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?
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 Folk on the Delaware General Corporation Law, and Pennsylvania Law Encyclopedia. Many online databases, including Bloomberg Law, LexisAdvance and WestlawNext 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. For Delaware cases, West’s Atlantic Digest 2d should be used, and 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 Delaware, the session laws are published in the Laws of the State of Delaware (also referred to as Delaware Laws) Once codified, they appear in the official version of the code, Delaware Code Annotated published by LexisNexis. There is also an unofficial code published by Thompson/West West’s Delaware Code Annotated.
- 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. For a more detailed explanation, see the library research guide, Pennsylvania Practice Aids.
- 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 Thompson West’s United States Code Annotated (USCA) also available online through Westlaw, or Lexis’s United States Code Service (USCS), 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.
