Cases
The type of authority of a Michigan Supreme Court decision in the Illinois Supreme Court.
What is persuasive authority?
This official set contains the codified laws of the United States.
What is the United States Code?
This official publication contains the codified regulations of the federal administrative agencies.
What is the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.)?
A source in which you would find scholarly articles on recent legal topics most likely on a narrow issue of law.
What is a law review or journal?
The system in Westlaw that allows you to find cases by subject from any jurisdiction, state or federal.
What is the Key Number system?
This is the official reporter of United States Supreme Court decisions.
What is United States Reports?
These two unofficial sets contain the laws as found in the United States Code, PLUS case summaries and citations to secondary sources.
What are the United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.) and the United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.)?
This official publication contains proposed and final regulations of federal administrative agencies in chronological order.
What is the Federal Register?
A source where you could find .pdf typeset page images of law review articles.
What is HeinOnline?
Publisher known for its practitioner-oriented handbooks on Illinois law, which are recognizable by their black paperbound or spiral-bound books.
What is IICLE (or Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education)?
These short numbered paragraphs, highlighting the points of law in an opinion, are written by West editors and found at the beginning of cases in West reports in print and on Westlaw.
What are headnotes?
Tool used to locate a statute if you only have its name (e.g., Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).
What is the "Popular Name Table"?
Legislation that defines the scope of an agency's mission and empowers it to perform its functions.
What is enabling legislation or an enabling act?
This legal dictionary is generally seen as the most authoritative of its kind.
What is Black's Law Dictionary?
This source restates the common law doctrines on a subject using the rules in a majority of jurisdictions.
What are the Restatements?
Names of the citators for Westlaw and LEXIS.
What are KeyCite and Shepard's?
When a federal statute is first published, it is identified by this number.
What is its Public Law Number?
A currently updated, free, online unofficial version of the Code of Federal Regulations.
What is the e-CFR?
Corbin on Contracts and Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts are examples of this type of secondary source.
What is a treatise?
The search method that uses keywords and symbols to tell the search engine specifically what you do and do not want it to return.
What is Terms and Connectors or Boolean searching?
Citations to the same case opinion from different reporters are called this.
What are parallel citations?
This official set contains the text of federal statutes, as passed, in chronological order (by session of Congress).
What is the United States Statutes at Large?
This official publication contains proposed and final regulations of Illinois administrative agencies in chronological order.
What is the Illinois Register?
One of the two commercially published Illinois-specific legal encyclopedia sets.
What is Illinois Law & Practice or Illinois Jurisprudence?
Secondary source that has articles called "annotations" and combines elements of legal encyclopedias with elements of case reporters.
What is American Law Reports or A.L.R.?