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Introduction to Case law Research

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The Basics | Reporters | Citations | Digests | Other Resources

Introduction:

THE BASICS

What is Case Law?
Case law is the law from the written decisions of courts as they apply and interpret constitutions, statutes, rules, regulations, and other court decisions. The United States of America follows a common law system, which is one in which the decisions of courts and the rules those decisions set forth are considered to be a source of law themselves in much the same way that statutes (laws passed by legislatures) are.

Why is Case Law important?
Case law is important because knowing how cases have been decided in the past helps researchers to know how similar cases will be decided in the future. In fact, lower courts must follow the decisions of higher courts within the same jurisdiction when deciding cases with sufficiently similar details. Such decisions by higher courts become what is called binding precedent for lower courts within the same jurisdiction. Correctly identifying the proper jurisdiction is crucial for case law research. For example, trial courts in Illinois must follow the decisions made by the Illinois Supreme Court when deciding essentially similar cases, but trial courts in Indiana are not bound by the decisions of the Illinois Supreme Court! Because the value of a published case rests largely upon whether or not it creates binding precedent for other cases in the future, the opinions of trial courts are often not published.

A good legal researcher tries to identify cases with facts and situations similar to his or her own case. If courts have previously decided similar cases in ways that you would want your own case decided, you must make arguments that the details of your case are sufficiently similar to those other cases that it ought to be decided the same way. On the other hand, if other, similar cases have been decided differently than you would like your case decided, it is important to identify those cases and persuade the court that the details of your case is sufficiently different from those other cases that it should be decided differently.

Terminology
The terms “case,” “opinion,” and “decision” are often used interchangeably to refer to the written document that contains the decision of the court and the reasoning behind that decision. Because a single dispute may result in several individual decisions (due to re-hearings, appeals, etc.) the entire dispute is sometimes called the case, and the individual documents created along the way called decisions or opinions (e.g., “The decision of the appellate court overturned the decision of the trial court in the Jones case.”). Appellate cases, unlike trial cases, are almost always decided by more than one judge. The judges may disagree about what the decision should be or about the reasoning behind it and write separate opinions for a single case. When that happens, the decision and reasoning of the majority (or plurality, if there is no majority) of the judges is binding. Other opinions may be concurring (if they agree with the binding decision) or dissenting (if they disagree). Cases involving multiple issues where judges write multiple opinions can be very confusing and must be read carefully to determine what the binding ruling of the court was for each issue. Even majority opinions may contain information that is not essential to the decision of the case at hand or the reasoning behind it. Such information, called dicta, is not binding precedent!

Headnotes
A headnote is an editorial enhancement to a case that is not part of the official judicial opinion but which has been added to help researchers isolate and locate particular points of law and where they are discussed within a case.

Annotations
An annotation is an editorial enhancement to a case that is not part of the official judicial opinion but which has been added to help researchers locate related documents (other cases, statutes, regulations, law review articles, etc.)

Published v. Unpublished Cases
You may encounter something called “unpublished” cases in your case law research. The term is, of course, not quite accurate; these cases are published, or you would not be coming across them! An “unpublished” case is designated as such by the court that produced the opinion. Since most court cases are a matter of public record, nothing stops private publishers from publishing these “unpublished” cases. The utility of unpublished cases is controversial. Some think that they can be used to gain insight into how a court will determine other cases despite their unpublished status. Others think they are not worth examining because they do not establish binding precedent in the way that published cases do. Researchers should be cautious about relying on unpublished cases, because many courts do not allow them to be cited in briefs and other official documents or relied upon in making an argument. Always check the rules of a court to see how it handles unpublished cases before relying on them!

REPORTERS:

West's National Reporter System
Cases are published in series of books called reporters (sometimes also called reports) because they report the decisions of the courts. The most popular reporters are those published by the West company as part of its National Reporter System. Each reporter may contain the decisions of a single court, of the courts in a single jurisdiction, or of multiple courts or courts from multiple jurisdictions. Still other reporters cover specialized areas of law like tax or bankruptcy. All federal and regional reporters are located on the law library’s main floor. Federal reporters are at the far west end of the reading room opposite the law library’s entrance. Regional reporters are to the north of the reading room. The table below lists the various reporters and the cases they include:

National Reporter System: Commonly Used Case Reporters
Reporter:	Abbreviation(s):	Covers Years: †	Contains Cases From:
Supreme Court Reporter	S. Ct.	1882-present	U.S. Supreme Court
Federal Reporter	F. F. 2d F. 3d	1880-1925 1925-1993 1993-present	U.S. Courts of Appeal
Federal Supplement	F. Supp. F. Supp. 2d	1932-1998 1998-present	U.S. District Courts
Regional Reporters *
Atlantic Reporter	A. A. 2d	1886-1939 1939-present	Conn., Del., D.C., Me., Md., N.H., N.J., Penn., R.I., Vt.
North Eastern Reporter	N.E. N.E. 2d	1885-1936 1936-present	Ill., Ind., Mass., N.Y., Ohio
North Western Reporter	N.W. N.W. 2d	1879-1942 1942-present	Iowa, Mich., Minn., Neb., N.D., S.D., Wis.
Pacific Reporter	P. P. 2d. P. 3d	1884-1931 1931-2000 2000-present	Alaska, Ariz., Cal., Colo., Haw., Idaho, Kan., Mont., Nev., N.M., Okla., Or., Utah, Wash., Wyo.
South Eastern Reporter	S.E. S.E. 2d	1886-1939 1939-present	Ga., N.C., S.C., Va., W. Va.
Southern Reporter	So. So. 2d	1887-1941 1941-present	Ala., Fla., La., Miss.
South Western Reporter	S.W. S.W. 2d S.W. 3d	1886-1941 1941-1999 1999-present	Ark., Ky., Mo., Tenn., Tex.
Specialty Reporters (e.g., Bankruptcy Reporter, Military Justice Reporter)	Varies	Varies	Varies; these contain decisions in specialized areas of law such as bankruptcy, tax, etc.
The regional reporters contain opinions by all appellate state courts in the states indicated; they do not contain opinions by federal courts or opinions by trial-level state courts. Because the National Reporter System was developed in the late 1800s, the names of the regional reporters can sometimes seem goofy to us today. For instance, the Pacific Reporter contains opinions from the courts in everyone’s favorite “Pacific” state, Oklahoma, and the Northwestern Reporter does not include cases from Idaho and Oregon, but does include those from Michigan. Don’t let the names of the reporters confuse you! †Years covered are approximations.*

Notice that some reporters have multiple abbreviations listed (for example, the Atlantic Reporter is listed as “A.” and “A.2d”). These abbreviations are used for different series. There are many millions of cases in print, and more being published all the time, so when the number of volumes in a reporter becomes very high, the publishers begin a new series and start numbering volumes from “1” again. When copying a citation or using one to locate a case, be sure to note the series of the reporter where applicable. The series of each reporter are shelved together, so that the first volume of “A.2d” comes right after the last volume of “A.”

The cases in reporters appear in roughly chronological order. Thus, while all of the cases appearing in volume 3 of the Pacific Reporter will have been decided before any of the cases published in volume 12, you should not assume the cases in volume three were published in the order in which they appear in that volume. Always check the date of decision which appears near the beginning of the case to verify when it was decided.

Other Reporters
There are other reporters besides those in West's National Reporter System. For instance, decisions of the United States Supreme Court are published in both the United States Reports (U.S.) and the Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer’s Edition (L. Ed.), in addition to West's Supreme Court Reporter. There are also reporters (often more than one) for each individual state. Some of these other reporters are published by private companies (just as West publishes the national reporter system) and others are published by the state and federal governments. In situations where cases appear in more than one reporter, court rules will specifiy what reporter to cite when preparing documents to be filed in that court.

CITATIONS

Standard legal citation follows the rules of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18th ed., 2005), available at KF246.U53X in the reserve area. The basic citation to a case contains the following elements:

The name of the case (usually two parties separated by a “v” for “versus.”
The volume number of the reporter in which the case can be found.
The abbreviated title of the reporter in which the case can be found.
The page number at which the case begins within its paarticular volume.
The abbreviation of the court that decided the case.
The year the case was decided.

citation sample

The Basic Elements of a Case Citation
If you know the volume number, reporter, and page number for a case you can simply go to the reporter on the shelves and turn right to the case, or enter that information into an electronic databaase to retrieve the case. In the example above, the case begins at page 181 of volume 864 of the Southern Reporter, Second Series; the case was decided by the Louisiana Supreme Court in 2004. If you know one or more of the names of the parties to a case, or have some idea of what the case was about, you can use a digest to find it.

DIGESTS

Digests are essentially extended indexes to reporters. They are only finding tools and should NEVER be cited or quoted in court documents. Any material you find in a digest should ALWAYS be verified by checking the actual text of the relevant case Please ask a reference librarian if you need help finding or using a digest.

Digests contain extremely brief summaries of points of law from cases, along with the citations to those cases so that you can locate them in a reporter. These summaries are assigned to one of about 200 broad legal topics (e.g., criminal law, securities regulation, trademarks, etc.). These topics are further divided into subdivisions which are assigned key numbers. Using the digest’s descriptive word index, you can locate a relevant topic and key number for your research.

For instance, if you are interested in a person’s duty to report suspected child abuse, and you looked up the term “child abuse” in the descriptive word index of a digest for your jurisdiction, you would find that relevant cases are classified under the topic “Infants” at key number 13.5 (“Duty to report Child Abuse”). To read summaries of cases dealing with this issue, you would then turn to the subject volume containing the topic “Infants” and look under that topic at key number 13.5. You could then use the citations provided with those summaries to locate specific cases from reporters. The headnotes to a case will allow you to pinpoint where within that case the particular topic is discussed by the court. Following the example above, if the topic and key number “Infants 13.5” appeared at headnote 5 of a case, you could turn to the text of the opinion where headnote number 5 appears (the number will be in bold type and brackets) to see what the court said about the duty to report child abuse.

The case summaries are arrranged first by jurisdiction, with federal cases coming before state cases, and higher courts coming before lower courts. Within the jurisdictions, the summaries are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent cases being listed first.

Digests also include a table of cases volume to help you locate a case if you know the parties’ names but not the citation. Some digests also include a list of words and phrases you can consult to see how courts have defined and interpreted certain terms and a defendant-plaintiff table to help you locate cases for which you know only the defendant’s name (you can usually locate a case using the table of cases even if you know only the plaintiff’s name).

Just as there are multiple reporters containing cases from various jurisdictions, there are multiple digests that index the cases from those various jurisdictions. In addition to the federal and regional digests, most states have their own digests, with the following exceptions:

The Virginia Digest indexes cases from both Virginia and West Virginia; there is no separate digest for West Virginia.
There are no separate digests for South Dakota or North Dakota; the Dakota Digest indexes cases from both states.
There are no digests for Delaware, Nevada, or Utah.

The law library collects digests only for select states; use the appropriate regional digest to find state cases from other states. The table below lists the digests in the law library’s collection and the jurisdictions from which they index cases:

Digests in Our Collection:
Digest:	Years Covered:	Digests Cases From:
Federal Digests	1754-1939	All Federal Courts
Federal Practice Digest	1939-1961
Modern Federal Practice Digest	1961-1975
Federal Practive Digest, 2d	1975-1985
Federal Practice Digest, 3d	1985-present
Federal Practice Diges, 4th	1754-present	U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court Digest
Regional Digests *
Atlantic Digest, 2d	1930-present	Conn., Del., D.C., Me., Md., N.H., N.J., Penn., R.I., Vt.
North Western Digest ‡ North Western Digest, 2d	1836-1932 1932-present	Iowa, Mich., Minn., Neb., N.D., S.D., Wis.
Pacific Digest Pacific Digest, 2d	1931-1940 1941-present	Alaska, Ariz., Cal., Colo., Haw., Idaho, Kan., Mont., Nev., N.M., Okla., Or., Utah, Wash., Wyo.
South Eastern Digest South Eastern Digest, 2d	1729-1935 1935-present	Ga., N.C., S.C., Va., W. Va.
State Digests
Arkansas Digest	1820-present	State digests index cases from the courts in the corresponding state as well as federal cases that originated in that state. For example, the Illinois Digest indexes state cases from the Illinois Supreme Court and the Illinois appellate courts, as well as federal cases that originated in one of the federal district courts in Illinois.
Florida Digest, 2d	1935-present
Illinois Digest Illinois Digest, 2d †	1818-1938 1938-present
Indiana Digest, 2d	1817-present
Kentucky Digest Kentucky Digest, 2d	1785-1930 1930-present
Massachusetts Digest Massachusetts Digest, 2d	1761-1933 1933-present
Missouri Digest Missouri Digest, 2d	1821-1930 1930-present
New Mexico Digest	1852-present
Ohio Digest	1803-present
Texas Digest Texas Digest, 2d	1840-present 1935-present
There are no regional digests for the regions covered by the North Eastern, Southern, or South Western Reporters. The General Digest and Decennial Digests, which comprehensively collect the material from all other digests, are no longer collected by the law library. † The Illinois digests are shelved in the Illinois materials’ alcove near the reference area; all other state digests are shelved with the materials for their respective states on the library’s second floor. ‡Also sometimes called the Wisconsin and North Western Digest*

OTHER RESOURCES

In addition to the reporters and digests, there are many other ways to locate cases.

Free Online Resources

FindLaw: http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/
Includes state and federal cases but coverage is limited (e.g., it has U.S. Supreme Court cases back to 1893, but other federal and state court cases only back to around 1995).

Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute:

Federal Cases:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/federal/opinions.html#appeals

State Cases:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/opinions.html#state

Coverage back to the mid or late 1990s for most jurisdictions.

LexisONE: http://www.lexisone.com/
Select “Find Cases for Free” from the home page; although free, this site requires users to register. Includes all U.S. Supreme Court cases; coverage is limited to the past five years for all other jurisdictions. Does not include cases from federal district courts and certain specialty and lower state courts.

LoisLaw: http://www.loislaw.com/
Although primarily fee-based, this is a relatively affordable service, and it is included here because it is available for free to law students, and anyone can register for a free trial account. These accounts are limited to primary materials (including cases) and do not include access to LoisLaw’s secondary materials. LoisLaw includes published state and federal cases from the early 1900s to the present.

Individual Courts’ Websites:
Many courts now have their own web sites , which often include the case law of that court. These can be found using the National Center for State Courts’ directory at http://www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/info_court_web_sites.html, or you may use a search engine to see if courts from the jurisdiction(s) you are interested in publish their opinions online. For state courts, the generic address “www.xx.gov” usually retrieves the state government’s web site (where “xx” is the state’s postal abbreviation, e.g. www.il.gov for Illinois’ website). From there, you can look for links to the judiciary or courts to see what cases may be available online. Be aware that the quality of courts’ web sites can vary widely. In some cases it may be difficult to search for or retrieve cases, and often only relatively recent cases are available.

Fee-Based Online Resources
Note: These resources provide value-added information to the text of cases that may or may not be particularly useful to persons without legal training; this added information is reflected in the costs of the resources. For this reason, we strongly encourage you to contact the law library or visit us in person before using one of these services. Not only can we give you access to much of the same information at no charge, we can also help you to understand how to use it effectively and efficiently!

VersusLaw: http://www.versuslaw.com
An affordable option with relatively good coverage of basic case law. Includes searchable databases of published cases from all federal and state courts (as well as some tribal and foreign courts). Prices start at $13.95 per month.

Lexis: http://web.lexis.com/xchange/ccsubs/cc_prods.asp
This link takes you to the portal to use Lexis if you do not have an account. It requires a credit card. As of 22 March 2006 it costs $9.00 to retrieve a case. Includes state and federal opinions, including many unpublished opinions for nearly comprehensive dates. Also includes editorial enhancements like headnotes and annotations (these are not included in LexisONE).

Westlaw: http://creditcard.westlaw.com/welcome/frameless/default.wl
This link takes you to the portal to use Westlaw if you do not have an account. It requires a credit card. As of 22 March 2006 it costs $15.00 to retrieve a case. Includes state and federal opinions, including many unpublished opinions for nearly comprehensive dates. Also includes editorial enhancements like headnotes and annotations.

updated 4/06