arcane question

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005, Andrew Koppelman wrote:

> It ought to be easy enough to resolve this with a day of research in the 
> Supreme Court library.  They ought to have the old briefs, and should be 
> able to tell, by examining a sample a few dozen cases, whether there is a 
> close correspondence between the briefs and the reported description.  For 
> that matter, a phone call to the head librarian at the Supreme Court might 
> resolve the question, since that librarian is presumably familiar with the 
> unique aspects of the collection.

In my experience the reference librarians at the U.S. Supreme Court are 
very knowledgeable and helpful and may already have answers to commonly 
asked questions in their files.  For example, I know that they have a list 
of which advocates have argued the most cases before the Supremes.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
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