Reporters

Now you know what case law is, why it's important, who creates it, and when it is published. The next obvious question is how to find the cases you're interested in. As you know, not all case law is published. Published case law is primarily from intermediate appellate courts or the highest court of a jurisdiction. Published opinions are found in books called reporters. They also are found in online databases and on court web sites. The citation or reference to a case relates to the print reporter where it appears. Case citations also are used to retrieve opinions in online databases. We'll discuss how to read citation references a bit later in the lesson.

If you are looking for cases that deal with specific legal issues, there are various ways to approach this research. For print tools, legal researchers locate cases using subject indexes called digests. We'll examine digests when we look at finding tools. Cases also may be located in online databases, using a variety of search methods, and on court web sites.

Statutes

The second type of legal authority is the statute. Statutes are laws from the legislative branch. Whereas judicial opinions must follow the precedent of other cases, legislators can change statutory laws at any time. Basically, the only things necessary to pass a legislative measure are the requisite number of legislative votes and the approval of the jurisdiction's chief executive (President, Governor, and Mayor).

Statutes are first published as slip laws. Then they are compiled chronologically into session laws, along with all the other statutes passed during a session of the legislature. Most researchers, however, need to locate statutory laws on a given topic. Therefore, statutes also are published in topically-arranged sets known asstatutory codes. These codes are organized by legal topic, often referred to as a title or chapter. Each individual statutory law is published in a section of the title or chapter that covers the relevant legal topic. Codes are sometimes annotated for the researcher's convenience.

Quiz. Which of the following is statutory legal authority?

A statutory code section; a session law; a constitutional amendment; an annotation; rules of a court.

Both session laws and statutory code sections are versions publications of statutory law. Session laws are those laws published in chronological order, for each session of the legislature. Codes are subject arrangements for current the statutory laws. The tricky part here is that some of the other content choices also are included in statutory law publications. Constitutions for a particular jurisdiction are printed often included as part of that jurisdiction's statutory code. In addition, court rules for the jurisdiction also may be found in the code.

Administrative Law and Regulations

The last of the three main types of legal authority is administrative law. This is the law created by administrative agencies, which are created by the legislature or executive branch to further develop and enforce the law. The most common type of administrative law is the regulation. Agencies promulgate regulations to address the loose ends created by statutory law.

Administrative regulations have a publication pattern similar to statutes. When an agency first promulgates a rule or regulation, it is published chronologically in aregister along with other agency materials. The publication process for administrative registers is similar to session laws for statutes. Then the regulations are recompiled into an administrative code that is arranged by regulatory subject matter. Administrative codes are organized topically with each major part of the code addressing a different subject.