Accessing the World of Case Law
Case law, also known as court reports, judicial precedents, or reported cases, is a collection of selected published court cases that contains the decisions of judges on a variety of issues. These decisions apply precedents set in previous cases, filling in the blank spots in the various laws that govern different areas of the law. For example, much of contract law is contractual interpretation, in which previous court rulings provide interpretations that make it easier to apply a contract and sometimes provide new precedents that contract is based on.
Also known as judicial opinions, case law is one of the most important components of law, as it determines how various statutes and codes are interpreted and applied by judges throughout the country. Together with statutes, court rules and codes, case law is one of the four issues of law that governs the rights and obligations of the parties in a suit . Because they are such an important part of the law, lawyers who are able to find case law is invaluable to their clients.
Attorneys and law clerks spend much of their time in searching for applicable cases, often by searching through digests. Digests are helpful when searching for cases that meet more than one specific legal requirement, such as a lease, termination and damage.
In addition to attorneys, law students also spend much of their time learning how to accurately and efficiently search for and read case law. If you want to truly understand any area of the law, such as insurance or bankruptcy, you must be familiar with the intricacies of the various choices different judges have made over the years. When searching for cases, you will generally be able to find them broken down by the different jurisdictions, so you can pinpoint the applicable county, state or federal circuit to your particular case.
Categories of Books on Case Law
The different types of case law books help address specific user needs, providing a more targeted approach to legal research. While reporters and annotated case law books already cover a broad spectrum of solutions, digests are another option in this suite of tools.
Digests are comprehensive collections of headnotes from reported cases broadly organized by subject. Like reporters, digests are also published for state and federal law, although state digests are by far the more extensive. There are over 600 different state digests available across the U.S. Since state courts handle many of the cutting-edge legal matters in areas like science and technology, the collection of cases covered in state digests can be much greater than what is in federal reporters.
Annotated federal and state case law books go beyond just adding case law and statutes to the standard reporter format. The annotations provide summaries of all important cases related to a digest, along with references to where they were published and which federal and state statutes are most relevant to different areas of the law. Annotated versions are available for most reporters and are often considered a valuable tool for legal research.
Just like with the rest of the series, The Essential Guide to Case Law Books provides a concise summary of what goes into these resources. As a group, their organizational structure is centered around concepts like federal and state rules or the rules of court. As a subset of this group, Digests further break these ideas by organizing case law by subject. Other collections can be broken down further by jurisdiction or by deciding court.
As a legal professional, it is essential to understand how to leverage these resources and how to pick the right one. By finding the most suitable resource, you can find the information you need quickly and spend less time doing it. The Essential Guide summarizes the main functions, the major players in the field, and how you can make each of them work for you.
Leading Publishers of Case Law
Several publishers have carved out significant niches in the case law book market. Their contributions to the field are noteworthy, each bringing their own unique style and approach to legal materials.
West Publishing Corporation continues to be a titan in the legal publishing industry. Their West’s National Reporter System is an unmatched repository of U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate case law. They have also published the national single-state reporter series for 150+ years, which include state trial, appellate, and supreme court decisions. Today, West is part of Thomson Reuters, a global leader in a wide range of information services.
LexisNexis is another major case law publisher, particularly known for their extensive historical collections—spanning colonial times through the 19th century—and their access to comprehensive reporters from all state courts. To home in on a specific jurisdiction, including town or city courts, LexisNexis offers very detailed geographic coverage. In addition to their expansive historical archives, LexisNexis houses current opinions and statutes from all 50 states.
Thomson Reuters, a leading provider of business information services, expanded its operations into the case law field by acquiring West Publishing in 1996. Its databases include all decided U.S. cases and all Federal Court Reports, first and second series. The size of its database is unparalleled, with more than 75 million searchable legal documents.
HeinOnline is an up-and-coming provider of legal information. They are the only publisher to provide PDF copies of nearly all Supreme Court Briefs, and their offering of 200 databases spans from current law school textbooks to treatises, international yearbooks, and law journal articles. They are an essential resource in this field.
Effective Use of Books on Case Law
One of the first steps in legal research is to search for a case in legal periodicals and law books. For law students, this usually involves research in online sources. But what about lawyers, insurance adjusters or simply the curious researcher? The research challenges are the same. Both electronic and hard copy research are valid in any law library depending on your needs. A very short summary of case law books, case law is simply a legal precedent based on a court decision in a previous case. Case law books are the common law of England and its colonies. If you were to use case law books in a law library, you would have to consult an index for the relevant year and volume number. Once you have these two key pieces of information, you can look up the case using a citation or search the entire volume in chronological order from the beginning. Case law books contain cases from state and federal courts of record. When searching case law books, the cases will be arranged in reverse chronological order. That is , the most recent case will be first. After searching for the case you are looking for, you can then turn to the back of the book index to look up specific legal citations for your own research purposes. Many indexed law topics will also reference sub-topics (or cases) under that main topic heading.
To locate a specific case within the case law books at your law library, you need two key pieces of information: By searching the case law books with both of these two key sets of information you will be able to find the citation from which the case was listed. In many cases, if you don’t have a direct citation, it may be necessary to search through the entire volume in chronological order beginning with the year.
Using the above example, you can break the information down in the following way: Many times, cases may be cited in a variety of ways. For the purpose of a research paper, a citation from either of these two sources would be acceptable. To practice law, however, it is always important to use the most accurate source.
New vs. Traditional Books on Case Law
The advent of technology has led to the deprecation of many items. Consider the library card catalog. Once an essential part of any library, the filing system went by the wayside with the ascendancy of digital and online databases. Consider the printing press. Once the primary means by which a society put information on paper, it’s all but vanished into the archives of history.
Put simply, when the digital version arrived, the analogue was no longer needed. But when it comes to case law books, the digital version is still far from perfect.
The upside of online case law books is that they are easier to use. It’s easier to search because one can enter one or two search strings into the search field, and the results will come back in less than a second. It’s easier to cite the law because an attorney can grab a hyperlink and plop it directly into a brief. It’s also easier to save a bookmark, not just throughout a single document, but across documents, across different online case law books. Online makes it easier to update, easier to share, easier to use outside of the office.
But that doesn’t mean electronic case law books are without their disadvantages. Digital case law is still completely dependent on internet access, and access is less than ubiquitous. Internet service may be available at the office, but what happens when you need a case law book answer while on the go? We now live within the bounds of where service is available, and your emphatic "can’t wait" for a download to finish will take you a lot further in a coffee shop than in a car or taxi. Digital case law books are also susceptible to technical issues — sometimes, the connection to the server is down. Sometimes, the site you’re using to access a case law book is down. And sometimes, downtime isn’t always an issue with the website, but within your own system (OSs and browsers).
This leaves us with a conundrum — do you use a case law book or two online versions? The best solution is to use both. The case law books cover each other’s deficiencies. When your online version passes out, the dead tree will be there, silently waiting (and vice versa). For that reason, many legal professionals don’t mind hauling around dozens of case law books.
Lawyers are used to having a paper copy of the law. They like the aroma of the leather, the feel of the paper and how it sits on the shelf. This is a powerful physical attachment. This is one of the reasons they have yet to fully embrace their devices as their primary means to access the law. When technology does catch up to our lawyers, however, and it surpasses the offline experience, we will begin to see a trend in lawyers switching their habits. Until then, we’re stuck with the fact that while digital can be better than print, that doesn’t always hold true in practice, and if the online version is less, then the offline version will always win out – even if it’s just an extra moment in which to thumb through the material.
Establishing Veracity and Credibility when Researching Books on Case Law
Ensuring accuracy and reliability is paramount when dealing with case law books. It is critical for the integrity of any legal work to cross-check the accuracy of the information in legal materials. This requires a diligent approach to both verification of the law contained within and awareness of any changes in the legislation.
One key element is to avoid the reliance on older case law books that have not been updated. I have seen instances where the law stated in older case law books has been amended or repealed, but the case law books have not been published or updated to reflect the changes. While this does not happen very often, when it does, it can have serious consequences in a legal opinion or memorandum, as it can make it out of date and potentially inaccurate.
How do you check the accuracy of the case law books? While this may seem obvious, you can double-check the accuracy of the law stated in a case law book through the online version of the legislation. After all, all new legislation is published online by the government shortly after the law comes into force.
To check the accuracy of the law stated in a case law book, look up the legislation in its online version on the government’s e-laws website. In Ontario, the site is e-laws.gov.on.ca and after entering that address in your web browser, you have two options: either browse through a numeric or alphabetical list of the Ontario Statutes or Regulations or you can enter the name of the statute or regulation you are looking for in the search box. Once you have found the statute or regulation, you are looking for, you can check the date the law was enacted and whether it is in an amended or consolidated version. If it is the latter , then the legislation is in its most current form, without any amendments outstanding; thus, the date of the law stated in the case law book and the updated version on e-laws should match. If there is an inconsistency between the dates, then the case law book is likely out of date, which should prompt a further investigation to determine the accuracy of the information you are using.
If you are looking for a specific section of legislation, you can even search for it by entering the relevant section number or name into the search engine. For example, if you wish to find the "Legislative Intent" clause of the Limitations Act, 2002, you can enter that into the search engine, or simply type in "Limitations Act", which will take you to the Act’s main page. After that, you can search for the relevant section number (i.e., section 1) or word search for the name of the relevant section while on the Act’s main page.
In summary, you can check the accuracy of the law stated in a case law book through the online version of the legislation. You can double-check the accuracy of the law stated in a case law book by seeing if the version of the law in the relevant case law book matches the most current version of the law set out online by the government – for statutes, that would be the consolidated version on e-laws, or alternatively, the unamended version on the same site. This will allow you to verify the accuracy of the information contained in the relevant case law book, and it will also give you a sense of the recency of the publication in relation to the current state of the law.