Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The most common sources of authority cited are court decisions (cases), statutes, regulations, government documents, treaties, and scholarly writing. Typically, a proper legal citation will inform the reader about a source's authority, how strongly the source supports the writer's proposition, its age, and other, relevant information.
Legal research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a problem and concludes with the application and communication of the results of the investigation."
United States Reports, the official reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States. Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported.
Keyword searches in databases may also be a challenge, because people may describe legal concepts in varying ways. "Issue spotting" is a skill that lawyers home in law school and throughout their careers as they gain experience. For the layperson, reading secondary sources, such as books and journal articles, can help.
The divine right of kings, natural and legal rights, human rights, civil rights, and common law are early unwritten sources of law. Canon law and other forms of religious law form the basis for law derived from religious practices and doctrines or from sacred texts; this source of law is important where there is a state religion.
In law, a citation or introductory signal is a set of phrases or words used to clarify the authority (or significance) of a legal citation as it relates to a proposition. It is used in citations to present authorities and indicate how those authorities relate to propositions in statements.
By 2011, The Bluebook was "the main guide and source of authority" on legal references for the past 90 years. [24] It is recognized as the "gold standard" for legal references in the United States, even though it was originally designed only to help teach law students how to cite cases and other legal material. [25]
First developed by Peter Birks of the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, and now in its 4th edition (2012, Hart Publishing, ISBN 978-1-84946-367-6), [1] it has been adopted by most law schools and many legal publishers in the United Kingdom. An online supplement (developed for the third edition) is available for the citation of international ...