Official pronouncements of the law by the executive branch, legislative branch, and judicial branch.
What is a primary authority?
100
A written opinion that expresses the views of the minority?
What is a dissenting opinion?
100
To focus attention on the subject or actor of the sentence, which performs or causes certain action.
What is active voice?
100
Legal sources that are persuasive only and need not be followed by courts of law.
What are secondary sources?
100
What you must do to a case name in a citation.
What is italicize or underline?
200
The requirement that a plaintiff in a federal court case must allege actual or threatened injury.
What is standing?
200
The name of the official set of books that publishes cases from the U.S. Supreme Court.
What is the United States Reports?
200
A movement within the legal world to make legal writing more comprehensible to the average reader.
What is the Plain English Movement?
200
A secondary source you may use to find another word for a certain term.
What is a legal thesaurus?
200
A.L.R.4th
What is the abbreviation for American Law Reports, 4th Series?
300
The concept of following previous cases or precedents.
What is stare decisis?
300
The 50 categories of our federal statutes.
What are titles?
300
Issue, rule, analysis and conclusion.
What is IRAC?
300
Law school publications; publications of bar and other associations; specialized publications for those in the legal profession who share similar interests; and legal newspapers and newsletters
What are legal periodicals?
300
A reference to a particular page on which a quotation appears.
What is a pinpoint or jump cite?
400
The most widely used means to gain access to the U.S. Supreme Court from the lower courts of appeal.
What is a writ of certiorari?
400
Written opinions by justices who agree with the result reached in a case but disagree with the reasoning.
What is a concurring opinion?
400
A search method that uses symbols, word fragments, and numbers rather than plain English.
What is boolean searching?
400
A secondary source you may use to get examples and instructions on how draft an agreement or legal document.
What is form book?
400
Two citations to the same case.
What are parallel citations?
500
Cases, statutes, constitutions and administrative regulations.
What are sources of law?
500
A law that affects only one person or a small group of persons, granting them some special benefit not afforded to the public at large.
What is a private law?
500
Elegant variation, the overuse of negatives and improper word order.
What are the primary legal writing flaws that effect clarity?
500
Highly authoritative legal opinions written by the chief legal advisor to the executive branch in the federal or a state government.