Announcing Upcoming Lecture Series

Footage from the Alien Enemy Detention Facility at Crystal City, Texas. This film was distributed by the U.S. Dept. of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1945. It is now part of the U.S. National Archives (ID# 13206).

The Harris County Law Library is happy to announce a three-part lecture series hosted in collaboration with Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan titled Immigration Law and Internment Camps in Texas: Legal Perspectives on The Train To Crystal City by Jan Jarboe Russell. An hour-long lecture will be offered at noon on October 4, October 11, and October 18 at the Law Library's downtown Houston location. Lunch is provided and attorneys can earned 3.0 hours of CLE credit and 1.0 hour of ethics credit in Texas. For more information and to RSVP, visit the event page on the Harris County Attorney Office website.

At each event, distinguished speakers will discuss legal aspects of this year's Gulf Coast Reads featured title The Train to Crystal City. The book presents the story of internees of German and Japanese descent who found themselves at the family internment camp in Crystal City, Texas during World War II. The stories are told on a personal level with references to the federal legal mechanisms that affected each internee, many of whom were U.S. citizens, and the international politics that led to many internees being repatriated to their ancestral nations in exchange for American prisoners of war. With a story line that takes place in the Lone Star State and an author who is a native of the Texas gulf coast, this book is a natural candidate for the Gulf Coast Reads program, through which a book with local ties is read at libraries and book clubs through the month of October. Visit the Gulf Coast Reads website for more on this year's read and archives of past featured titles.

Who Owns Space Stuff?

When a meteorite hit the ground in Egypt in the 13th century, the question of what to do with it was easily answered - make a dagger out of it and give it to King Tut. The question today of who owns space objects is less-easily answered and likely to involve some litigation. For example, when a meteorite hit a clinic in suburban Virginia in 2010, a dispute arose between the doctors and the landlord about who owed the rock. After some legal research and novel arguments, the doctors were able to donate the rock to the Smithsonian and donate the finders fee to Doctors Without Borders.

In honor of Space Law Month here at the Harris County Law Library, we thought we would assemble a few resources to help answer the unusual question of who owns a celestial chattel. As with the answer to many legal questions, the answer starts with "it depends," so here are resources for a few scenarios.

Natural Objects Naturally Falling to Earth

The question of ownership over space rocks that fall from the sky seems to be jurisdictional in nature. In his 2002 article in Meteorites & Planetary Science, Canadian lawyer Douglas Schmitt provides a survey of laws of various nations applicable to found space objects. Depending on where the rock hits the Earth, it may belong to the finder, the landowner, a government agency, or a national museum. With citation to relevant cases and regulations, Schmitt's article is a great place to start your research.

Natural Objects Brought to Earth

No one is legally entitled to own lunar objects, including moon rocks, pebbles, core samples, or space dust that has been collected in the course of a lunar mission and brought back to Earth. All samples of this type are considered national treasures. One individual, Alan Rosen, learned this lesson the hard way. On a business trip to Honduras in 1995, Mr. Rosen met with a retired Honduran colonel, Roberto Argurcia Ugarte, who had acquired a moon rock and accompanying plaque following a military coup in 1973. The artifact had been given as a gift by President Nixon on behalf of the United States to the people of the Republic of Honduras. Mr. Rosen purchased the moon rock from Colonel Ugarte and brought it back to the United States in violation of 19 U.S. Code § 1595a. Upon learning of Mr. Rosen’s acquisition, the United States sought to seize the artifact in the case known as UNITED STATES of America v. ONE LUCITE BALL CONTAINING LUNAR MATERIAL (One Moon Rock) and One Ten Inch by Fourteen Inch Wooden Plaque Defendant In Rem. Details of the case and the events surrounding Mr. Rosen’s acquisition of this rare space treasure are presented in The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks, along with film footage of astronauts collecting lunar artifacts from the surface of the moon.

Man-made Objects in Space

With an estimated 21,000 bits of space debris now orbiting the Earth (for an excellent visual representation of all this space junk, see James Yoder’s fascinating website, Stuff in Space, a real-time 3D tracking tool of each object’s location, orbit, and speed), issues concerning ownership of satellites and the like can present major legal issues. When confronting these issues, there are different aspects of ownership that might be researched, including who may exert ownership over objects in orbit and who is responsible for damages if those objects do harm. In his 2012 article published in The Space Review, space law attorney Michael Listner provides an overview of laws applicable to both facets of the question. According to Listner, these objects all still belong to the country that launched them under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which seems to clear up the question until one considers the web of arms treaties and quasi-binding conventions and agreements that may also come into play. Listner's article will help jump start your research.

Man-made Objects Naturally Falling to Earth

When man-made objects fall from space, causing personal injury or damage to property, the question arises: Who do we sue and how do we do it? The 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects is a good resource to consult, unless of course the space debris is part of a United States vehicle that makes landfall on American soil. In this case, the Federal Tort Claims Act may apply. In either case, the likelihood of confronting this issue is low. Space debris does occasionally fall to Earth, and even small chunks of orbital junk (< 2 inches), can be harmful, but most of the derelict space craft and associated debris poses little risk to those of us on terra firma. Even so, as an intellectual inquiry, the question of what happens to objects hurling through space is well-addressed in this Primer on the Legal Issues Surrounding Space Debris Remediation.

With this blog post, we conclude Space Law Month at the Harris County Law Library. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading and learning about the legal issues surrounding outer space exploration as much as we’ve enjoyed sharing resources with you. 

Best Practices for Effective Version Control In Microsoft Word

In the of drafting of legal documents, effective version control is essential, especially when several people are collaborating on the same project. Fortunately, Microsoft Word allows you track every change you make. Adjustments in formatting, text, and typography as well as editorial and content revisions can be revealed with the click of button. The tool that makes this all possible is located on the Task Ribbon’s Review tab. Here you will also discover a few more useful features, including the Comments tool and the Show Markup button. With the Comments tool, you and your collaborators can notate the text, providing color-coded comments or suggestions.

Unless a document administrator restricts a particular user’s editing privileges, anyone who has access to a document can use the Show Markup feature. Notifications can be labeled with the initials of the person who has made them, so there’s never any doubt about the source of a particular modification.

While the Microsoft Word tracking feature is an effective tool for managing multiple versions of a document, it must be used with care. Neglecting to remove all revision marks and the associated metadata from your final product can have dire consequences. If exposed to the wrong party, hidden data or confidential client information stored in the document’s properties may open you to liability.  Depending on which other features you used to create your document, you may unknowingly reveal personally identifiable information such as e-mail headers, send-for-review information, watermarks, routing slips, or template names. Fortunately, there’s an easy and effective safeguard build into Microsoft Word that will protect you against any accidental sharing of data. It’s called the Document Inspector. 

The Document Inspector is located on the Task Ribbon’s File tab. Select Info in the left-hand menu where you will see an option to Prepare Your Document for Sharing. With the click of a button, Microsoft Word will examine your document and identify any comments, revisions, annotations, or previous versions as well as document properties or personal information you may not wish to reveal.  At this point, you can select which information you wish to remove, but remember that once data has been scrubbed from a document, it cannot be restored. As a best practice, you may wish to save your document with a new filename, using a consistent naming convention to clearly distinguish the original from any subsequent copies. Leave the original document as is, making sure to retain all comments and modifications. Then, clean up the copied version using the Document Inspector, and rest assured that when you share it with an outside party, the document is free of any privileged information.    

This is a very broad overview of how to track changes in your documents, how to maintain version control, and how to remove hidden data that shouldn't be shared. The Microsoft Word Help site contains much more detailed information, and will hep you identify the steps to follow in using these tools, especially the more advanced features. If you have further questions, please visit the reference desk and talk to our helpful staff. 

Women's Equality Day - August 26th

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Mrs. Suffern campaigning for women's suffrage in 1914.

Visit the Library of Congress catalog for more information on this photo.

Tomorrow, August 26, is Women's Equality Day. The date commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees women the right to vote. Since 1994, Presidents have proclaimed the day to be a time of remembrance and recognition of the contributions of women throughout history and to promote women's equality in all aspects of society. Last year, President Obama reaffirmed that message with a proclamation in honor of the 95th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.

For resources on Women's Equality Day, visit the National Women's History Museum blog.

Latest & Greatest – Municipal Law Deskbook

Edited by William J. Scheiderich

Published by American Bar Association (2015)

KF 5305 .S34 2015

For the lawyer who practices before or for local governments comes Municipal Law Deskbook, a comprehensive guide for analyzing and handling the issues that most frequently arise in municipal law cases. Written by lawyers with decades-worth of experience in municipal law matters, Municipal Law Deskbook offers clear explanations of the applicability of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to public sector employees, the liability of public employees for wrongful acts, and the regulation of free speech in the public workplace. In addition, the authors provide an overview of regulatory taking and inverse condemnation, open meetings/open records laws, and the power of a municipality to raise taxes, generate revenue, and borrow money. Municipal Law Deskbook is a great resource for anyone wanting to know more about constitutional and employment law-related issues in a public context.