Oct. 22 Boyd Briefs Now Available

The Oct. 22 issue of Boyd Briefs is now available.

This week's edition features Professor Jeanne Frazier Price, student Evan Wozniak, and alumnus Matt Christian '02. 

Professor Price is director of Boyd's Wiener-Rogers Law Library. She and her colleagues have made the law library a focus of the intellectual life of the law school, for faculty and for students.

Wozniak is a 2013 magna cum laude UNLV graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He spent the year following his UNLV graduation as a technical writer for National Security Technologies, a contractor to the United States Department of Energy. After spending his 1L year in the Northwest, he transferred to Boyd. 

As a 1L, Christian began working as a law clerk at a small firm specializing in public construction law. He graduated magna cum laude and has focused his practice on complex construction claims ever since. While a shareholder at Kolesar & Leatham, one of his clients, Clark County, asked him to come work in-house. It was an opportunity he could not pass up, and he has been with the District Attorney's Civil Division since 2013. 

To subscribe to Boyd Briefs, visit law.unlv.edu/BoydBriefs.

Professors Jeanne Price and David McClure Present at Nevada Conference on Digital Learning

Jeanne Price is the Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library and an Associate Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law.

David McClure is the Head of Research and Curriculum Services and an Assistant Professor at the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law.

From April 11 through 13, Professors Price and McClure participated in the Nevada Conference on Digital Learning held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

They participated in a panel discussion on "Gamifying Access." Their talk was titled "Institutional Repositories as Gamified Environments to Stimulate Student Agency and Faculty Impact."

Professor Price's research interests focus on law and language, law-related taxonomies, and cross-language information retrieval. 

Assistant Professor McClure provides specialized research assistance to law faculty, and coordinates the library’s faculty liaison and student research assistant programs.

April 3 Boyd Briefs Now Available

The April 3 edition of Boyd Briefs is now available.

This week's edition features Professor Jeanne Price, student Bryn Esplin, and alumna Kim Leung '09.

Professor Price serves as the Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library, where she manages a staff of more than a dozen people, a collection of more than 350,000 volumes, and a facility that is more than 50,000 square feet.

Esplin has already launched a promising scholarly career, having published articles in peer-reviewed journals, made presentations at numerous conferences, and earned national awards and fellowships, primarily in the fields of health law and bioethics.

Leung currently works as an associate of the Patent Group working in the San Diego office of Fish & Richardson. Her practice focuses on various technologies, including: communications systems, analog and digital electronics, computer hardware and software, mobile devices, semiconductor devices, and medical devices.

To subscribe to Boyd Briefs, visit law.unlv.edu/BoydBriefs.

Law Library and Office of Diversity Initiatives Awarded NEH Grant

By Jeanne Price

The Wiener-Rogers Law Library and UNLV’s Office of Diversity Initiatives have been awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to host a series of film showings and discussions focusing on the civil rights movement in the United States. Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The NEH grant provides funds to communities across the country to support film showings and programming on the history of civil rights in the United States.

The Law Library and Office of Diversity Initiatives will incorporate the film series in existing programs and develop new programming to highlight the issues described in the four featured films – The Abolitionists; Slavery by Another Name; The Loving Story; and Freedom Riders. Over a three year period beginning in September 2013, UNLV scholars and community leaders will participate in forums – including the Diversity Leadership Forum and Latino Youth Leadership Conference – in which the films will play an important role.

The film series complements the Law Library’s collection of documentary films, one of the largest collections of its kind among academic law libraries. We hope that the initiatives and programming that the grant supports will not only inform and encourage dialogue, but also inspire students and other scholars to undertake research in primary source material in the Law Library’s collection, research that might enhance our understanding of the minority experience in Southern Nevada. The Law Library’s collections include the archives of the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association, the oldest minority bar association of African-American attorneys.

Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom

By Jeanne Price

On Saturday, October 6, the ACLU of Nevada, together with the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, Nevada Humanities, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the American Institute for Graphic Arts, hosted "Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom." The event marked the celebration of Banned Books Week in Las Vegas and focused on censorship's past, present, and future. The event, held at the Clark County Library, opened with remarks by Jeanne Goodrich, Director of the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, and Dane Clausen, Executive Director of ACLU of Nevada.

Discussions were moderated by Steve Sebelius, political columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Panelists included Tony Diaz, author and founder of the Librotraficante Movement, Professor Jeanne Price, Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law, Dr. Auggie Romero, Director of Student Equity at the Tucson Unified School District, and Trevor Timm, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Much of the discussions centered on recent state and federal legislative initiatives focused on, in the case of state legislation, public school curriculum, and, at the federal level, national security and restrictions on access to information.

On Friday, the panelists spoke on KNPR’s State of Nevada about censorship issues in the news today.

The Banned Books program anticipates the opening of the Vegas Valley Book Festival on November 1, 2012.

Professor Price Places Her New Article in the Cleveland State Law Review

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Jeanne Price placed her new law review article, "Wagging, Not Barking: Statutory Definitions," in volume 59 of the Cleveland State Law Review.

The article focuses on the role played by definitions in a reader’s understanding and application of a statute. Despite the frequency with which terms are defined in the United States Code (the Code includes more than 25,000 defined terms), statutory definitions remain relatively unexamined. Professor Price frames her analysis by distinguishing two functions served by legislation – statutes are both communication vehicles and instruments of governance. She suggests that a better understanding of the effect of definition on a reader’s interaction with a text, coupled with an appreciation of the different roles served by definition, will enable legislators to draft more useful definitions and enable interpreters to better apply those definitions

Professor Price, who also serves as Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library, joined the faculty in 2008. She teaches Research Methods and enjoys focusing on information sources and strategies in business and commercial contexts. As illustrated by her new law review article, Professor Price's research interests focus on law and language, law-related taxonomies, and cross-language information retrieval.

Before coming to UNLV, Professor Price served as Associate Director of the Tarlton Law Library and Lecturer at The University of Texas School of Law as well as Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas School of Information. A member of the Texas Bar, Professor Price practiced corporate and securities law in Houston and overseas for nearly ten years. Professor Price is a graduate of Yale University (B.A.), The University of Texas (J.D.), and the University of Maryland (M.L.S.).

Medal of Justice Reception to Be Held at UNLV

Together with the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association and the State Bar of Nevada, the Boyd School of Law and the History Department at UNLV are very pleased to announce a reception honoring Professor Rachel Anderson (Boyd School of Law, UNLV), Professor Joanne Goodwin (History Department, UNLV), Professor Jeanne Price (Boyd School of Law, UNLV), and Claytee White (Director, Oral History Research Center, UNLV) for their work in creating the February 2012 issue of the Nevada Lawyer.

The Medal of Justice reception will be held from 3:30 to 4:00 p.m. in the Reserve Room on the third floor of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at Boyd School of Law on Thursday, August 30, 2012.

The February 2012 issue of the Nevada Lawyer presented comprehensive, state-wide research on the experience of African-American lawyers and the history of civil rights in Nevada. Feature stories include Professor Rachel Anderson's "Timeline of African-American Legal History in Nevada (1861-2011)," Claytee D. White and Geralda Miller's "Charles L. Kellar: Legal Trailblazer in Nevada," Professor Joanne L. Goodwin's "Nevada Civil Rights Act of 1965," Richard F. Boulware's "Dedicated to Excellence: National Bar Association, Las Vegas Chapter," and Geralda Miller's "Bar None: Pioneer African-American Lawyers in Northern Nevada."

Boyd Unveils Public Interest Law Film Festival

By Professor Jeanne Price

The Boyd School of Law's first Public Interest Law Film Festival takes place on Friday, September 30. The Festival celebrates the Law School's commitment to public service and the relationships among student organizations, public interest groups, community members and the Law School. Films shown at the Festival highlight the contributions of four individuals representative of important social movements - Shirley Chisholm, Thelton Henderson, Cruz Reynoso, and Sargent Shriver. Facilitators of the discussion that follow each film include State Assemblywoman Lucy Flores (Boyd '10), filmmaker Abby Ginzberg, Professor David Tanenhaus, and Professor and former Congresswoman Dina Titus.

Barbara Buckley, Executive Director of Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, will open the Festival, and Dean John White will introduce Judge Johnnie Rawlinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit who will make closing remarks. A reception will follow in the Wiener-Rogers Law Library. Professor Ann Cammett, who started the Festival project, hopes that the Festival will become an annual event: "I think the concept naturally lends itself to repeating. There are many ways to envision public interest law and many themes to coalesce around. Besides, it is always a good idea when Boyd has an opportunity to engage with members of the larger community."

More information about the Festival is available here.