Biddleblog

The Archives considers the Sommer papers the foundation of its growing effort to collect in the area of consumer bankruptcy. We look forward to receiving additional papers covering other phases of Sommer's distinguished career.  We also recorded an oral history interview conducted with him, which is available online here.

The finding aid for the Henry J. Sommer Papers is located here.  If you are interested in learning more about this collection, contact Jordon Steele or stop by the Archives.

With the conclusion of another NCAA March Madness, and the NFL and NBA labor/management disputes heating up, it has been a busy spring in the sports world.  Did you ever wonder about the laws governing or related to sports?  There is a lot of sports-related legal material out there, and perhaps Biddle Law Library can point you toward some of it.  Biddle actually owns a fair amount of U.S. and international sports-related legal material.

(Attorney Janet Judge, of Sports Law Associates, speaks on sports hazing, during the NCAA convention in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

If all of the popular sports shows, newspapers headlines, and magazine articles have piqued your interest, you may want to look at the news through a more scholarly perspective.  Biddle has a wealth of relevant and very current print and electronic journals and treatises.

For starters, you may want to browse the library's journal collection.  The Spring 2009 issue of Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal, for instance, has an interesting article by Max N. Panoff entitled: "Black, Tie Optional: How the NBA's Dress Code Violates Title VII."  Or, you may want to check out the Spring 2010 issue of The Sports Lawyers Journal, where you will find thoughtful articles on gender discrimination in coaching, salary arbitration in Major League Baseball, or the tax-exempt status of the NCAA.

After perusing the journals, you may want to move on to something with greater depth.  For example, Biddle owns books such as such as Taking Sports Seriously: Law and Sports in Contemporary American Culture (2009), Sports Justice: The Law & the Business of Sports (2010), and Reversing Field: Examining Commercialization, Labor, Gender, and Race in 21st Century Sports Law (2010).

And for concise, hard-hitting basics about sports law, take a peek at West's Fundamentals of Sports Law (2004), where you will find chapters on coach and referee liability, athlete eligibility, and the intersection of international law and the Olympics.

If you are looking for a resource with even more weight, try the three-volume Law of Professional and Amateur Sports (2002), which provides in-depth coverage of topics such as agent-player representation, endorsement contracts, and collective bargaining in professional sports.

Has the end of March Madness has left you yearning for more?  Would you like to know more about the legal ramifications of the professional sport labor/management disputes?  There is much more information out there.  Just search LOLA or speak with a reference librarian!

(This is a modification of a 2009 legal research blog post that you may find useful)

Going to California to clerk for the summer or to begin a full-time practice? Given today’s challenging economic climate, you may want to consider eschewing traditional fee-based databases (e.g. Lexis and Westlaw) and instead take advantage of free (and reliable) internet resources to conduct basic California research.

Written by Joe Parsio (Biddle Law Library, Head of Access Services)