Basics of legal research
When an attorney engages in legal research, he is
attempting to find an answer to a particular question that has arisen in his case. In
performing this research, he usually checks three different sources: (1) statutes (laws
passed by Congress or by a state legislature); (2) case law (court decisions); and (3)
regulations (rules issued by bureaucrats).
These three sources of "legal
authority" coincide with our three branches of government: (1) statutes (legislative
branch); (2) case law (judicial branch); and (3) regulations (executive branch).
Federal statutes
All public laws passed by Congress are
contained in a set of books called the United States Code (U.S.C. or sometimes U.S.C.A.).
For example, you might see a reference to 42 U.S.C. Section 1981. This is a reference to
Section 1981 of Title 42. So a person would find this statute by looking in the volume of
the United States Code which contains Title 42 and then finding Section 1981 of that
title.
While the statutes are very important in
understanding your rights and responsibilities, attorneys typically look to case law and
regulations in order to determine how the statutes apply to a particular situation.
For example, if an attorney reads a statute and
is unsure how to interpret the statute, then he looks to case law or to regulations for
assistance in interpreting the statute.
Federal case law
Our discussion of "case law"
tracks our discussion above of the federal court system. When a court issues a written
decision in a case, that decision will either become an unpublished or a published
opinion. A published opinion is a decision deemed significant enough to be published in
books so that the decision can be read and relied upon by other persons in the future.
Legal publishers organize these published
decisions into sets of books that they sell to attorneys and libraries. For example, West
Group puts out three different sets of books which contain all the published decisions
from the federal courts: (1) federal district court decisions are found in West's Federal
Supplement®; (2) federal court of appeals decisions are found
in West's Federal Reporter®; and United States Supreme Court
decisions are found in West's Supreme Court Reporter®.
