KCLL Klues: Washington State Legal Research

Mike Flynn, long-time editor of the Puget Sound Business Journal, was one of 35 people who witnessed the hanging of convicted murderer Joseph Self in June of 1963.  Mr. Flynn has posted a thoughtful reflection about the execution and capital punishment in Washington State at  Flynn’s Harp  (Note: as of 9/9/2010, the link to Mike Flynn’s blog was not working properly).  For more information about the Self case, see our recent podcast, wherein local attorney George Sjursen interviews one of Self’s defense attorneys, Dan Riviera.

For those of you who are eager to read through the final version of the massive and hotly-contested Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Obama on July 21st, here’s a set of useful links.

As of this writing, the text of Public Law 111-203 wasn’t available but the Library of Congress’ THOMAS web site has a wealth of information about the legislation, including the final text of the bill presented to President Obama and a Congressional Research Service summary.

The White House has also posted the President’s remarks about the new law and a brief Executive summary of its intent.

Joseph Chester Self was the 73rd person to be executed in Washington and the last person to be executed in the state until Westley Allan Dodd’s execution on January 5, 1993. During the 30 year hiatus, Washington’s capital punishment statute was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.

In Part One of this episode of KCLL’s Sidebar, we talk to Dan Riviera, who was among two men to defend Mr. Self.

Listen to Episode 36, Part 1
Links for Episode 36, Part 1

The Department of Licensing (DOL) recently discovered that the State’s Model Traffic Ordinance (MTO) has not been updated to reflect new traffic laws since 2004.  This may lead to the dismissal of certain trafffic citations issued by municipalities with traffic codes based on the MTO.  For more information directly from DOL, see their July 15 blog posting.

For more information about the enabling statute for the MTO, see RCW 46.90.  To read the text of the MTO, see WAC 308-330.

Our EOS.Web library catalog will be down from 9:00 am to 11:00 am on Saturday, July 16 for routine maintenance.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

KCLL now has copies of the WSBA‘s new Partnership and Limited Liability Company Deskbook for your use.  We’re happy to see this addition to the State Bar’s valuable deskbook series because it has been some time since this area of law was addressed.  Together with WSBA’s Washington Business Corporations Act (RCW 23B) Sourcebook and LexisNexis’ Washington Business Entities: Law and Forms, we now have a set of materials that provide comprehensive coverage of business formation issues.

The Divorce Class scheduled for this Wednesday evening has been postponed until the following Wednesday 7/21.  Please call the library if you have any questions.

Many of you are familiar with doing legislative history research in Washington State, but if you need similar information from other states, here are some suggestions. 

You might try looking at a research guide on legislative history for the state you are interested in. The law library at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law maintains the website State Legislative History Research Guides on the Web.  It has a list of the states and online legislative history guides for each state — in some instances, more than one for a state.

Another possibility is to enlist the help of a law library in the state you are researching.  The Legislative Source Book on the website for the Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C.  has a page on State Legislatures, State Laws, and State Regulations.  That page has contact information for the state law library or other resource in each state.

Finally, you might want to hire someone to do the research for you.  The same webpage from the Legislative Source Book has contact information for commercial services that perform legislative history research (scroll down to the bottom of the page to find that list.)