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Friday, October 24, 2014

Tracking the Legislative History of Oregon State Constitutional Provisions

Many of our readers will be familiar with the annotations to the Oregon Revised Statutes. The note “Amended by 1969 c.179 §1” is familiar to many. It points to Chapter 179 Section 1 of the 1969 Oregon Laws and helps the reader track down the legislative history of the statute in question.

The Oregon Constitution has a similar notation that guides the user seeking the history of a particular constitutional section. The current Oregon Constitution is available on line at the Oregon legislature's website. Each Section of the constitution ends with a note that looks like this:

[Constitution of 1859; Amendment proposed by H.J.R. 11, 1955, and adopted by the people Nov. 6, 1956; Amendment proposed by H.J.R. 27, 1969, and adopted by the people Nov. 3, 1970; Amendment proposed by S.J.R. 17, 2001, and adopted by the people May 21, 2002]

This note, from Article XI Section 6, recounts the history of this section. In this case the section was enacted in the constitution of 1859 and then amended in 1956, 1970 and 2002. The last amendment to Article XI section 6 was proposed in the 17th Senate Joint Resolution from 2001.

You can find selected resolutions from 1999 on the Oregon Legislature's web page. A box in the lower right corner of the page contains the published resolutions. SJR 17 (2001) is located here

It is important to remember that the only resolutions recorded are ones deemed significant by the Oregon Legislative Counsel. If you are looking for a resolution and it is not listed on the legislature’s website you can contact the Oregon State Archives Reference Desk and view the resolution at the State Archives building. Feel free to contact us at the SOLL reference desk if you need help locating a document in the Archives. If you are looking for a resolution that is older than 1999 you can check a paper copy of the Oregon Laws from the appropriate year. The SOLL has a full collection of Oregon Laws available to the public.

Happy researching!

Friday, October 17, 2014

The first known attorney of Chinese descent admitted to practice in Oregon

On July 30 of 1907 the Morning Oregonian reported that a Mr. Seid Gein had been admitted to the bar in Oregon.

Admission to the Oregon Bar and the practice of law was a significant step into Oregon society. Before his admission Mr. Seid was already a respected member of the Portland community. Indeed only a few weeks earlier on July 14th the Oregonian reported that Mr. Sied had left a job with the U.S. immigration service upon being reassigned to St. Lewis. His status was such that A new position was created for him in the Immigration office after he was compelled to resign as interpreter.


At the State of Oregon Law Library we have in our collection two of the orginal Oregon Bar attorney rolls. These books contain the handwritten names of all attorneys admitted respectively from 1844 to 1848 and 1888 to 1974. You can see the line where Mr Seid was admitted on June 17, 1907.


Mr. Sied's stature only grew after his admission to the bar.


The early days of the Oregon bar are filled with firsts and interesting characters. The SOLL contains a wealth of resources to research the early days of the Oregon courts. Attorneys admitted during the year to the Oregon bar were listed in early editions of the Oregon Reporter. Stephen Armitage, a Supreme Court staff attorney, has written an article discussing the bar admission examination from 1865 into the 1900s. This is the same examination Mr. Seid would have undergone in 1907. Our collection includes a number of works dealing with Oregon's legal history including History of the Bench and Bar of Oregon and a collection of the excellent Oregon Historical Quarterly.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Pacer Access Restoration Planned

On August 10th The Administrative Office of the US Courts abruptly announced that archives of older cases from a number of courts would be removed from PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records). After being pressed by the media the AO explained, on August 26th that the removals were prompted by technical incompatibility with recent upgrades to the system.
The furor wasn’t quelled by the delayed explanation. On September 19th Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, the director of the AO, criticizing the move. The letter, acquired by the Washington Post, read in part:
Wholesale removal of thousands of cases from PACER, particularly from four of our federal courts of appeals, will severely limit access to information not only for legal practitioners, but also for legal scholars, historians, journalists, and private litigants for whom PACER has become the go-to source for most court filings
The PACER records effected and a tentative schedule for the restoration of the documents is available on the PACER website.