Chapter 4-7 Flashcards
Primary sources
Constitutions; statutes; rules, regulations, and ordinances; case law
Secondary sources
dictionaries, encyclopedias, form books, periodicals, treatises, digest, citators
issue
a question that must be decided by a court
relevant
relevant evidence relates directly to the issue; a relevant fact is a fact that is tied directly to the client’s legal question
primary sources
the resources that provide the actual law
secondary sources
tools used to understand the law
explanatory facts
these facts help the researcher understand what happened; not relevant, in a legal sense, to the issue
unnecessary facts
the factual information in this category; irrelevant to the legal issue
bifurcate
to sever from the trial
legal encyclopedia
a collection of legal information
finding tools
the resources used to locate primary and secondary sources
annotation
a brief summary of a statutes or a case
form book
a legal resource filled with sample forms and explanations on how and when to use the forms
law reviews
a publication containing articles written by judges, professors, and attorneys
treatise
a book that reviews a special field of law; a summary of the law on a particular subject; often called a hornbook
digest
an index to reported cases, arranges by subject; a short summary of the case is provided
case law
a collection of reported cases
reporter
a set of published volumes of cases by courts
Lexis
a fee-based computer-assisted legal research service provided by LexisNexis
Westlaw
a fee-based computer-assisted legal research service provided by Thompson-Reuter West
Bloomberg Law
a fee-based computer-assisted legal research service provided by Bloomberg law
rules of law
legal principles that are applied to the facts; generally derived from statutes, case law, and the Constitution
holding
the legal principle to be taken from the court’s decision
precedent
the examples set by the decision of an earlier court for similar cases or similar legal questions that arise in later cases
