Legal Research Flashcards
You must consider the following when determining the hierarchy of authorities:
- Currency
- Levels of court
- Conflicting decisions between circuits
- State and federal decisions concerning an issue
- Conflicts in federal and state authority
- State court decisions
Name primary authorities for legal research
- Court decisions
- Statutes
- Agency rules and regulations
- Constitutions
- Charters
Name secondary authorities for legal research
- Encyclopedias
- American law reports
- Periodicals and law reviews
- Dictionaries
- Thesauri
Name Finding Tools
Digests, Citators, Updaters, Annotated Statutes
What is the United States Reports?
the official, government printed reporter for U.S. Supreme Court cases.
the official government printed reporter for U.S. Supreme Court Cases
United States Reports
What are the commercial Supreme Court Reporters?
Supreme Court Reporter or U.S. Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer’s Edition are the commercial reporters.
What’s the difference between United States Reports and commercial reporters.
United States Reports is the official government printed reporter for U.S. Supreme Court cases, and the commercial reporters are not the official report and are usually published sooner than the official, government-printed version and contain a variety of publisher’s headnotes and case abstracts that will assist in your research.
Commercial reporters are _______________________________________.
usually published faster than the official report and contain a lot of headnotes and case abstracts that will assist you in your resesarch.
West South Western Reporter covers Texas.
TRUE
“shep a case” means
go look it up in west law or lexis. The Shepard’s citator system is the most pervasive, but Lexis bought Shepard.
________________ are services that note when a court has mentioned or relied on a case.
Citators
Which citator is the most pervasive?
Shepard’s citator system, but now Lexis bought them.
What do you learn from reviewing Shepard’s citations?
- List of parallel citations and the history of the case you are reviewing.
- All cases that mention or cite case you are Shepardizing.
- References to West’s headnote system.
- For some citing authorities, additional information about the court’s treatment of the citing cases.
- Can be used to research almost every federal and state case reported in print in the past 200 years.
What are treatises?
Treatises are scholarly works that examine one legal topic in great detail and with very broad coverage. These are generally multi-volume sets.
What are hornbooks?
Hornbooks are also scholarly, but designed for students of law, are generally one-volume works providing an overview of a single legal topic.
_______________________ are scholarly works that examine one legal topic in great detail and with very broad coverage. These are generally multi-volume sets.
Treatises
________________ are scholarly works designed for students of law, are generally one-volume works providing an overview of a single legal topic.
Hornbooks
_________________________, published by the American Law Institute, are the most prestigious source of secondary authority.
Restatements of the Law
What is the purpose of codifying the common law holding?
so that a researcher does not have to unearth the legal rule from the text of an opinion, and to make common law principles straightforward and succinct, like statutes.
What is the official, government-issued compilation of the federal statutes?
United States Code (U.S.C.)
U.S.C.?
United States Code
What are the unofficial versions of the U.S.C.,?
United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.) and United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.), they contain the text of the laws found in the U.S.C. and also case law annotations and excellent updating services.
The United States Code Service publishes paperback advance sheets with the public laws enacted during the prior month.
TRUE
The United States Code Annotated also prints paperback advance sheets each month that contain all of the public laws enacted during the prior month.
TRUE
U.S.C.C.A.N.
United States Code Congressional and Administrative News
What is the United States Code Congressional and Administrative News (U.S.C.C.A.N.)?
the easiest source of commercially compiled federal legislative histories.
CFR
Code of Federal Regulations
The Code of Federal Regulations is
the collection of regulations that have been promulgated by federal administrative agences.
_________________________is the collection of regulations that have been promulgated by federal administrative agencies.
Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)
Regulations have the _________________.
force of law
Regulations have the
force of law.
GPO
government printing office
Where can you find CFR’s?
You can find regulations through the GPO (government printing office) at gpo.gov/fdsys
and
you can find pending regulations that have been promulgated, but are in comment periods, at Regulations.gov
What are Lexis and Westlaw?
they are computerized legal research systems which require careful query formulation and selection of search terms to obtain the most relevant information available.
Is there a national code of ethics?
No.
Many state rules are patterned after the American Bar Association’s __________________________________ or the ABA’s ______________________.
- Model Code of Professional Responsibility
2. Model Rules of Professional Conduct
