How to Research Case Law

A Level Academy Islamabad

Transcript

00:00One of the best things for your, or anyone's, court case is precedent.

00:05Something in court that happened in the past which applies to your case,

00:09and supports your current argument.

00:12Prior court rulings that serve as the basis for what's now legal are considered case law,

00:18which is different than statutes, law decided by legislation.

00:23Picking the right examples in case law can be crucial to a favorable outcome,

00:28but scouring the wealth of past court decisions to find what you need is daunting,

00:33especially through traditional physical reference.

00:36Thankfully, someone that's not Al Gore invented something called the internet,

00:41which, besides revolutionizing human society forever, is finally a useful tool when researching case law.

00:48But where to browse?

00:50One of the leading ones, to no one's surprise, is Google Scholar.

00:56If you're looking for specific cases, the best way is to search using the case's citation number.

01:01Let's use Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as an example.

01:06This was the famous Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation.

01:11It all begins with the law report, or the reporter, containing the case's information.

01:16A law report is a series of books of judicial opinions deciding cases.

01:22Each book has a number.

01:24A standard case citation format first includes the volume number of the law report,

01:29then the abbreviation of the specific book of court decisions in the case,

01:33then the page number in the aforementioned volume,

01:36and finally the year that the court made its decision on a case.

01:40Often, reporters have so many cases that they have to start over with a new series.

01:45The series follows the abbreviated law reporter name.

01:48This citation, for example, says that the case appears in Volume 121 of the third series of the Southern Reporter, on page 23.

01:58It was decided by the Florida Supreme Court in 2013.

02:02Often, all you need is the volume number, the reporter, and the series and the page number to find your case.

02:09Now, to go more broadly, you can search for case law by keyword,

02:13perhaps by using terms like dog bite, personal injury, home foreclosure, or whichever type of case you're involved in.

02:20From there, you can filter your search by court type and time frame to narrow things down.

02:25Other useful case law sites besides Google include FindLaw, Justia, and the Public Library of Law.

02:33For any and all aspects of the law in general, well, there's only one place for that.

02:38LegalYou.

02:40LegalYou. You can do this.