Thurgood Marshall State Law Library
The Thurgood Marshall State Library offers information on treaties, books, taskforce reports, government publications and taskforce reports that provide information on American Law. The Thurgood State Library opens from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm from Mondays to Fridays. Owing to the existence of the Public Information Act (PIA) requests, Thurgood Library strives to ensure free and optimum access to all library visitors. The Maryland PIA Act allows the provision of public records and legal material while protecting legitimate federal and state governmental interests. The Act also ensures that librarians do not disclose information that may negatively affect the privacy rights of Maryland citizens. Thurgood Marshal Library, therefore, facilitates open access in most of its data while respecting the PIA act.
The library contains the American Jurisprudence 2d encyclopedia. The Jurisprudence contains substantive and procedural American law in federal, state, civil, and criminal grounds (Thurgood Marshall State Library, 2020). The American Jurisprudence 2d articles have volumes of well-collected, analyzed, and summarized American law principles. The Jurisprudence is present in print form, making it more accessible. Librarians in Thurgood are also very active and helpful in allocating resources. The library also contains Corpus Juris Secundum that is present in the reference collection. The Corpus Juris Secundum that exists in Thurgood Library is a successor of the Corpus Juris that contains alphabetically arranged legal information. The first record of the Secundum in Thurgood Library was created in 1936. The library has the corresponding replacement of the Corpus Juris Secundum made in 1980 and other replacement volumes. Some records of the Secundum are kept up to date by replacement volumes of procedural and substantive law.
The library also has several state reporter series for the state of Maryland. These reports are easily accessible in the catalog. Maryland reports have been arranged in chronological order in volumes denoting different cases and their outcomes. All these reports have call numbers to differentiate them. Depending on the call, a researcher can figure out which cases are freely accessible and which ones require a librarian’s oversight.
Moreover, it has adequate organizations of case digests. The Thurgood Marshall Library has vast sources that list Maryland cases and their reporters. One can easily find any Maryland case digest from the catalog, regardless of the year. For instance, typing ‘Maryland Digests’ and the keyword ne can find examples such as “Digest of Maryland reports: from the ninth to the twentieth volume inclusive [1856-1863].” The reporter’s name, Jacob Cohen, is also listed in the digest (Thurgood Marshall State Law Library, 2020). The region the case proceedings took place (Baltimore) is also contained in the library’s summaries.
The annotated code of Maryland is vital in the state’s legal proceedings as it contains statutory laws. The Thurgood library contains the state’s annotated code and has different cases where the code is put into practice. The majority of issues involving Maryland’s annotated code are free to researcher access. The library also contains different volumes of the Black’s law dictionary which have been written and corrected by Thomas Reuters. The dictionary is essential in analyzing court opinions, especially in Supreme Court Cases. Beiber’s Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations is critical in understanding some symbols or law jargons found in different legal reports. The Thurgood library contains the dictionary as a reference guide for paralegals, attorneys, legal secretaries, and students of law.
Additionally, the Thurgood Marshall Library provides numerous cases and online resources that are related to these cases. After typing keywords such as a case’s name in the catalog, the library directs a researcher to the case and any other resource that links to it. The Thurgood online catalog also redirects the researcher to relevant resources that are absent in its database.
References
Thurgood Marshall State Law Library. (2020). Maryland courts. https://mdcourts.gov/lawlib