past month alone, more than 500 volumes and nearly 320,000 pages were added to the U.S. Congressional Serial Set. And the HeinOnline Blog includes a regular post called "Secrets of the Serial Set."  In the most recent post, readers can explore the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and its resulting investigations

North Carolina Supreme Court adopts universal citation format

The NCAPB (North Carolina Appellate Practice Blog) reports that the North Carolina Supreme Court has officially made plans to change the citation format for NC appellate court opinions to the universal citation format.  ("universal citation",sometimes called a "media-neutral" or "vendor-neutral" citation, is one that is media-neutral and does not depend on being located in a print edition of a book).
The change will become effective at the beginning of 2021. The announcement from the courts says that:

..."opinions filed on or after 1 January 2021 will have an immediate, permanent, and medium-neutral ("universal") citation the moment they are issued. Because a universal citation is medium-neutral, it does not point to an official publication of the opinion. Opinions of the Supreme Court of North Carolina and the North Carolina Court of Appeals that are filed on or after 1 January 2021 should be cited using this format: [Case Name], [Traditional Citation to the Bound Volume and Page Number of the Court's Official Reporter], [Universal Citation to the Year, Court, and Opinion Number], [Pinpoint Paragraph Number].
e.g., State v. Smith, 375 N.C. 152, 2020-NCSC-45, ¶ 16.
State v. Smith, 255 N.C. App. 43, 2020-NCCOA-118, ¶ 23."

Georgia v Public Resource in the Supreme Court

Public.Resource.org, the organization founded by Carl Malamud with the motto “Making Government Information More Accessible," has been involved in litigation with the state of Georgia and its Code Revision Commission for several years. At issue is whether states like Georgia can claim copyright ownership over certain legal texts, specifically the official annotated versions of the Georgia statutory code. Public.Resource.org made the law of Georgia freely available online. Georgia objected. Georgia’s official code contains more than just the letter of the law. That extra content – like summaries of relevant court decisions – creates the legal question: can the whole book be freely-published online?
In CODE REVISION COMMISSION and State of Georgia v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC., 244 F.Supp.3d 1350 (2017), the United States District Court, N.D. Georgia, Atlanta Division decided that the annotations in the Code were copyrightable, and the alleged infringer's use was not a non-infringing fair use.
Public.Resource.org appealed, and in Code Revision Commission for General Assembly of Georgia v. Public.Resource.org, 906 F.3d 1229 (2018), the 11th Circuit Court overturned the lower court's ruling and held that "held that annotations editorially created for the annotated compilation of Georgia statutes, while not having the force of law, were sufficiently law-like so as to be regarded as sovereign work constructively authored by the People, and thus were not copyrightable."
The Code Revision Commission of Georgia appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in June the Supreme Court granted certiorari in GEORGIA, et al., petitioners, v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. 139 S.Ct. 2746 (June 2019) (note that this link goes to Westlaw). The case was argued before the Supreme Court on Monday, December 2. If you are interested in following the case, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued, under the authority of the state and via Internet, a transcript of oral argument prepared by HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION Official Reporters.

Fastcase news

Fastcase and ROSS Intelligence have announced a new partnership in which they will share content, research and development in order to allow both Fastcase and ROSS to innovate more quickly. According to the announcement, "As a result of the Fastcase partnership ROSS has achieved data completeness within its platform, which now contains case law, statutes, and regulations across all 50 states. Fastcase and ROSS will be progressively developing additional product integrations and joint features, to be released in the coming months."
Bob Ambrogi, on his Lawsiteblog, calls it a "unique partnership." He interviewed Ed Walters of Fastcase, who said that they are "jointly committing to work together on some collaborative new research projects going forward." Jean O'Grady, in her Deweybstrategic blog, calls the partnership a "paradigm shift," saying that "Fastcase is clearly positioning the company to play the disruptor."