RFI: NJ civil unions; obscenity and film; legal research tips

Hi ILX, I'm doing some papers and need a bit of guidance. I thought I'd turn to you for help!

First, I'm writing an article on the failure of civil unions in NJ, and am trying to find people to talk to who have NJ civil unions. Does anyone have one? Does anyone know someone who has one?

Second, I'm writing a paper on U.S. obscenity laws and film, more specifically films/filmmakers that were actually tried on obscenity charges. I'm going to be doing stuff with Deep Throat and I Am Curious (Yellow), and possibly Last Tango In Paris, but my big roadblock is finding actual legal documents. I want to find opinions, summaries, transcripts, etc. but have NO IDEA how the fuck to search them without names or case numbers. Anyone know baot searching for these types of things online? I'd love to do something on "Pink Flamingos"; I know he was sued in Hicksville, NY and pleaded guilty and paid a $5000 fine but I have no idea how to find documentation of this outside of interviews that reference it.

does your school library have lexisnexis or westlaw

Yes, it has both, but I'm trying to figure out the most efficient way to search them.

i can help u as i am a master of researchin but it might be easier to ask a librarian? it can get complicated and you will get confused. westlaw is better btw.
another way to do this quickly is to look in the endnotes of a book about this and just pick out the citations and put them into google (if they're u.s. supreme court cases). trial transcripts are going to be hard to find as a primary source.

The librarian wasn't sure. I need someone who's semi-familiar with law specifically who can tell me what kinds of things to even look for. Like how to find an obscenity charge from Hicksville, NY in 1975. Or one in Orlando from 1990. What types of documents would even exist on these things, if any? would they even be online?

honestly i'd just call the jurisdictions directly, if you can figure what the jurisdiction was (circuit court or county court or whatever). court clerks' offices usually have a couple of hugely knowledgeable people who've been there forever and can probably save you a lot of time. even if you're not sure of the jurisdiction, you can just call one close by and if you're wrong they'll refer you somewhere else. civil servants are a great resource.

(and the internet has made at least that part of this kind of thing a lot easier, because you can find phone numbers of court clerks and county clerks and all that so much more easily. back in the pre-internet stone age, i spent a lot of time calling information for that kind of thing, and half the time got the wrong number.)

civil servants are a great resource.

lollllllll it really depends where they are!
sorry to sound dismissive, a lot of people are afraid to ask librarians ime

oh yeah, online local court records are very minimal and probably do not go back that far. also if jw pleaded guilty (no trial, no opinions written) there will not be a transcript with anything useful in it, for a paper. you would probably get a lot more out of newspaper articles than court records.
this might help you w/ the deep throat thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reems (see citations at bottom)
you might also want to look at jacobellis v. ohio (supreme court re: louis malle's 'the lovers' being obscene)

Yeah, that's what I figured (re: guilty pleas, no trials/opinions)

Also lol at this thread already being the fourth result when googling "pink flamingos hicksville"

Yeah, lesson I learned way, way late in my paper writin' career is that you should call people and talk to librarians and basically not think that you can google/lexisnexis/card catalog your way into a well-researched paper, because it's super difficult and needlessly so seeing as how you are paying for parts of the salaries of people who have f-ing Master's Degrees in Helping You Find Shit.

(Not specifically directed at you, btw, just a general statement)