Homeschooling Laws & Legalities

URL: http://www.gomilpitas.com/homeschooling/directory/Legalities.htm
Homeschooling Law and Legalities is a section of Ann Zeiss's A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling website, a comprehensive source on home education which, unlike many such resources, is philosophically diverse and inclusive. With regard to education law, Zeiss states up front that she is a homeschooling mother, not a lawyer, and that the laws may not be the most current. The Legalities section contains links to the website of the Association of Homeschool Attorneys, information on instructional content standards, and articles on such topics as laws regarding "educational neglect." There is a list of U.S. states to click on, but better results are obtained by choosing the "Regional and Worldwide" section (worldwide being at present Canada, the UK, South Africa, Japan, Australia and New Zealand). Here are links to a variety of resoures, including legal information, associations, support groups, essays on regulations, and excerpts from state codes (or summaries of the law), with citations to statutes and cases. Coverage for each state/province or country varies widely, but this website is an excellent starting place for the person investigating the law of home education.

National Center for Victims of Crime

URL: http://www.ncvc.org/
Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to serving individuals, families, and communities harmed by criminal conduct. Through collaboration with local, state, and federal partners, the NCVC is active in providing direct services and resources for crime victims and their advocates; shaping public policy on victims' rights; and supplying training and technical assistance to victim service organizations, counselors, attorneys, criminal justice agencies, and allied professionals. In addition to providing information about the NCVC's services and activities, the website offers links to external, related Internet resources. In the "Virtual Library" section of the site, users can find book reviews, bibliographies, full-text access to some of the NCVC's recent publications, and statistics on a wide range of crimes including school crime, hate crime and cybercrime. Other sections of the website include the "Press Center," "Discussion Forums," and highlights of recent NCVC newsletters. The site is keyword-searchable, and a site map is also available to assist in navigation.

Refugee Caselaw Site

URL: http://www.refugeecaselaw.org/Refugee/index.htm
The purpose of the Refugee Caselaw Site, based at the University of Michigan Law School, is to "promote transnational analysis of refugee law by advocates, decision-makers, and policymakers committed to the effective implementation of international standards." The site collects, indexes, and publishes selected recent court decisions from federal and supreme courts of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland on cases brought by people seeking refugee status. The site is searchable by court, date of decision, jurisdiction, case name, and claimant's country of origin. Additional search features are full-text and Hathaway number, i.e. a number in a topical outline assigned by Prof. James Hathaway in his treatise The Law of Refugee Status. Here the user can click on any topic (e.g. "well-founded fear," "stateless persons") and retrieve a list of citations to relevant cases, with summaries of the issues involved. The actual text of the decisions are viewable in PDF format, taken from LEXIS or the official reporters. Note that decisions from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are in German or French; the hypertext links on the screen do not function. Because the cases are drawn from decisions of appeals courts the selection is far from comprehensive; a search on "gender" retrieved only 12 cases, and "sexual orientation" also brought up cases involving issues of sexual activity. The website provides other links to United Nations and European Union refugee law sites and to various international conventions; a link labeled "national refugee case law" connects the user to websites of high courts of a number countries in addition to those represented in the searchable database, as well as to the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals. Some of the latter links are specific to refugee law, many are simply the links to more general national legal websites.

Widows' Law File

URL: http://www.oneworld.org/empoweringwidows/lawfile/index.html
Empowering Widows in Development (EWD) is a UK-based non-governmental organization which focuses on the problems of widows in developing countries and war zones, and assists national and international human rights organizations. Customary law, traditional culture, and local religious practices can mean the denial of property rights; child marriage and prohibitions against remarriage result in devastating social and economic consequences for women and children. Moreover, in many countries lacking provisions for pensions or social security, families are now less able to provide for widowed relatives, and women are often unaware of their legal rights and at the mercy of unsympathetic police and courts. The Widows Law File serves as an online newsletter, publicizing issues such as the increase in widows worldwide as a result of war and AIDS, and reporting news of conferences, global developments, and important legal decisions. Unfortunately there is no clear navigation path; for instance material on African countries may be found in several different sections. For best results the user is advised to peruse the entire website.