New Student Orientation

Case Law refers to judicial opinions, the written decision of a judge deciding a lawsuit between two parties. Since much of the American legal system is dictated by the precedence of common law, researching case law is a critical component of legal research.

• Where is Case Law Found?
  • Where is case law found? Cases can be found either in print format, or online through various legal databases. In print, cases are found in reporters that print cases in sequential order. Reporters are arranged either by court such as Pennsylvania State Reports and United States Reports; by region such as the Atlantic Reporter, or by subject matter, such as Federal Rules Decisions or U.S. Tax Reporter. Opinions are also available electronically, either through subscription legal databases such as Bloomberg Law,  LexisNexis and Westlaw or on free websites such as FindLaw and Google Scholar.  Members of the Pennsylvania bar also have access to case law online through Casemaker. Often court websites will provide opinions online for free, including the The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Finding Cases
  • By citation: If you have a citation to a case, such as Morin v. Traveler’s Rest Hotel, Inc., 704 A2d 1085 (Pa. Super. 1997) you would find volume 704 of the Atlantic Reporter, Second Series, and turn to page 1085. For online databases, you would use the “find by citation” box, and type in the citation to retrieve the case.
  • By Party Name: If you only have the party name of a case, you can use the Table of Cases volume in a West Digest set, such as the West’s Atlantic Digest 2d, West’s Pennsylvania Digest 2d, or West’s Federal Practice Digest 4th. Legal encyclopedias and practice materials often have table of selective cases, including Pennsylvania Law Encyclopedia. Many online databases, including Bloomberg Law,  LexisNexis and Westlaw have a “find by party name” search box.
  • By Subject: If a citation or party name for a case is unknown, a researcher can use several methods to search for a helpful case. For searching in print, the best way is to use a Digest, a collection of volumes that organizes case law by subject. For an overview of the National Reporter System, and how to locate case by subject through the West Digest System, see the research guide, Legal Methods. For Pennsylvania cases, the Atlantic Digest, or West’s Pennsylvania Digest 2d could be used.

The Legislative branch of government creates laws in the form of statutes which are then signed into law by the head of the executive branch. There are local, state and federal statutes. Knowing which jurisdiction your issue falls under will determine which set of statutes you should consult.

• Court Opinions often interpret statutes or determine if they are constitutional and reasonable.
• Statutes are first published chronologically as session laws. They are then codified (put into the code) into sets called Codes which are usually arranged by subject.
  • In Pennsylvania, session laws are published in The Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has been working on codifying Pennsylvania statutes for several decades. In the meantime, practitioners use Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes, Annotated which is an unofficial version of the code. 
  • The Federal Statutes are first published in United States Statutes at Large as public and private laws and then codified and officially published in the United States Code (USC), also available online here. Since this version is not updated as frequently as the unofficial codes, researchers will usually conduct research using either West’s United States Code Annotated (USCA), which is also available online through Westlaw, or Lexis’s United States Code Service (USCS), which is also available online through Lexis. All three versions of the code contain the same text of the statutes but the annotated versions contain additional information in the form of annotations. The annotations will give references to cases brought under that section of code or references to secondary resources.

The Executive branch of the government creates laws in the form of Administrative rules and regulations. These regulations are put forth with statutory authority by the government agency in charge of that area of law (for example the Internal Revenue Code is promulgated by the Treasury Department.) As with legislation, administrative regulations are created at the both the state and federal level.

• When federal regulations are first proposed, amended or adopted they appear in the Federal Register which is published daily in chronological order.
• After appearing in the Federal Register, the regulation will be codified (put into the code) in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR.) The CFR is arranged by subject matter in a series of titles that mirror the arrangement of the statutes in the United States Code.
• State regulations go through a similar process.
  • In Pennsylvania, state regulations first appear in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, and then are codified into the Pennsylvania Code.

Secondary resources are often the best place to start legal research because they contain analysis and commentary on the law.  A secondary resource essentially "explains" an area of law.  Secondary resources will also contain citations to applicable primary resources.  Examples of secondary resources include: 

• Legal encyclopedias such as the national encyclopedias American Jurisprudence or Corpus Juris Secundum. Some states also have their own state-specific legal encyclopedia, such as the Pennsylvania Law Encyclopedia.
• American Law Reports (ALR’s) are articles written primarily by legal practitioners on narrow legal subjects. ALR’s often provide analysis and citation to primary sources on both sides of a legal issue.
• Law Reviews are scholarly articles written by law professors and judges on topics that tend to be on “cutting-edge” or emerging trends in the law. Law reviews are available in print at the library, or online through HeinOnline, Lexis, or Westlaw.
• Restatements, published by the American Law Institute, are an effort to “codify” the common law in America by articulating the consensus common law rules on a variety of legal principles.
• Uniform Laws Annotated (ULA’s) are intended to serve as a model to the state legislatures of how legislation should be drafted on a variety of topics. Written by legal professionals and scholars, the ULA’s are published by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.
• Treatises are secondary resources that focus on one legal topic. These sources can range from one volume nutshell books like Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell, to extensive multi-volume sets such as Wright and Miller’s Federal Practice and Procedure.

To locate journal articles, perform a search in one of the databases listed below.  The following databases are listed on the law library’s webpage under Library Resources, A-Z Databases.

Use the databases to search for articles on your topic.  Some databases provide full-text display of articles while others only provide citations to, or abstracts of, articles.  Some of the databases linked to in this Guide are subscription databases.  Access is available to these databases on the campus and also off campus.