Shift #14 - Orientation to Legal Research: U.S. Case Law Webinar
Thursday, June 6, 2024 | 12-1 pm CST/1-2 pm EST (1 hr)
Details
Michelle Hurt, student/intern
Jennifer Gonzalez, practicum supervisor
This is a screenshot of a webinar hosted by the Legal Research Institute. It was a very in-depth presentation on legal research and finding sources.
I found this webinar to be a good introduction to legal research. It was quite fast-paced and introductory, so it definitely warrants the title of "orientation". Before we learned about how to find legal sources, we were given an overview of the federal court system structure in the United States. There are 94 U.S. District Courts that serve as trial courts, then there is the U.S. Court of Appeals which functions as the intermediate appellate court, and finally, the Supreme Court which is known as the Court of Last Resort. In trial courts, there is a judge and a jury which is different from the intermediate appellate court, where there is no jury. Based on 2023 data, the U.S. District Courts had 353,170 filings, the U.S. Court of Appeals had 40,681 filings, and the Supreme Court had 100-150 filings they accepted but only approximately 63 cases were argued. In the webinar, I also learned about the state court system structure, which is similar to the federal structure. In the state trial courts, most states will also have county and municipal courts for local ordinance issues and traffic violations. Interestingly enough, not every state has an intermediate appellate court like Delaware and New Hampshire. The court of last resort in the state structure is the State Supreme Court.
In addition, the webinar presenter talked about the importance of precedence and the different types of authorities/precedents. There is mandatory authority, which is precedent that must be followed in the current court, and persuasive authority where a precedent may be followed but not required. I also learned that a case opinion is the written "why" of a decision made in court. A case opinion is different from a ruling or a verdict. The case opinion, as I noted, is the "why" and the ruling or verdict is the "what". I didn't know that trial courts do not usually offer case opinions. Case opinions, whether federal or state, are published in volumes called reporters. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court publishes their case opinions in United States Reports, Supreme Court Reporter and Lawyers Edition. State case opinions are published in state law reporters and sometimes, regional reporters. There are also unpublished opinions, which we may run across in our legal research. Unpublished opinions cannot be used for mandatory authority/precedent but can still be accessed through online portals like Westlaw and Lexis. Lastly, we had a brief lesson on how cases are cited - a title includes the parties (the plaintiff and the defendant), the reporter volume number, the reporter abbreviation, the page number the case starts on and the court and date. We were also given online sources that we can use to start our research like courtlistener.com and caselaw.findlaw.com.
Comments
Post a Comment