Ian Beilin & Dana Neacsu, Interdisciplinary Legal Research:   Developing Research Strategies: Searching for supporting theories Ian Beilin & Dana Neacsu,

Hypothetical 1: The U.S. Supreme Court decided Jan. 13 it will look at whether a naturalized citizen can lose her citizenship over a white lie (Maslenjak v. United States, U.S., No. 16-309, review granted 1/13/17). Divna Maslenjak fled to the U.S. from Bosnia, claiming that she faced persecution there because her husband had evaded conscription into the Serbian army during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. She was later naturalized. But her husband had, in fact, served in the Serbian militia, and Maslenjak admitted to lying about it during her naturalization process. As a result, Maslenjak was convicted of knowingly procuring her naturalization contrary to law and her citizenship was revoked.But the jury had been told that her lie didn't need to be material to her application for naturalization, and it's not clear that it was—Maslenjak had also based her application on a fear of ethnic persecution. The question presented by her petition is whether a naturalized citizen could be stripped of citizenship for an immaterial false statement, referred to as a "white lie". Is 'white lie" the appropriate synonym for an immaterial false statement?

Macro-management of ILR: Read your question: Assess your research needs; Locate Research Resources (indexes)

More on Macro-management Find the appropriate literature databases More on Macro-management Find the appropriate literature databases. Where do you start? 1. Free of charge? 2. Fee-based? Who publishes them? Where can you access them? What are their research tools?

Answer Library catalogs (clio v. pegasus) Natural language v. Boolean language Specialized databases

Micro-management of ILR Keep track of your results

Hypothetical 2: Ritovarin is the most useful anti-retroviral medication to fight HIV/AIDS in many patients. However, the drug is very expensive in the United States, while much cheaper in Canada, although the drug was developed with government money by US entities, whose financial resources are now so depleted they cannot start developing a new drug. Is there a way the pharmaceutical industry giants profiting from a patent developed with government money could be forced to payback, indemnify, the entities whose research produce the now-patented drug? Is there any statutory language to support your research objectives? If there is no statutory provision in effect, what about old or pending legislative activity which could be used as grounds for new legislative proposals?

Macro-management of ILR Read your question carefully - specialized terminology; literature research legislative history research

More on macro-management: What databases. 1. Free of charge. 2 More on macro-management: What databases? 1. Free of charge? 2. Fee-based? Who publishes them? Where can you access them? What are their research tools?

Ian Beilin, igb4@columbia.edu Dana Neacsu, edn13@columbia.edu Questions? Ian Beilin, igb4@columbia.edu Dana Neacsu, edn13@columbia.edu