Cases
Statutes
Regulations
Secondary Sources
Potpourri
100
Cases are this kind of legal authority.
What is primary authority?
100
This official set contains the codified laws of the United States.
What is the United States Code?
100
This official publication contains the codified regulations of the federal administrative agencies.
What is the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)?
100
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?
100
The short numbered paragraphs, highlighting the points of law in an opinion, written by West editors and found at the beginning of cases in West reporters in print and on Westlaw.
What are headnotes?
200
Used in online searching for locating terms within the same sentence.
What is /s?
200
As of September 2014, the total number of Titles in the United States Code.
What is 52?
200
This official publication contains proposed and final regulations of federal administrative agencies in chronological order.
What is the Federal Register?
200
A source where you could find .pdf typeset page images of law review articles.
What is HeinOnline?
200
Publisher known for its practitioner-oriented handbooks on Illinois law, which are recognizable by their black binders.
What is IICLE (or Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education)?
300
Feature available in Westlaw that helps researchers locate legally binding definitions from cases that have interpreted or defined a term or phrase.
What is "Words and Phrases"?
300
These two unofficial sets contain the laws as found in the U.S. Code, PLUS case summaries and citations to secondary sources.
What are the U.S. Code Annotated (USCA) and the U.S. Code Service (USCS)?
300
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?
300
This Legal Dictionary is generally seen as the most authoritative of its kind.
What is Black's Law Dictionary?
300
This source restates the common law doctrines on a subject using the rules in a majority of jurisdictions.
What are the Restatements?
400
Names of the citators for Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law.
What are KeyCite, Shepard's, and BCite?
400
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"?
400
A currently updated WWW unofficial version of the Code of Federal Regulations.
What is the e-CFR?
400
Corbin on Contracts and Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts are examples of this type of secondary source.
What is a treatise?
400
The type of authority of a Michigan Supreme Court decision in the Illinois Supreme Court.
What is persuasive authority?
500
This feature in Lexis provides an overview of the facts and concepts from a case opinion and can help you generate additional search terms.
What is Core Terms?
500
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?
500
A website where members of the public may post comments on proposed federal agency regulations.
500
One of the two commercially-published, Illinois-specific legal encyclopedia sets.
What is Illinois Law & Practice or Illinois Jurisprudence?
500
The weekly compilation of Illinois administrative law materials.
What is the Illinois Register?
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