TMLL Library News

Law Library Hours and Access Policy

Effective May 26, 2015: Before 9:00 a.m. and after 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, and all day on weekends, access to the Marshall Law Library is granted only to authorized affiliated users. Visitors may not remain in the library after 8 p.m. on weekdays, and will be asked to leave at that time. Authorized law library users include students, faculty and staff of University System of Maryland campuses; attorneys; School of Law alumni; and UMMC and VA staff. Students with valid ids may bring guests into the library. Click here for more information regarding the Library's Access Policy

Snow Day Books

Here are some great books to read during a long, snowy weekend, as recommended by UM Carey Law students, faculty and staff:

Half of the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

The Best of Simple

The Christmas Train

The Invention of Autonomy

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

The Count of Monte Cristo

Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy

Even silence has an end

The Devil in the White City

Years of Wonder: a Novel of the Plague

The Sense of Wonder

The corner : a year in the life of an inner-city neighborhood

The System of the World

Whatever it Takes

The Emperor of Ocean Park

 

New Book Display on Privacy Law, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution

To encourage discovery and raise awareness of privacy issues facing the Supreme Court this term, the display shelves to the right of the library desk now feature books on constitutional law and the Supreme Court, with a focus on privacy law.

The collection includes books on various aspects of privacy raised by digitization, surveillance, identity, enforcement, and other issues. The book display includes recent books by distinguished faculty at Maryland Carey Law Hate Crimes in Cyberspace by Danielle Citron and The Black Box Society by Frank Pasquale. Most of the books on display are available to borrow by members of the Maryland Carey Law community.

Key privacy cases before the Supreme Court in 2016 include Spokeo v. Robins (consumer data), Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez (class relief), Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo (class definitions), and Davis v. US (warrants to collect cellphone location data).

In case you missed the fall book display of books recommended by law school faculty, staff, and students on READ posters since 2007, these books are listed in the Digital Commons READ Poster Series and can be found in the library catalog.

Umbrellas available for checkout

Don't get caught in the rain or snow! The Thurgood Marshall Law Library has umbrellas available for checkout at the User Services Desk.

2015 READ Posters Now on Display in the Law Library

The 2015 READ posters are now on display in the library and feature Dean Donald Tobin, Associate Dean Susan Krinsky, Professors Don Gifford and Oscar Gray. Click here to view all of the posters in the Digital Commons and to view videos of the participants explaining their book selection. To celebrate the release of the new posters, the Library has all of the previous READ posters and book selections on display at the main entrance on L2.

In 2007, the Thurgood Marshall Law Library initiated the READ Poster Series to focus attention on faculty research and scholarship and to encourage reading.  Based on the READ program’s success, the Library began an annual tradition of donating a READ poster to the Maryland Public Interest Law Project (MPILP) auction, to raise money for student summer placements with public interest legal organizations.  This year's auction winners were law students Hilary Tebeleff and Chelsea Kadish.

Last year, the READ posters series was expanded to include members of the Law School staff.  This year's poster features Student Affairs Coordinator Kathleen Schotto.

TMLL Celebrates Civil Rights Milestones

This week the Thurgood Marshall Law Library and the University of Maryland Carey School of Law are celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the 80th Anniversary of the Desegregation of the University of Maryland.  Special exhibits on voting rights in Maryland, university desegregation, Donald Gaines Murray, and Thurgood Marshall curated by Professor Larry S. Gibson will be on display within the Library and in the main entrance of the Law School until October 7th.

The NAACP and William H. Hastie Collections

The archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), nearly 2 million pages of internal memos, legal briefings and direct action summaries from the association’s national, legal and branch offices throughout the United States are now fully searchable and accessible through the Library’s ownership of the database NAACP Papers from History Vault - (ProQuest).  Affiliated users and visitors may access this database while on site at the Thurgood Marshall Law Library. 

The Law Library also has in microfiche the papers of prominent African American jurist and statesman William H. Hastie. The material is located on the first floor of the library building and is open to the public and law school community. 

Click here for more information on both collections.

Donald Gaines Murray and the Integration of the Law School

Donald Gaines Murray, Sr. (1914 - 1986) was the first African-American to enter the University of Maryland School of Law following the 1890 effort to prevent African-Americans from attending the school.  Murray first sought admission to the University of Maryland School of Law on January 24, 1935, but his application was rejected based on race and his subsequent appeal to the Board of Regents of the university was unsuccessful. Upon this second rejection Murray began to work with lawyers at Washington D.C.'s Howard University to consider possible legal action. According to Juan Williams writing in his 1998 work Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary when Thurgood Marshall learned that some other lawyers were considering filing a suit against the State of Maryland and the University:

he [Marshall] got upset and wrote to [Charles Hamilton] Houston that he wanted to be first to file suit. He could not bear to allow any other lawyer to take the lead on this case.

By the time the case reached court, Murray was represented by Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, with help from Baltimore based attorney Nicholas Gosnell. Marshall argued the organization's policy of racial segregation was unconstitutional and argued in principle that "since the State of Maryland had not provided a comparable law school for blacks that Murray should be allowed to attend the white university." and stated " What's at stake here is more than the rights of my client. It's the moral commitment stated in our country's creed."

Judge Eugene O'Dunne ordered Raymond A. Pearson, president of the university, to admit Murray to the University of Maryland Law School. The ruling was appealed to Maryland's highest court, the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the lower courts' rulings on January 15, 1936.

Murray, who eventually graduated in 1938, went on to practice law in Baltimore with the firm of Douglass, Perkins and Murray. He was involved in several subsequent cases which would lead to integration of other professional schools at the University of Maryland.  Murray was a member of the Baltimore Urban League, American Civil Liberties Union and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. He retired in the early 1970s and died at the age of 72. [Murray Obituary]

The Murray case was an involved, far-reaching effort and has been extensively studied by both historians and lawyers. It played an important role in the breaking down of barriers to education at other University of Maryland Schools and helped Thurgood Marshall to develop the arguments that would come to the fore in the Brown v. Board of Education. This site is intended to serve as a starting point for researchers interested in the subject but is not comprehensive.

In addition to the electronic resources detailed in this guide, additional archival material may be located in  ProQuest's History Vault - NAACP Papers.  Affiliated users and visitors may access this database while on site at the Thurgood Marshall Law Library.

New Issue of the Legal Studies Research Paper Series Available

"Victim or Thug? Examining the Relevance of Stories in Cases Involving Shootings of Unarmed Black Males"  by Sherri Lee Keene
Howard Law Journal, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2015 Forthcoming
U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-17

In recent years, the shootings of unarmed African American men and boys by individuals with real or purported police authority have garnered significant public attention. Moreover, studies about these incidents have revealed stark contrasts in perspectives between African Americans and White Americans concerning jury decisions not to charge or not to convict the shooters, and the role that race may have played in these cases. Recent polls reveal that African Americans express significantly greater dissatisfaction with these jury decisions and often share the belief that race has played a role. While it is not possible to know the extent to which race actually impacted recent jury decisions, this article explains how matters of race can find their way into jurors’ assessments of cases involving shootings of unarmed African American males. This essay focuses on what we now know about the role of stories in jury decision-making, and the opportunities that stories afford for jurors’ pre-existing attitudes and beliefs, including their biases and prejudices, to factor into their evaluations of cases. Ultimately, this essay argues that the quality of justice and public perceptions would be improved if courts reconsider how they address bias and prejudice in the courtroom. It encourages courts to acknowledge the role that jurors’ perspectives play in decision-making, and employ practices that raise jurors’ awareness of their own biases and encourage the selection of jurors who bring diverse perspectives.

"Colorism Among South Asians: Title VII and Skin Tone Discrimination"  by Tauyna Lovell Banks
Forthcoming in Washington University Global Law Review
U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-19

In 2013 Nina Davuluri, an Asian Indian from Syracuse, NY, became the first South Asian-American Miss America. The largely congratulatory comments from South Asian bloggers while reveling in the significance of her win, also commented on her skin tone, characterizing the new Miss America as dark brown, some adding that Davuluri would have never won the Miss Indian America USA title because she is “too dark.” Early discussions of colorism, skin tone bias, by legal scholars focus on how the practice impacts black Americans or other persons with some African ancestry. Yet the comments from South Asians about Davuluri’s skin tone sound surprisingly similar to conventional American notions of colorism practices. South Asian commentators acknowledge a light-skinned preference within their communities but explain her selection as a national beauty queen as a preference by the dominant American culture for darker more “exotic” South Asians. Thus skin tone preferences impacting South Asians operate within and outside of their communities. What is not clear is whether intra-group or inter-group skin tone preferences involving South Asians carry over to workplace decisions. This inquiry is important because South Asians comprise a significant portion of this country’s growing non-white population. Focusing on Title VII employment discrimination cases this article asks whether colorism among or between racialized groups impacts immigrants from South Asia and their American-born offspring in the same way studies suggest that skin tone discrimination adversely impacts black Americans and Latinos in the workplace.

"Race, Place and Historic Moment – Black and Japanese American World War II Veterans: The G.I. Bill of Rights and the Model Minority Myth"  by Tauyna Lovell Banks
Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation (Robert S. Chang & Greg Robinson eds.), Forthcoming
U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-20

The most commonly touted social change in the United States following the end of World War II is the expansion of the American middle class. The more frequently invoked narrative holds that the G.I. Bill, by providing veterans previously unavailable educational opportunities, elevated the socioeconomic status of a substantial segment of the American population as they entered their most productive working years. Black and Japanese American soldiers who fought abroad in racially segregated units to “make the world safe for democracy,” returned to fight, with others, for full citizenship rights at home in the civil rights movements of the mid twentieth century. During this period second generation Japanese Americans (Nisei), but not blacks, achieved near economic parity with whites causing some to characterize them as a “model minority.” Historian Roger Daniels, writing that “the transformation [of Japanese Americans] from ‘pariah to paragon’ [was not] merely a mechanical adjustment of market forces,” urged historians to more closely examine the factors contributing to the relative post-war economic success of Japanese Americans. This chapter takes on an aspect of Daniels’ challenge. It asks whether the advantages allegedly conferred on WWII veterans who received G.I. Bill benefits explains the current socio-economic status of Japanese Americans, or whether other factors better explain their relative postwar success.

"Post-Katrina Suppression of Black Working-Class Political Expression"  by Tauyna Lovell Banks
Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, 2015 Forthcoming
U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-21

New Orleans politicians, with the aid of the federal government, used the destruction and displacement caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to implement policies that discouraged low-income and working class black residents from returning to New Orleans. Impacted communities felt the need to revitalize street parades (second-line parades), a traditional communal neighborhood activity, as an instrument of political protest. In response the City used minor municipal ordinances to more vigorously regulate these parades, doubling the fees imposed for street parades and effectively shutting them down. The City’s response raised important constitutional questions about government suppression of speech and freedom of association. This article is an examination of how the racially biased use of city permitting structures impacted working-class blacks in New Orleans post-Katrina. It is a cautionary tale about how cities can enforce social control by manipulating tiny details in municipal laws. It is a lesson for other diverse communities about what can happen to minority subcultures in the wake of recovery efforts after a natural disaster.

"Respect and Dignity: A Conceptual Model for Patients in the Intensive Care Unit"  by Leslie Meltzer Henry and others
Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, vol. 5.1A, pp. 5A-14A
U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-22

Although the concept of dignity is commonly invoked in clinical care, there is not widespread agreement — in either the academic literature or in everyday clinical conversations — about what dignity means. Without a framework for understanding dignity, it is difficult to determine what threatens patients’ dignity and, conversely, how to honor commitments to protect and promote it. This article aims to change that by offering the first conceptual model of dignity for patients in the intensive care unit. The conceptual model we present is based on the notion that there are three sources of patients’ dignity — their shared humanity, personal narratives, and autonomy — each of which independently warrants respect. The article describes each source of dignity and draws on examples to illustrate how clinician attitudes, actions, and behaviors can either contribute to, or detract from, expressions of respect for patient dignity.

"Just Compensation: A No-Fault Proposal for Research-Related Injuries"  by Leslie Meltzer Henry and others
Journal of Law and the Biosciences, pp. 1-24, 2015, DOI: 10.1093/jlb/lsv034
U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-23

Biomedical research, no matter how well designed and ethically conducted, carries uncertainties and exposes participants to risk of injury. Research injuries can range from the relatively minor to those that result in hospitalization, permanent disability, or even death. Participants might also suffer a range of economic harms related to their injuries. Unlike the vast majority of developed countries, which have implemented no-fault compensation systems, the United States continues to rely on the tort system to compensate injured research participants — an approach that is no longer morally defensible. Despite decades of US advisory panels advocating for no-fault compensation, little progress has been made. Accordingly, this article proposes a novel and necessary no-fault compensation system, grounded in the ethical notion of compensatory justice. This first-of-its-kind concrete proposal aims to treat like cases alike, offer fair compensation, and disburse compensation with maximum efficiency and minimum administrative cost. It also harmonizes national and international approaches — an increasingly important goal as research becomes more globalized, multi-site trials grow in number, and institutions and sponsors in the United States move to single-IRB review.

Charging station for smartphones, tablets and more!

The Thurgood Marshall Law Library has a courtesy charging station for mobile devices in the L2 Copy Room. 

1. Place your device in the locker and plug it in
2. Turn the lever to a locked position 
3. Enter your own 4 digit code + the Zephyr button
4. To re-open, enter your 4 digit code + the Zephyr button
5. Turn the lever to the open position
6. Remove your device from the locker

Device chargers are also available for checkout at the User Services Desk.