Case Law Research Guide

When performing legal research, there are two types of sources to consider:  primary sources and secondary sources.  Primary sources are the official legal documents that actually state the laws of the nation and of the individual states.  Examples include statutes, regulations and court opinions.  Secondary sources, on the other hand, do not state our laws but rather discuss or analyze them.  Secondary sources of law generally provide commentary and background information on the primary sources of law.  Additionally, they provide citations to primary sources, as well as references to other secondary legal materials.

 In the case of judicial opinions, secondary sources allow the legal researcher to gain a better understanding of a particular area of law, and also find links to relevant cases for his or her purposes.  Various types of secondary sources for case law research exist.  Some of these include legal encyclopedias, texts and treatises, and law reviews.

 Legal encyclopedias provide summaries of broad areas of law; they attempt to provide an overview of the entire body of legal doctrine.  Entries are arranged alphabetically, and they contain numerous references to cases that address the issues they discuss.  Legal encyclopedias do not offer critiques of the various areas of law; instead, they provide an introduction to the main concepts within these areas.  The following are two of the major legal encyclopedias:

 American Jurisprudence, Second Series (AmJur) - Ref KF154.A42.  This multivolume set contains both brief and extensive articles, depending on the topic of the article (broader subjects will receive lengthier treatments than narrower ones).  Each article has a topical outline and notes concerning the scope of its contents.  The body of the article is divided into numbered sections, which explain legal concepts and give citations to primary sources and other legal research materials, including American Law Reports (ALR) annotations and digests from the West Publishing Company (see later sections on these sources).  AmJur tends to focus on federal law.  The set is updated annually by softbound pocket parts, located at the back of each volume, and by revised hardbound volumes, located at the end of the set.  The encyclopedia also offers a detailed index, as well as a volume of tables listing federal statutes, regulations, and court rules. 

Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS) - Ref KF154.C6.  This multivolume set has much of the same content as AmJur; however, the individual articles from CJS are often written from different perspectives than the ones in AmJur.  Furthermore, the cases cited in the CJS articles usually differ from those cited in the AmJur articles.  In contrast to AmJur, CJS tends to focus more on cases from state courts.  The encyclopedia uses the same pocket part system of updating as AmJur, and it contains both an index and a volume with a table of cases.

 Texts and treatises, like legal encyclopedias, introduce the researcher to various areas of law; however, the areas they address are usually very specialized.  This type of secondary source in case law research includes multivolume sets that offer scholarly treatments of different legal topics; single volumes devoted to specific legal issues, or to larger issues applied to a particular jurisdiction; and self-help legal publications written for the layperson.  Most texts and treatises, especially the scholarly ones, provide an abundance of references to cases and other primary sources of law.  The following are examples of texts and treatises available in our library:

The Law and Regulation of Financial Institutions  (Ref KF975.S3)

Protecting Consumer Rights  (Ref KF1040.L4 1984)

Couch on Insurance  (Ref KF1159.5.C62)

Recovery and Wrongful Death and Injury  (Ref KF1260.S66 1992)

Products Liability Design and Manufacturing Defects  (Ref KF1296.B37)

Oil and Gas Law  (Ref KF1849.O44)

Mass Media and the Constitution  (Ref KF2750.A59 H58 1989)

Nimmer on Copyright  (Ref KF2991.5. N5 1985)

Trademark Protection and Practice  (Ref KF3180.G54)

Sports Law (Ref KF 3989.A7 Y37)

Education and the Law (Ref KF4117.T39 1996)

American Constitutional Law (Ref KF4550.T785 1988)

Federal Laws Affecting Real Estate  (Ref KF6540.F26)

International Trade Practice (Ref KF6659.K39)

 Law reviews are scholarly publications that discuss current developments in both general and specialized areas of law.  Most reviews are edited by law students and contain a mixture of extensive articles and brief essays written by legal scholars and practitioners, and comments or notes from students.  Law review articles generally contain exhaustive footnotes that cite both primary and secondary sources of law, which makes them excellent legal research tools.

 LexisNexis Academic (Electronic Indexes/Databases).  This database contains a "Legal Research" section, which has a subsection for "Law Reviews."  Here, the researcher can search for full-text law review articles by keyword, author, title, and citation.  Sources range from The Air Force Law Review to The Yale Law Journal.

Once the researcher gathers citations from various secondary sources and determines their meaning, he or she can move to the primary sources of interest.  In the area of case law research, these will often be case reporters.  When reading the cases, or court opinions, in these reporters, the researcher should look for citations to relevant cases and other primary sources; this is one of the simplest ways to find sources that address his or her specific legal issues of interest.  Then, to ensure that his or her cases are still valid, the researcher needs to check for new court decisions that may have overturned or otherwise altered the previous cases.  These can be found in the pocket parts that accompany the individual volumes, and entire sets, of case reporters, as well as in case citators like Shepard's (see Using Shepard's Citations) .  The following are some of the major case reporters for both federal and state cases available in our library:

United States Reports (U.S.) - Ref KF101.A2. This is the official case reporter of the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Reference Department houses the volumes that cover cases from 1921-2001.  The text of each case in the reporters includes a syllabus, which summarizes the case and the Court's ruling on the legal matters the case involves.  Publication of U.S. Reports is relatively slow, which may necessitate the use of commercial reporters such as the following:

 United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer's Edition (L. Ed. or L. Ed. 2d) - Ref KF101.U5. The volumes in this set cover cases from the 1700s to the present.  The cases in these reporters contain headnotes, which are summaries of legal principles announced in the decisions. These headnotes provide subject access to the cases published within this set; although other commercial case reporters use headnotes, they may not apply to the cases in Lawyer's Edition.  The headnotes are compiled and arranged alphabetically in supplements to the case reporters known as digests, which cover the published cases in a particular jurisdiction.  The corresponding digest for this set is United States Supreme Court Digest, Lawyer's Edition.  The headnotes in Lawyer's Edition are followed by "Research References," which are citations to relevant sections of various primary and secondary sources.  At the back of each volume in the set are annotations and summaries of briefs from lawyers who argued the cases before the Supreme Court.  Lawyer's Edition is also accompanied by a Quick Case Table with Annotation References, which lists cases alphabetically and provides citations to United States Reports and Supreme Court Reporter.

 Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) - Ref KF101.S8.  This set is part of the National Reporter System, a product of the West Publishing Company.  One of the editorial features of West case reporters is a classification system of headnotes and key numbers, which are later compiled into digests (see Finding Cases Using West Headnotes, Key Numbers and Digests).  The corresponding digest for Supreme Court Reporter is United States Supreme Court Digest.  The volumes in this set cover cases from 1955 to the present.

 Federal Reporter or Federal Reporter, Second Series or Federal Reporter, Third Series (F. or F.2d or F.3d) - Beginning at Ref KF105.1.F4. This series, published by West, covers cases from the United States Courts of Appeals, Claims, and Customs and Patent Appeals.  The volumes contain cases from 1880 to the present (F.3d).  Like other West publications, Federal Reporter contains headnotes and key numbers, which link the researcher to related cases in other jurisdictions within the U.S.  This is accomplished by checking the digest that corresponds to the researcher's jurisdiction (see Finding Cases Using West Headnotes, Key Numbers and Digests).

 Federal Supplement or Federal Supplement, Second Series (F. Supp. or F. Supp. 2d) - Beginning at Ref KF120.F4.  This West series contains selected opinions from federal district courts and the Court of International Trade, along with the usual West editorial enhancements.  Only appellate court cases are published; trial court cases are not.

 American Law Reports (ALR) Federal (ALR Fed) - Ref KF105.A54.  This set covers only outstanding cases, from all jurisdictions in the U.S., from 1969 to the present, on specific points of federal law.  In addition to the court's opinions, the case reports contain annotations, or explanatory notes that help the researcher to interpret the case.  These annotations provide commentaries on the case in question, and they also describe other cases dealing with similar legal circumstances, particularly those cases where the court reached a different opinion.  Each annotation includes a table of contents, a subject index, and a table of the jurisdictions covered.  The researcher gains subject access to case annotations through the ALR Digest, which provides citations to ALR Federal and the other ALR reporters (see discussion of ALR, ALR2d, etc.).  This digest is updated by pocket parts.

 Mississippi Digest (Miss) - Ref KFM6647.1. M5.  This set from West contains summaries of the points of law decided in Mississippi Supreme Court cases (headnotes) from 1818 to the present.

 Southern Reporter or Southern Reporter, Second Series (So. or So. 2d) - Beginning at Ref KF135.S8.  This series, part of the West National Reporter system, covers Supreme Court opinions from 1887 to the present, from the states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi.  The set is accompanied by the Southern Digest, which contains case headnotes from these jurisdictions.

ALR (First Series) - Begins at Ref KF132.A5224.  Covers 1919-1948.

ALR2d (Second Series)                                  Covers 1948-1965.

ALR3rd (Third Series)                                    Covers 1965-1980.

ALR4th (Fourth Series)                                  Covers 1980-1992.

ALR5th (Fifth Series)                                     Covers 1992-2004.

ALR6th (Sixth Series)                                    Covers 2004 to the present.

 This set of case reporters follows the same format as ALR Federal, only it focuses on cases that deal with general and state legal matters.  Only cases that are unique in setting precedent are chosen.  As in ALR Federal, the case reports contain annotations and citations for other relevant cases.

 LexisNexis Academic (Electronic Indexes/Databases).  The "Legal Research" section of this database contains search features that allow the researcher to locate the full text of cases by citation, party name (plaintiff or defendant), and keyword.  This section has subsections for "Federal Case Law," "State Case Law," and "Area of Law by Topic."

Sometimes the researcher may have a particular case in mind but does not have a complete citation to the case.  However, if the researcher at least knows the name of the plaintiff or defendant in the case, he or she can use this information to locate it.  The following sources have volumes with tables of cases in alphabetical order:

 Modern Federal Practice Digest (Ref KF128.M64). Lists cases from 1939-1961.

 Federal Practice Digest 2d (Ref KF127.W4). Lists cases from 1961-1975. 

Federal Practice Digest 3d (Ref KF127.W3). Lists cases from 1975-1997.

 Federal Practice Digest 4^th (Ref KF127.W43). Lists cases from 1997 to the present.

 United States Supreme Court Lawyers' Edition 2d Desk Book (Ref KF101.U5 Desk Book 1978).  Lists all the cases in the L.Ed. or L. Ed. 2d sets.

 ALR Quick Index (Ref KF132.A543). Lists all the cases covered in the ALR series.

 United States Law Week (Ref KF175.U5).  Covers only the Supreme Court Table of Cases.

 Mississippi Digest (Ref KFM6647.1. M5). Covers only the Supreme Court of Mississippi cases.

Many of the case reporters previously discussed come from the West Publishing Company.  West offers an entire set of state, regional and federal reporters, which together make up the National Reporter System.  Each of the cases in these reporters contains headnotes, which are summaries of the points of law decided in a case.  These appear before the text of the case, in numerical order; when reading the actual case, the researcher can locate the number that corresponds to the headnote discussing his or her legal issue of interest (these appear in brackets before the numerous paragraphs in the text of the case). 

 Each headnote contains not only a headnote number, but also a broad legal topic and a key number, which corresponds to a narrow subtopic.  The editors at West assign each published case, in every jurisdiction, with a topic and key number.  The idea is that all the cases that deal with a specific legal issue, for every jurisdiction, will have the same topic and key number.

 The headnotes for all the cases in a particular jurisdiction are compiled in a book known as a digest.  Each West digest covers a different jurisdiction or geographical region, and corresponds with the West case reporter that covers that jurisdiction or region; for example, West's Southern Digest accompanies its Southern Reporter.  Once the researcher has read the case in the West reporter and identified relevant topics and key numbers in the headnotes, he or she can look these up in the appropriate digest for his or her jurisdiction.  Then, the researcher can look up these same topics and key numbers in the digests for other jurisdictions, which will allow the researcher to find every case published by West that deals with a specific legal issue.

 If the researcher does not have a citation to a relevant case or does not know the precise topic and subtopic that would apply, he or she can use the digest to find cases that might be relevant.  In the digest, each topic begins with an outline that shows the subtopics that go with its key numbers.  So, if the researcher knows a general topic of case law, he or she can look at the topical outline in the digest to find subtopics of interest. 

 Another strategy the research can use to find cases on a particular topic and subtopic is to look in the Descriptive Word Index that comes with the digest.  This index lists all the topics and subtopics (key numbers) in the digest.  The researcher can look up terms that describe his or her legal issue and find the topics and key numbers that apply.  Then the researcher can move to the digest and look up these topics and key numbers to find cases of use.

 Each digest also contains a volume entitled Words and Phrases.  This is a collection of headnotes that define a specific legal term, or term of art.  The researcher can check here to find his or her term of art, and find topics and key numbers for cases that interpret this term.

 One other feature of West digests is a Table of Cases volume, which lists every case covered by a particular digest, or every case in the reporter that goes with that digest.  The cases are listed by name, and each entry contains citations for the case, as well as its corresponding topics and key numbers.

 Like many other case law research tools, the digests contain pocket parts that update their content; these appear at the back of every digest volume, and at the end of the set.  The researcher should check every pocket part available, as they may contain references to later cases that affect the original one.