Devin Humphreys writes
One incredible benefit of being at Notre Dame Law School is the opportunity to complete a directed reading. A directed reading is where you develop a research proposal and write a substantive paper on that topic, guided one-on-one by a professor of your choosing. At the end of the semester, a paper of 10,000 words yields two credits and an incredible experience. This semester, I’m doing a directed reading with Professor A.J. Bellia, who was my constitutional law professor last spring. But on what? Well, dear reader of this column, nine years ago, in 2012, I had the opportunity to be a Junior Legislator for a Day. I met with Michigan state representative Kevin Cotter, who represented my school at the time, Michigan state Sen. Judy Emmons, who was my state senator at the time and a number of other local political figures in Lansing. One of Representative Cotter’s aides guided us through our visit, and one of my most vivid memories to this day from that experience was the story he told of how in the mid-2000s, the Michigan Legislature would address gridlock surrounding budget deadlines by literally stopping the clock within their legislative chambers. The notion that legislative procedures, whether formal or informal, could regard a legislature as having the power to control time itself fascinated me then and has continued to be a source of intrigue to this day, so I knew I needed to write on it. And what better way to do that than to sign up for a directed reading?
Last month, as my directed reading commenced, I began my research on these questions. While I had found a couple of leads, the search proved somewhat tricky. Since the stoppage of time constitutes a sort of legal fiction, the practice isn’t always officially recorded in an easily accessible manner, meaning that if I wanted to be sure of the scope of this phenomenon, I needed to call on others’ knowledge and experience.
Then I had a lightbulb moment. If Representative Cotter’s aide was how I first heard the story of Michigan legislators stopping the clock as a personal anecdote, might there be others similarly situated across the country? I started going onto the websites of various states’ legislatures, finding out that just about every state in the Union has either an official legislative library with research librarians on staff or an official state library that serves a similar function. I was able to find a contact person for each state and send out an email seeking any information they might have on the stoppage of time.
I couldn’t have expected what would happen next. I thought maybe two or three might get back to me with a short story, something that would enable me to do some further digging of my own to find more useful information. Rather, at the time of this writing, I’ve had correspondence with 34 research librarians, from Alaska to Wyoming and everywhere in between. Their insights have been an absolute godsend, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will have a much stronger paper thanks to their contributions.
As a result of this endeavor, I’ve arrived at an important conclusion: I love research librarians. When I recounted this series of events to Brandy Ellis, one of Notre Dame Law School’s own incredible research librarians, she explained that the nature of these librarians’ response to my inquiry is a hallmark of the profession, given librarians’ passion for securing the freedom of information as best they can. I truly believe that there’s something to this categorical imperative. We would all do well in taking a couple of pages out of the research librarian playbook.
Read full article: https://ndsmcobserver.com/2021/10/thankyounationsresearchlibrarians/
