Principles of Legal Research
Authors:
Olson, Kent C. / Kirschenfeld, Aaron S. / Mattson, Ingrid
Edition:
3rd
Copyright Date:
2020
32 chapters
have results for Principles of Legal Research
Preface 10 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The first edition of
- Principles of Legal Research
- This work is a guide for all legal researchers. It covers many more resources than a beginning law student needs but fewer than experienced legal researchers encounter in their careers. It teaches the principles of how legal institutions like legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts create legal information, and how that information is arranged by publishers into the resources a researcher must learn how to use. It is also a work that one can reference to refresh one’s memory of how less-familiar resources function. Thus, the material is suitable for use in a legal research course, in practice, and at many points in between.
- Legal research, like most areas at the intersection of law and technology, is in a state of flux. Lexis and Westlaw remain the preeminent platforms for legal research, but new publishers and products arrive on the scene regularly. Some become lasting research tools, others are acquired and integrated into existing platforms, and the rest fold or fade into obscurity. To the extent possible, we’ve included a wide range of these other online resources. Time will tell which ones remain for inclusion in future editions of this book.
- The book begins with an introduction to legal sources and to managing legal research problems. Secondary sources, often the easiest place to begin research, are discussed next, but to understand them you need to know something about the primary sources they analyze. The organization of primary sources is based on the treatment of the three branches of government identified in the Constitution. Following discussion of constitutional law, the legislature (Article I) is treated first, followed by the executive branch (Article II) and then the judiciary (Article III). Chapters on specialized materials for litigation and transactional practice follow, emphasizing the importance of understanding these valuable tools.
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Chapter 5. Statutory Research 212 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The role of statutory law in legal research is often underemphasized, in part because of the focus on appellate decisions in American legal education and the complexities of case research. In practice, however, statutes are central to most legal issues, and you should usually ascertain whether there is a governing statute before searching for judicial precedents. Indeed, the vast majority of appellate decisions today involve the application or interpretation of statutes rather than the consideration of purely common law principles.
- Statutory law plays a pivotal role in the legal system and in legal research. Most court decisions involve the application or interpretation of statutes, and the scope of judicial authority and jurisdiction is largely determined by legislative enactments. Administrative regulations, court rules, and local laws are all based on statutory delegations of power created by statute. All legal research must therefore include the question: Is there a statute on point?
- However, there are variations in statutory publication and research from state to state, and an online or print state legal research guide can provide valuable guidance in using a particular jurisdiction’s code and session laws. These resources are particularly helpful for understanding sources for historical research in state statutes.
- In some ways statutory research is easier than case research because the major resources are more accessible and more regularly updated. In many situations an annotated code provides most of the necessary research leads. This convenience is undercut, however, by the ambiguity of statutory language. One of the major approaches to interpretation of ambiguous statutes is the study of legislative documents created during the drafting of the statutory text. This research in legislative history is the focus of the next chapter.
- evidence of the law, rebuttable by reference to the However, beginning in 1947 Congress has revised individual titles of the code and reenacted them into positive law. More than half of the titles have been reenacted so far, and are now legal evidence; for the rest the remains legal evidence and the Major code titles enacted as positive law include Title 11, Bankruptcy; Title 18, Crimes and Criminal Procedure; and Title 28, Judiciary and Judicial Procedure. For the purposes of conducting legal research, however, there is no difference in how you locate relevant statutory sections in a positive law or non-positive law title.
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Introduction. Context and Framework 29 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The major legal information vendors offer simple search boxes that make research appear easy and suggest everything you need is online in one place: their platform. Artificial-intelligence-powered search algorithms deliver predictive suggestions to expedite your research. These technological developments may direct you to resources you had not considered and may provide powerful new ways to understand information. Still, if you lack foundational knowledge of the U.S. legal system, the documents produced in the law-making process, and basic principles of organization for legal information, at best these tools will give you starting points to help you begin your research. At worst, they will give you the false sense that you have gathered everything you need to completely and accurately resolve a legal problem.
- Finding relevant information is only the first step towards competent representation. Analyzing that information, understanding its significance, and applying it to a new situation are essential components of the research process.Legal research works hand-in-hand with the legal analysis skills learned in doctrinal law school classes like Torts and Constitutional Law. These classes teach you to evaluate factual situations and to determine the relevant fields of legal doctrine. Legal research skills give you the ability to identify the specific rules that apply to a particular situation.
- “ ‘Legal research’ is not merely a search for information; it is primarily a struggle for understanding. The need to think deeply about the information discovered is what makes legal research the task of a professional lawyer.”
- Several aspects of the American legal system shape the process of legal research:
- On the various meanings of “the common law,” see
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Chapter 12. Case Research 135 results (showing 5 best matches)
- in print is available in the first edition of
- Although online research has become the primary case-finding method for most researchers, the digest, a tool that reprints in a subject arrangement the headnote summaries of each case’s points of law, continues to be a valuable resource for finding cases by topic. A digest functions in a manner similar to an index; instead of simple one-line entries, however, it consists of paragraphs describing the legal principles decided in cases, with citations to the full text of the cases.
- Legal research platforms are complex, yet they are designed to feel simple, safe, and effective for finding just the answers to your legal research questions. However, the same natural language search across different research platforms can produce very different results. The algorithmic tools designed to help you avoid the pitfalls of a poor keyword search are also subject to producing widely varying results lists of “relevant” cases.
- Chapter 1 provided a brief overview of basic online research techniques. This section begins with a more in-depth analysis of searching on legal platforms, focusing more specifically on effective case research. It discusses Westlaw and Lexis in detail, because those platforms add important editorial features such as synopses and headnotes that can guide you to the most relevant cases more quickly than general keyword searches. It also addresses the nature of computer-assisted legal research and the impact of algorithms on the case research process. For researchers without access to Westlaw and Lexis, other subscription and free platforms that cover a great deal of case law with a range of search capabilities are also described.
- Second, while it is not possible to audit a legal research platform’s coverage of cases, it is possible to recognize that different platforms contain slightly different sets of cases. For this reason and the others discussed in this section, using multiple platforms to conduct a range of searches is your best bet for ensuring complete, accurate case law research.
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Title Page 4 results
- Principles of Legal Research
- Senior Research Librarian and Assistant Professor, General Faculty University of Virginia School of Law
- Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and University of North Carolina School of Law
- Interim Director of the Law Library and Lecturer in Law Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
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Chapter 1. Research Methods and Process 119 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Legal research is not simply gathering information, but being able to analyze that information and grasp its significance. Applying rules of law to a specific set of facts, the process of legal research and analysis, requires determining the scope and meaning of various rules and how they pertain to a given situation. It is a process that requires a significant commitment of time and focus.
- Legal research databases contain millions of documents. Your research projects will require you to cull the most relevant documents from those millions, a professional skill that often requires more than simple internet-type searches for keywords or phrases. Most legal research platforms permit much more powerful and focused searches, allowing the use of features such as synonyms, truncation, proximity connectors, and field restrictions for searching specific parts of documents. If you use these search techniques combined with knowledge of a subject area developed using a secondary source, rather than just relying on a legal research company’s algorithms and relevancy rankings, you can be confident that you have identified the most relevant documents for your research.
- Resources in disciplines other than law are also essential in legal research. In the 1800s and early 1900s, American judicial opinions typically cited only legal authorities in support of their conclusions. Many modern judicial opinions, however, articulate quite clearly the social, economic, political, and even psychological consequences with which they are concerned. Law has become an interdisciplinary study, and research in materials considered “nonlegal” is an inherent part of legal research.
- This text examines legal research generally, but researchers should be aware that specialized areas of law have many idiosyncrasies. Numerous guides to these topics are available. Many law libraries have research guides to specialized areas on their websites, so a first approach may be to run a general search such as “environmental law research guide.” More than 580,000 publicly available research guides across the library community can be searched at the LibGuides Community website ( ). Guides have also been published in legal bibliography journals such as
- A research project generally involves answering a specific question by applying a general legal principle to a set of facts. It often requires two distinct steps: (1) coming up to speed in the law governing a situation, and (2) searching for the specific rules that apply. These are different tasks and require different approaches. It has been estimated that it takes eighty percent of a researcher’s time to learn about an unfamiliar area, and just twenty percent to provide a specific answer.
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Chapter 15. Transactional Law Research 103 results (showing 5 best matches)
- For more comprehensive coverage of legal research resources and methods in banking and finance law, see Penny Hazelton, “Banking Law,” chapter 10 in
- For more comprehensive coverage of legal research resources and methods in copyright law, see William H. Manz, “Copyright Law,” chapter 4, and for patent and trademark, see Harold
- To this point, we have covered legal research materials without much reference to specific types of legal practice. But as the legal profession has moved toward greater specialization in recent decades, so too has legal information. A wealth of useful tools and resources are now available in many specialized practice areas. One area with a broad array of customized resources is transactional practice.
- This chapter covers several different aspects of the specialized online transactional research tools now available on the legal information market. It details the types of documents you can find on these platforms, the efficiencies in research and document drafting you can achieve with them, and how to use them to find digital versions of essential print sources in a variety of transactional law practice areas.
- Researching topics in transactional law often involves using a specialized online product or interface offered by one of the major legal information vendors. These platforms include primary law, treatises, research guides, practitioners’ tools, and news, and are organized by area or topic of transactional practice.
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Chapter 18. The Law of Other Countries 95 results (showing 5 best matches)
- ) is a free service with guides prepared by attorneys and librarians on researching the legal systems of more than 160 countries. These guides generally summarize the legal system, describe available documentation, and have extensive links to online resources. Published research guides, such as
- Part of the difficulty of doing legal research in a foreign legal system stems from differences in language. But even legal systems sharing the same language can have different meanings for the same terms. Legal dictionaries can help somewhat, although they usually provide only a superficial sense of the differences in meaning and usage.
- While thorough research on a foreign law issue can be undertaken only in original sources, print and online reference resources can provide a working knowledge of major legal issues. It is usually best to begin with an encyclopedia or treatise for a general introduction to a national legal system or a specific subject, and then to find translations or summaries of the primary sources. Foreign law research guides with descriptions and links for sources can help clarify the range of options.
- Several guides to the legal systems of specific countries are published in English. These generally explain legal institutions, summarize major doctrines, and provide leads to research resources. Examples of recently published titles include
- In theory, a code in the civil law tradition is designed to cover all legal situations that might occur. Instead of searching for precedents in factually similar judicial decisions, a civil law researcher looks to the abstract provisions of the code for a logical and appropriate legal principle.
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Chapter 14. Practice Materials 86 results (showing 5 best matches)
- John K. Hanft, Legal Research in California
- Nevada Legal Research Guide
- Researching developments in heavily regulated areas of law using the resources discussed to this point can be cumbersome both because of the volume of information available and the frequency with which it is updated. It can require consulting secondary sources, statutes, regulations, agency websites, and judicial decisions. Legal publishers recognize the amount of effort that this multifaceted research can demand. Publishers also recognize that in legal practice, time is money, and that lawyers are willing to spend a good deal of money on products that make their research easier and less time-consuming. Topical services are publishers’ answer to this demand.
- For a much more thorough treatment of the issues and resources in this section, see
- Practice manuals can vary greatly between jurisdictions, and a state-specific research guide can provide valuable details and information on sources. Law library websites often have guidance on legal research issues in their home jurisdictions, so browsing these libraries’ websites may also yield useful insights. More in-depth guides are published in print for most states, and cover sources of primary law as well as specialized secondary sources like practice manuals. A series of research guides by Carolina Academic Press now covers more than thirty states. Hein publishes guides for several states, and others are published by state continuing legal education entities.
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Chapter 17. International Law 148 results (showing 5 best matches)
- International and Foreign Legal Research: A Coursebook
- Modern legal practice often requires knowledge of international and foreign law. Lawyers representing an American firm investing in another country, for example, must be aware of treaties between the two nations as well as the investment and trade laws of both countries. This chapter focuses on international law, while research in the law of foreign countries is the subject of Chapter 18.
- The other three official EU institutions are the European Council, which oversees policy and major initiatives but cannot engage in law-making; the European Central Bank, which implements monetary and economic policies; and the Court of Auditors, which audits use of EU funds.
- are generally considered the two most important sources of international law. If a treaty is relevant to a problem involving its signatories, it is the primary legal authority. International custom is the actual conduct of nations, when it is consistent with the rule of law. Custom is not defined in specific legal sources but is established by evidence of state practices.
- International law has a wide range of print and electronic resources beyond those mentioned in this brief survey, and bibliographies and research guides can be invaluable sources of leads and research tips.
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Chapter 2. Encyclopedias, Restatements, and Texts 116 results (showing 5 best matches)
- There is nothing wrong with doing preliminary research with internet searches and free online resources such as Wikipedia ( ), as long as you recognize that these are only starting points for background information. Further research in legal resources will be necessary to find the more sophisticated detail and supporting documentation required for legal analysis.
- To be reliable for coverage of current legal issues, any publication, from treatise to self-help guide, must reflect changes in the law promptly and accurately. Some form of updating is usually essential to preserve a legal text’s research value. An outdated text may be of historical or intellectual interest, but it cannot be relied upon for analysis of current law.
- While primary sources of law such as legislative enactments and judicial decisions determine legal rights and govern procedures, codes and court reports can be notoriously difficult places to find answers. It is generally best to begin a research project by looking first for an overview and analysis written by a lawyer or legal scholar. This chapter and the next cover the major secondary source materials of American law—the encyclopedias, texts, and journal articles that provide background information and attempt to synthesize the mass of conflicting primary authorities into a coherent body of doctrine. Starting with secondary sources is a basic rule of successful legal research.
- Even basic legal texts can be daunting to someone new to legal research generally or to a particular area of law. For a start in understanding and analyzing an issue, it may be helpful to begin with resources written for a more general audience.
- For more information on legal history resources, see
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Chapter 3. Periodicals 76 results (showing 5 best matches)
- For research in legal history, the predecessor to the
- Legal periodicals appear in a wide range of forms, from scholarly law reviews to blogs covering the most recent breaking news, and they serve a variety of research functions. Some law review articles have analyses and insights that merit study even decades after publication. Bar journals tend to highlight current practice trends, and legal newspapers, newsletters, and blogs offer current awareness of new developments. All of these resources can serve as springboards to further research.
- Legal research also requires access to nonlegal periodicals. Scientific journal articles can provide information to underlie a tort claim. Contemporary coverage of business developments can be helpful in both litigation or transactional practice. Historical newspapers provide coverage of political and legal changes. These interdisciplinary and fact-finding resources can be just as valuable as the publications of lawyers and legal academics.
- Journals play a central role in legal analysis. They often offer more intense and focused treatment of specific issues than treatises, and they cover new developments more quickly. Their voluminous footnotes can lead to a wealth of primary sources and other research leads.
- by students. Articles and essays by established scholars are more influential, but the student contributions can also be very useful in research. Like articles, they usually begin with an introductory section providing a summary of the relevant legal doctrine and citing the key literature. This introduction can provide an excellent overview and a starting point for research. The entire text is usually accompanied by footnotes citing cases, statutes, books, articles, websites, and other sources. An author and a team of law student editors may have worked months to gather citations and verify their accuracy, giving you a good head start in your research.
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Chapter 9. State Administrative Law and Local Law 44 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Local governments create a variety of legal documents that can be important in legal research. A local government’s
- State administrative law is an area in which most research is done online. Law libraries within a state generally have print copies of its administrative code and register, but very few libraries have administrative law resources for other states. As with statutory research, you can do basic work with free government websites but more thorough information is often available from the major commercial legal research platforms.
- A text or treatise dedicated to a specific state can incorporate discussion of state administrative law issues in a way that more general works cannot. These state-specific works can be identified from library website guides or from state legal research guides.
- For historical research, however, sometimes print or microformat is your only option. A helpful state administrative law research guide can provide guidance on when this might be the case, including noting, for example, when a state’s regulations were codified and how you might track down versions produced by agencies before they were compiled in a code.
- and providing basic information about government agencies and officials. Some of these manuals describe state agency functions and publications, while others simply serve as government phone directories. The American Library Association’s Government Documents Round Table has a State Blue Books and Encyclopedias page ( ) that lists most of these resources and links to versions available online. The annual also lists directories and manuals for each state, as well as websites, statistical abstracts, and other reference sources. A thorough legal research guide for a specific state will discuss relevant resources and explain any idiosyncrasies of that state’s administrative law processes and publications.
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Chapter 6. Legislative Information 173 results (showing 5 best matches)
- A state guide to legislative research can also be invaluable. Most state legal research guides include discussion of available legislative history resources for their states, noting coverage dates for online resources and material available only in print. Law libraries in the jurisdiction you are researching, particularly the state legislative library, often have legislative history research guides on their websites. The Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s “State Legislative History Research Guides Inventory” ( ) has links to guides from all fifty states, and law reviews and bar journals frequently publish articles on state legislative history research. In addition to highlighting the various legislative materials available, these guides will often identify other, more comprehensive works on the topic for thornier research questions.
- Researchers are interested in Congress for numerous reasons, such as policy formation, voting patterns, and the influence of lobbyists on legislative behavior. This discussion, however, focuses on tools useful for two basic legal research tasks: investigating the meaning of enacted laws and tracking the status of pending legislation. A number of approaches can be used for these purposes. For recently enacted laws and pending legislation, a range of online resources provides current and thorough coverage. For older bills, the choices dwindle to a few tools that provide retrospective coverage.
- The third and most wide-ranging research arm of Congress is the Congressional Research Service, created in 1915 as the Legislative Drafting Bureau and Reference Division. Each year it produces several thousand new or updated reports, including legal and policy analyses, economic studies, bibliographies, statistical reviews, and issue briefs that provide background information on major legislative issues. These reports are written exclusively for members of Congress and their staff, and until recently, were not officially published online or otherwise distributed to the public. Since 2018, however, most recently published CRS reports are now readily available (
- Legal Reference Services Q.
- Committee prints are distributed by the Government Publishing Office, but they are not as widely available online as are reports or hearings. New committee prints are available on Congress.gov, and Govinfo and Bloomberg Law have a limited number of prints beginning in 1995. The most comprehensive source is the ProQuest Congressional Research Digital Collection, available as part of the ProQuest Congressional system. “Congressional Research” in the title means research performed for Congress, an apt description of the purpose of committee prints. This online collection includes tens of thousands of committee prints dating back to 1830, with PDF images of the original documents and search options including full text and indexed fields.
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Chapter 16. Factual Information 91 results (showing 5 best matches)
- While most directories are somewhat specialized, a few try to answer a wider range of inquiries.
- Detailed information about private companies, which do not sell stock to members of the general public, is harder to come by and often can be lacking in depth and currency because federal reporting requirements do not apply. Private companies can vary in form and size and include many large corporations such as Koch Industries and Mars, Inc. There are several dedicated online sources for conducting private company research, and the major legal research services have selective coverage as well.
- Publicly held corporations, which sell shares of stock to the general public on the open market, generate a wealth of accessible data. Profiles of public companies aggregate information about the company’s structure, leadership, and financials, and are readily available on all the major legal research platforms. These profiles are brief but can be an excellent starting place for researching public companies. Bloomberg Law may offer the easiest access to company profiles, because you can simply begin typing a company name into its search box and click on the appropriate link. Hoover’s Company Records and LexisNexis Corporate Affiliations, both on Lexis, are also good sources of in-depth records for many larger companies.
- Market research reports tend to focus more on the products and technologies that companies produce. BCC Research ( ) offers a database of reports on the state of markets in life sciences and chemistry, technology and manufacturing, and energy and the environment. The reports are compiled by professional research staff and contain detailed factual reporting and analysis.
- No matter what citation rules are followed, part of the puzzle is simply deciphering the abbreviations used so that you can identify sources. The online legal research platforms let you enter an unfamiliar citation in the search box, so understanding an abbreviation is not always necessary to obtain a document. This approach frequently works, but at times it may lead to a dead end. Cases and law review articles contain numerous abbreviations and citations that are cryptic even to experienced researchers.
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Chapter 10. Court Systems and Case Law 91 results (showing 5 best matches)
- For a survey of these early developments, see
- The next four chapters concentrate on the judicial branch. This chapter introduces judicial decisions and provides some historical background on case publication. Chapters 11 and 12 explain where to find these decisions and several of the major methods used for case law research. Chapter 13 discusses several other aspects of judicial and case information that are important resources in legal research, such as court rules and briefs.
- Legal Research via
- reports, that is, reports named for the person who recorded or edited them. The first volume of nominative reports was prepared by Edmund Plowden and published in 1571. It was followed by numerous series by dozens of jurists and lawyers, of varying accuracy and authority. The development of printed reports changed the nature of legal practice dramatically, from a reliance on general principles to an increasing use of case citations as authority.
- , usually available in PDF from the court’s website. Slip opinions are individually paginated documents containing the full text of the court’s decision, but they have two major drawbacks for research purposes. They rarely provide material that would facilitate research, such as a summary of the court’s decision, and because their page numbering is not final they are cited by docket number and date rather than to a permanent published source. 10-1 shows a slip opinion as issued by the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
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Resource Index 411 results (showing 5 best matches)
Chapter 4. Constitutional Law 94 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Prestatehood Legal Materials: A Fifty-State Research Guide
- (4th ed. 2006–date). The first volume of this set discusses issues such as freedom of expression and civil actions for the violation of state constitutional rights; the second covers search and seizure, the rights of defendants, and punishment issues. This treatise is available as an e-book but is not accessible through the major legal research platforms.
- For frequently cited constitutional provisions, the citators are most valuable if you narrow retrieval by searching within the citing documents for specific keywords. This allows you to narrow your research to very specific fact situations or legal issues mentioned in conjunction with a constitutional provision. “Search within results” only works, however, with 10,000 citing documents or fewer. For major constitutional provisions with tens of thousands of citing cases,
- Only a small part of constitutional law research relates to locating the relevant text. Most research problems focus on scholarly commentaries, judicial interpretations, and historical background. They involve research in case law and secondary sources, using resources and approaches to be discussed in later chapters. To a substantial extent, however, constitutional literature is a distinct research field with its own procedures and tools.
- The first step in constitutional research is often to find an overview or explanation of a doctrine; this is followed by more exhaustive case research applying a provision to specific facts, and in some instances by historical research into the background of the constitutional language. The following sections discuss sources for obtaining the text of the Constitution, interpreting its provisions, locating court decisions, and finding historical material on its framing and amendment.
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Chapter 13. Other Court Information 114 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Before diving into individual court websites, however, it can be worthwhile to explore what is available on the major legal research platforms. On Westlaw, dockets and documents can be found in the Filings tab for appellate decisions, and they are searchable in the Dockets, Briefs, and Trial Court Documents databases. Lexis’s CourtLink and Bloomberg’s Dockets Research Tool also include coverage of state dockets and documents. For an elusive case, it might be worthwhile to compare all three resources.
- contain background information on decided cases or pending lawsuits. A developing suite of tools lets you research how judges tend to rule when confronted with particular legal questions or proceedings, and directories provide practical assistance for anyone who needs to contact courts.
- For appellate cases, two types of documents are particularly informative for the purposes of legal research. Briefs are the written arguments by the attorneys for the parties on appeal, which contain citations to many relevant authorities. Records are documents from the lower court proceeding submitted as an appendix to the briefs, and which can include pleadings, motions, trial transcripts, and judgments. You can also learn a great deal about a case by reading oral argument transcripts, which are becoming easier to find for many jurisdictions.
- Nontraditional Legal Research: Appellate Briefs
- Federal court rules are also available from the online platforms and in a variety of pamphlets and reference publications. The major sets of rules, with Advisory Committee comments, are printed in the (available on Lexis) contain not only Advisory Committee notes but also headnotes of cases applying and interpreting the rules, as well as other research aids such as references to treatises, law review articles, and legal encyclopedias. These annotations can be quite thorough; the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, for example, occupy 21 volumes in 13-1 shows just a few of the annotations for Rule 6, as they appear on Westlaw.
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Chapter 11. Case Law Sources 163 results (showing 5 best matches)
- More detailed information can usually be found on state court system websites and in state legal research guides. The NCSC maintains a comprehensive listing of state judicial branch and court websites (
- Other online sources have extensive collections, if not quite as comprehensive. Subscription services such as Casemaker, Casetext, Fastcase, and VersusLaw all have more than sixty years of Court of Appeals and District Court decisions. This coverage may not be as useful for exhaustive historical research, but it is sufficient for almost any modern legal inquiry.
- The Role of Official Headnotes in Legal Research
- Older cases, particularly from the colonial period, can also be found in a variety of other sources. Many early court cases were preserved in manuscript collections but were never published as court reports, and some of these have been printed during the modern era in historical collections or journal articles.
- This chapter has focused on the court systems of the American governments and sources for their decisions, both in print and through a variety of electronic means. Using these sources to find case law relevant to a particular research problem is the topic of the next chapter.
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Chapter 8. Federal Agency Law 148 results (showing 5 best matches)
- When researching administrative law, it is important to determine what agency has jurisdiction and to develop a preliminary understanding of its structure and functions. In some situations the relevant agency is obvious, but in others it may require background analysis or a close reading of statutory and judicial sources to determine an agency’s role. It is then important to develop an understanding of the agency’s legal mandates, whether from specific statutes or from more general enabling legislation or executive action, to understand more fully the scope and purpose of the documents it produces.
- Federal agencies have methods of making law outside of the traditional notice-and-comment rulemaking, albeit to a somewhat less authoritative effect. These methods, such as the issuance of guidance documents and agency adjudications, may produce information that is widely applicable to industry, government, and the public generally. Thorough research on a legal issue involving a federal agency requires familiarity with the types of materials discussed in this section.
- Specialized Legal Research
- The LLSDC website also has an informative and regularly updated guide to regulatory research. Richard J. McKinney,
- Cabinet departments and independent agencies operate under similar legal principles and create law in similar ways. The main distinction between the forms of organization is the degree of insulation from direct presidential supervision. For an overview, see
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Subject Index 31 results (showing 5 best matches)
Table of Contents 56 results (showing 5 best matches)
Chapter 7. The Presidency 48 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Presidential use of executive orders and other directives has been the focus of several recent books, including
- Presidential statements upon signing legislation into law have been discussed in the preceding chapter. These often provide the President’s interpretation of ambiguous or disputed provisions. Their relevance in legislative history research is controversial, but they certainly provide guidance to executive agencies in how to carry out their duties under newly enacted legislation.
- A 2012 Congressional Research Service report estimated that at least 1,200 government positions require Senate approval.
- Two basic forms of executive fiat are used to perform presidential functions pursuant to statutory authority or inherent powers. are issued to government officials and cover a wide range of topics, and are general announcements of policy issued to the nation as a whole. The two types of documents have substantially the same legal effect.
- While official documents are the binding embodiments of legal action, increasingly presidents use other means to announce decisions to the public. President Trump used Twitter to announce major policy actions such as a ban of transgender persons from the military and a revocation of California’s power to regulate emission standards. presidential use of social media, or following news sources that report on such developments, is essential in maintaining current awareness of presidential action.
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Copyright Page 2 results
- The publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional advice, and this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.
- Printed in the United States of America
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Appendix. Selected Treatises and Services by Subject 164 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Law: Regulation of Research, Development, and Marketing
- Principles of Conflict of Laws
- Principles of Administrative Law
- Antitrust Law: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles and Their Application
- IP and Antitrust: An Analysis of Antitrust Principles Applied to Intellectual Property Law
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Acknowledgments 20 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Illustration 17-6 is reproduced with permission of the copyright holder, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
- Illustrations 4-4, 5-2, 5-5, 5-13, 10-4, 11-5, 11-6, 12-4, 12-5, 12-14, 15-3, and 16-4 are reproduced with the permission of LexisNexis. Any further reproduction in any form without permission of LexisNexis is prohibited.
- Illustrations 9-1 and 9-2 are reproduced with permission of the State of Montana.
- Illustration 14-3 is reprinted with permission of the Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator.
- Illustration 17-8 is used with permission of the International Court of Justice.
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West Academic Publishing’s Emeritus Advisory Board 14 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics & Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center
- Professor of Law Emeritus, University of San Diego Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Michigan
- Dean and Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. Chair of Public Interest Law University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law
- Professor of Law, Chancellor and Dean Emeritus University of California, Hastings College of the Law
- Professor of Law Emeritus, Pepperdine University Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary of Contents 8 results (showing 5 best matches)
Table of Cases 6 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Publication Date: August 24th, 2020
- ISBN: 9781640208056
- Subject: Legal Research
- Series: Concise Hornbook Series
- Type: Hornbook Treatises
- Description: Principles of Legal Research provides comprehensive yet concise coverage of research methods in both online and printed resources. It has been thoroughly updated to explain the latest features of the major legal research platforms as well as dozens of other free and subscription websites. In this expanded and reorganized edition, an introductory survey of research strategies is followed by discussion of major secondary sources, treatment of the sources of U.S. law created by each branch of government, chapters on specialized resources for litigation and transactional practice, and an overview of international and foreign law. Other new features include a deeper look at search algorithms and executive branch lawmaking. Sample illustrations are included throughout, and an appendix lists hundreds of major treatises and topical services by subject.
