From The Law and Politics Book Review

Vol. 9 No. 1 (January 1999) p. 13.

Fed Law EasySearch by the Oryx Corporation. $199.00 CD-ROM.

Reviewed by Jeffrey A. Segal, Department of Political Science, SUNY Stony Brook. Email: jeffrey.segal@sunysb.edu.

Hmmm. For $199.00 you can purchase a CD-ROM that contains the complete U.S. Code plus Statutes at Large for the 104^th and 105^th Congresses with any easy-to-use search engine. Or, if you have Internet access, as virtually all readers of the LAW AND POLITICS BOOK REVIEW do, you can find the U.S. Code plus Statutes at Large (updated almost daily) from a variety of sources for free. See, for example,

http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/search/publaw.html,

and

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas2.html

for Statutes at Large; and

http://law2.house.gov/usc.htm

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/

for the U.S. Code. All of these, like FED LAW EASYSEARCH, have easy-to-use search engines.

Moreover, unlike FED LAW EASYSEARCH, the Internet also provides free access to the Code of Federal Regulations,

http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfr-table-search.html,

the Federal Register

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aces140.html,

and decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals, e.g.,

http://www.law.cornell.edu/opinions.html.

Of course I can imagine situations where federal practitioners without Internet access might find this useful, and even some situations where federal practitioners with Internet access might find the portability of the U.S. Code on a CD-ROM valuable. If you fall into one of these categories, the program is quick and easy to use.

I do have one minor warning though. The program came with no written instructions whatsoever. I knew enough, as would most users, to go to Windows Explorer, search my D: drive, and double click on the setup.exe file. But when you pay $199.00 for material available for free elsewhere, simple written instructions is not too much to ask.