About Case Law

By Roberta Woods, Reference Librarian

Created: 2009, Updated: May 2010 by Tom Hemstock

Introduction | Official and Unofficial Reporters | Finding Caselaw (graph)

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Introduction

Court opinions, or cases, are published in reporters. Reporters collect cases in chronological order. Often sets of reporters are limited to opinions from a single jurisdiction or a single court. Federal reporters contain opinions from federal courts while state and regional reporters offer opinions from a state or states in a particular geographic region. Regardless, all reporters are arranged chronologically.

Not every case heard by a court is reported. Typically only cases coming out of appellate courts are reported. Trial court cases are not usually reported though some U.S. District Court opinions are published in the Federal Supplement ( F. Supp., F. Supp. 2d) and the Federal Rules Decisions (F.R.D.).

Official and Unofficial Reporters

Official Reporters

A reporter published under government authority is known as an official reporter. The official reporter for United States Supreme Court decisions published by the federal government is United States Reports (U.S.).

Unofficial Reporters

A reporter published by a commercial publisher are unofficial reporters even though they will contain the same cases as the official reporters. Often unofficial reporters have editorial enhancements to help the legal researcher determine the significance of a particular case. Two unofficial reporters for United States Supreme Court decisions are Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) published by West Publishing, and United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer's Edition (L. Ed., L. Ed. 2d) published by LexisNexis.

Finding Case Law

West Digests

Print Access Points: Descriptive Word Index (DWI), Table of Cases, Words & Phrases

Online Access Points: Available only via Westlaw. Key Search or Keynumber Browse.

Additional online resources:

Best use: Finding similar cases on narrow topics of law.

Reporters

Print Access Points: By citation in print volumes

Online Access Points: CasemakerX, LexisNexis, Westlaw, Google Scholar

Best use: To retrieve a published opinion.

Secondary Sources

There are many secondary sources available that cite and explain caselaw. These sources include: ALRs, Journals and Law Reviews, Treatises, Looseleafs, Restatements and Legal Encyclopedias (CJS and AmJur). All of these sources are available both in print and online via LexisNexis/Westlaw and in other electronic resources.