There’s still time to play our third round of What’s Next Trivia with Johnny & Jenny Westlaw for a chance at $30 in Starbucks gift cards. Here’s what to do:

• Watch  the Johnny & Jenny videos from the third week of the tour in Miami, Atlanta and Tampa. (Especially Tampa, wink wink.)
• Watch any of last week’s videos (from Houston, Denver or Dallas) and wait for the trivia question to pop up at the end (or click on the PARTICIPATE tab to skip ahead).
• Answer a single trivia question about one of the videos. Then type in your name and email address (so we can contact you if you win) and click Submit. That’s it!

One winner will be chosen at random from the entries we receive each week, so keep following and playing along as Johnny & Jenny visit the remaining cities on the tour! (For more information, see the official rules.)

Wondering where to start after logging into Westlaw? The “Site Map” link at the top of the screen lays out all of your options. In the Site Map you can:

• Find a database or collection of materials
• Find a document by citation or party name
• Browse a table of contents
• Re-deliver print jobs through the Print/Delivery Manager

Still wondering where to start? The “Site Map” also includes a link to our Research Assistance phone number (1-800-REF-ATTY).

(Provided by West Reference Attorneys)

A U.S. Supreme Court decision announced on March 9, 1841, provides an early example of how a relatively narrow ruling can have broad social consequences.

The Amistad case takes its name from a Spanish schooner that was to carry 53 African slaves from Havana to another Cuban port. The Africans broke free from their chains and killed the ship’s captain and cook, but they spared the lives of two other crew members so that someone could guide the Amistad to Africa. The two instead piloted the ship to America, and the Africans found themselves in New Haven, Connecticut, to experience their first New England winter and await their fate.

The criminal case was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds; it was the civil case that ended up advancing to the Supreme Court. At issue: Were the Africans to be treated as property and returned to Havana, or were they the victims of kidnapping who deserved to be freed?

President Martin Van Buren had been pushing to return the Africans to Cuba, mainly as a diplomatic gesture to Spain (and an election-year favor to political allies in southern states). But the Africans had powerful abolitionist allies on their side – including John Quincy Adams, a.k.a. “Old Man Eloquent,” who was persuaded to help argue their case before the Supreme Court.

Given that five of the nine justices were slave-owning southerners, it came as a shock to many when the Court ruled to free the would-be slaves, stating that they were “kidnapped Africans, who by the laws of Spain itself were entitled to their freedom.”

Indeed, in 1820 the Spanish government had issued an order to  comply with a British treaty that abolished the slave trade south of the equator. The Supreme Court’s majority decision made it clear that had the Africans been enslaved before Spain’s 1820 ban went into effect, they would have been returned to Havana.

The Africans eventually made it back to their homeland (accompanied by a passel of missionaries), and the growing abolitionist movement in the United States got its first big boost from the courts – intentional or not.

For a much more nuanced account of the Amistad case and other famous trials from Socrates to Zacarias Moussauoi, see the excellent Famous Trials website, created and maintained by Professor Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law.

Merrill v. City of San Juan Capistrano (Cal. Super.)
Dirt bikers win $10M verdict for collision with SUV

2009 WL 1470367 Verdict Summary
2006 WL 5987154 Plaintiff’s complaint

Note: The links above are intended for Westlaw users. You will be asked to sign on to Westlaw before being taken directly to the document.

Publish Your Cases

It seems that a law degree may improve your odds of being elected president, since 26 of our 44 presidents have also been lawyers. Here’s the complete list of lawyer-presidents:

1. John Adams
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. James Madison
4. James Monroe
5. John Quincy Adams
6. Andrew Jackson
7. Martin Van Buren
8. John Tyler
9. James Polk
10. Millard Fillmore
11. Franklin Pierce
12. James Buchanan
13. Abraham Lincoln
14. Rutherford Hayes
15. Chester Arthur
16. Grover Cleveland
17. Benjamin Harrison
18. William McKinley
19. William Howard Taft
20. Woodrow Wilson
21. Calvin Coolidge
22. Franklin Roosevelt
23. Richard Nixon
24. Gerald Ford
25. Bill Clinton
26. Barack Obama

If you like presidential trivia, try these expert-level bonus questions. The answers are at the bottom of this post.

1. Barack Obama graduated from Harvard Law in 1991. (Yep, that’s him above, on campus.)
   Who was the only president besides Obama to earn a law degree from Harvard?
2. Who was the last president without a college degree?
3. Why is Obama considered to be the 44^th president, when he’s only the 43^rd person to serve in that office?

Thanks to everyone who played during our second week of What’s Next Trivia – and congratulations to Abby W., an assistant librarian at a law firm in Minneapolis, who answered our trivia question and won the drawing for a $30 Starbucks gift card! We look forward to seeing Abby and our other Twin Cities friends at next week’s preview breakfast in Minneapolis. In the meantime, keep playing What’s Next Trivia with Johnny & Jenny Westlaw – and we’ll keep handing out those Starbucks gift cards.

How to enter and win

• Watch  the Johnny & Jenny videos from the third week of the tour (Miami, Atlanta and Tampa).
• Go to any of this week’s videos (from Houston, Denver or Dallas) and click on the PARTICIPATE tab on the bottom of the video screen.
• Answer a single trivia question about one of the videos. Then type in your name and email address (so we can contact you if you win) and click Submit. That’s it!

One winner will be chosen at random from the entries we receive each week, so keep following and playing along as Johnny & Jenny visit the remaining cities on the tour! (For more information, see the official rules.)

Answers to Bonus Questions

1. Rutherford Hayes graduated from Harvard Law School – way back in 1845.
2. Harry Truman never earned a college sheepskin, although he did study law at the University of Missouri in Kansas City for a couple of years.
3. Grover Cleveland served non-consecutive terms, so he is counted as the 22^nd and the 24^th presidents.

Westlaw tip: To search for a common term, or to exclude plurals or automatic equivalents, remember to use the # sign. This will force Westlaw to search for those common words, like no, not, prior or before. It will also prevent both plural words and automatic equivalents from being returned in the search results. So if you’re looking for the word “incorporated” but do not want to get “inc” as well, just use #incorporated as the search term.

(Provided by West Reference Attorneys)