Week 6 - Background Readings on Courts and Reporters
Overview
Unit 3 is designed to provide some rudimentary knowledge about the court system, reporting decisions, and legal documentation--enough so you can locate cases using open source online tools. By "case," I mean written opinions by courts, usually appellate courts such as the Arkansas Supreme Court or the Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal. (These are what we've been reading in our textbook.)
Up until 10-15 years ago, the only way to access these opinions was through the commercially published versions, either in print or electronically. The two main publishers are West and Lexis. Their materials are very expensive. UA Little Rock's library used to subscribe to Lexis, but they canceled their subscription a few years ago because of the expense.
The federal courts and most state courts are now moving to what's called medium- or vendor-neutral publishing of cases, which means in addition to publishing in one of the commercial, print versions, they are publishing cases themselves electronically. Arkansas, for example, began doing that in 2009, which means that cases from then on can be located on the Arkansas Judiciary website. Cases before 2009 are being scanned into the site and can also be located. Arkansas is in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and it too has been adding its opinions electronically. What this means is that you can research online within a given jurisdiction through those websites as well as through Google Scholar. Notice that court websites not only provide written cases, but they also have videos of oral arguments, where the attorneys argue their cases in front of the judges.
The writing assignments for this unit will be case briefs, which are summaries of the written opinions. This genre is a genre used in law schools and also throughout legal practice since people need to find out about decisions but cannot always read the whole case.
I have written a couple lectures with background information. In order to locate and cite cases, you need to know something about the state and Federal court systems, and you need to know something about the legal reporting system.
I have written a couple lectures with background information. In order to locate and cite cases, you need to know something about the state and Federal court systems, and you need to know something about the legal reporting system.
There is a lot of material here, and I do not expect you to master it. I am hoping just to introduce you to the resources available so you can locate them later.
NOTE: There are many links in this unit to legal resources on the web. You might want to bookmark them for future use.
Reading and Viewing
- Read this lecture on the federal and state court systems.
- Watch this video on Court Structure and Precedent from Georgetown Law.
- Watch/read Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this tutorial on Inside the Federal Courts from the Federal Judiciary website. This website goes into more detail than you will be expected to know; however, it is an excellent reference and resource.
- Read this lecture on reporting legal decisions.
- Watch this video from Georgetown Law, The Anatomy of a Case.
Activities
- Participate in a check-in Tuesday discussion in Bb.