Legal Research for Beginners

In both court systems there are certain important documents which are produced that you may be asked to help patrons locate.  THE most important of these are opinions.

Opinions

• Judges in US courts of appeals (intermediate appellate courts) and courts of last resort (Supreme courts) make a decision on a case based on their interpretation of the current statutes (legislation – remember previous section), constitutions, regulations, earlier precedential cases, etc. One of the judges writes a majority opinion stating the court’s “holding” or reason for the decision. If a judge disagrees with the decision they may write a dissenting opinion.

• Nearly all decisions from courts of last resort (Supreme Courts) are published in print and online as well as some intermediate appellate court decisions.

• These published decisions on issues of law become case law or common law.

Stare Decisis - Let the decision stand

• The decision, if published, sets a (binding) precedent. All courts within that jurisdiction must abide by that decision. The higher the court, the more precedential value the decision has as all lower courts must follow that as “mandatory authority”.

• Stare decisis—a Latin phrase meaning "let the decision stand"—is the principle by which judges are bound to such past decisions, drawing on established judicial authority to formulate their positions.

• Decisions outside a court’s jurisdiction, eg. from another state, as well as unpublished decisions don’t hold precedential authority. However they can be cited as “persuasive authority”.

• The Holding – the guiding principle that led to the court’s decision. There may be more than one holding in an opinion/case decision.

Opinions/decisions are published in “reporters” both in print and online.

• Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct) – Westlaw – Supreme court decisions with editorial enhancements such as headnotes and summaries
  • West Key Number System - Case headnotes (summaries of cases written by editors) are assigned a classification number which points to a specific legal issue. There are nearly 400 subject areas or Key Numbers. Searching with these numbers may yield research results missed by keyword searching..
• United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers Edition (L.Ed.) – Lexis – Supreme court decisions with editorial enhancements such as headnotes and summaries
• HeinOnline – Comprehensive coverage of Supreme Court Opinions

Free Sources:

Here's a screenshot of some of the LOC's collection of Federal Supreme Court Opinions published in US Reports, (https://www.loc.gov/collections/united-states-reports/about-this-collection/united-states-reports-by-volume/) and you can browse through by volume to locate the opinion you're looking for.

The opinion provided is a very well-known case: 

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)

Dred Scott v. Sandford which was a case in 1857 involving a slave named Dred Scott who sued for his freedom, stating that because of his residence in a free state that made him a free man.  The court decided 7-2 that he lost and that he was not free and actually the case law then became that "a negro whose ancestors were imported and sold as slaves could not be an American citizen." This was largely considered one of the worst ever Supreme Court decisions in history, it was then overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution which abolished slavery.

The case can be located by looking in volume 60 of the US Reports and going to page 393 as you see in the citation.  And you'll see here, what we get when we look up the case is just that - the case, no other information about it.

Case Opinions with Editorial Enhancements

Now if we looked up that same case on one of the major legal research platforms such as Westlaw Edge we see the power of the editorial enhancements and the built in citator service.

• First, we see the headnote at the beginning of the case which is the editorial summary of the case.
• Along the top menu we can click in to the negative treatment tab and see the 36 cases which negatively cited the case as well as nearly 8,000 citing references to the case.
• Now the citator service I mentioned earlier consists of those red flags that we see as soon as we get to the case as well as on the negative treatment page.  This alerts us to a problem with this case right away.  And right next to the flag we see the explanation that it was superceded or overturned in 1868 by a constitutional amendment.  
• And this is what you always want to be on the lookout for, you always want to be sure the law that you are citing, in this example a case law is still "good law" and that it hasn't been overturned or had negative treatment.  This is an extreme example but you definitely wouldn't want to go into court with just that pdf of the case believing that was still the law that was in place.

For state opinions, these can be a little tougher to track down.  But there is a national reporter system that prints all state opinions in regional reporters such as the Northwestern regional reporter covering multiple states such as Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and about 4 or 5 others.  And then for very populous states such as California and New York, those states may have their own reporters.

You can find state opinions online via the state court system websites and these can be found in the us courts guide to courts by state linked here, as well as on any of these other services such as Westlaw and Lexis.

• vLex formerly Fastcase Comprehensive coverage back to 1789, Federal and state cases and opinions.
• Casetext - Coverage of opinions back to 1924.
• National reporter system - regional reporters with decisions for all 50 states, state reporters for populous states
• Westlaw & Lexis – comprehensive coverage for federal & state court decisions
• Bloomberg Law – nearly comprehensive coverage federal and state case law.
• State court system websites
  • US Courts: Links to all federal courts by state https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/federal-courts-public/court-website-links

Dockets

• These documents are a log or a complete record of a case and consist of the documents filed such as the complaint, motions, briefs, final opinion, information about the parties, information about the attorneys, etc.
• Sources:
  • PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) Official federal dockets from U.S. District Courts, U.S. Court of Appeals, Bankruptcy Courts, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, U.S. Court of International Trade and Judicial Panel On Multidistrict Litigation. https://pacer.uscourts.gov
  • Supreme Court of the United States - Docket Search - Information about cases, both pending and decided, that have been filed at the Court. https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docket.aspx
  • State court system websites

Records & Briefs

• Briefs are the arguments written by attorneys for the parties in an appellate case.
• Records are the documents from the previous court proceedings which support the briefs and are included as an appendix to them.
• Supreme Court briefs - https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docket.aspx
• State Appellate Court briefs – on state websites and also in microfilm format
• PACER - https://pacer.uscourts.gov
• LLMC-Digital - https://llmc.com/
• Docketbird (free to non-profits) https://www.docketbird.com/
• Docket alarm (free) https://www.docketalarm.com