LEGAL RESEARCH

Even though you may not be directly involved in the actual performance of legal research as an LN3 or LN2, you may be required to locate reference materials for the lawyers in your office. The following paragraphs should help you become more familiar with the types of' materials normally contained in a law library and how these materials are related to the basic legal research categories mentioned earlier in this chapter. In addition to this, we will also discuss what is meant by citing a legal source and how to use these citations to locate specific References.

REFERENCE MATERIALS

At the beginning of this chapter, we took a brief look at the three broad categories that legal reference materials fall into, these being primary sources, finding tools, and secondary sources. Let us look at these categories a little closer and see what types of materials are contained in each.

Primary Sources

Primary sources have been defined as those recorded rules of human behavior that will be enforced by (he state. These rules may be recorded in federal or state statutes, administrative and executive regulations, issued to comply with a legislative authorization, or as court decisions. s Statutes-Statutes are published by jurisdiction and in chronological order of enactment. Chronological publications of these laws are called session laws. One such publication of federal laws that will probably be part of your library is Satutes at Large. Because these laws are listed in chronological order and not by subject and date of passage, it is difficult for the researcher to locate a particular law. To help solve this problem, these laws are codified by subject matter and the laws that pertain to a particular subject, regardless of when they were passed, are found together under a specific subject codification. Normally, your library will have either the U.S.C. published by the GPO, which is the official codification of federal statues or the U.S.C.A. or the U.S.C.S., which are unofficial versions published by West Publishing Company or Lawyers Cooperative

Publishing Company, respectively. You may also find that you will have similar codification for state statutes contained in your library covering the laws for the state where your command is located.

. Regulations-Administrative and executive regulations provide the guidelines to be followed in carrying out certain statutes. For example, the MCM was published according to the directive issued as Executive Order 12473 of August 1, 1984, to comply with federal legislation enacted that affected the application of military justice in the Armed Forces of the United States. Another example is the regulations and instructions used by the Internal Revenue Service to provide the guidelines for implementing federal tax laws. Federal regulations are officially printed in the Federal Register. Because the Federal Register is published in chronological order, the same as Statutes at Large, the same problem exists for the researcher trying to find a specific regulation. To help solve this problem, the Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) was developed and serves the same function for regulations that the U.S.C. serves for statutes. . Court decisions-One of the bedrock principles of our judicial system is stare decisis et non quieta movere, which basically means to adhere to precedent and not to unsettle things that are settled. Questions arise daily that require interpretation of the law. These questions are resolved by the courts (usually appellate courts), and these decisions become law.

Case decisions are collected and published in chronologically arranged volumes that become a very important part of your library. As an LN, you will be concerned primarily with the reports of cases that have been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the federal circuits, federal district courts, the U.S. Court of Military Appeals (U.S.C.M.A.), and the Navy and Marine Corps Court of Military Review (N.M.C.M.R.). The case decisions handed down by these courts can be found in official and unofficial publications called reporters. The reporters that you will most likely come in contact with are the U.S. Supreme Court Reporter, the Military Justice Reporter, the Courts-Martial Reports, the Federal Reporter, and the Federal Supplement. (NOTE: The last bound volume of Courts-Martial Reports (C.M.R.) was volume 50, published in 1975. The Military Justice Reporter (M.J.), Which began publication in 1978, picks up where the C.M.R. leaves off. Those cases reported in advance sheets published between 50 C.M.R. and 1 M.J. are included in 1 M.J.) Additionally, you may have in your library a state and/or regional reporter (from West's National Reporter System) covering the decisions of state and local courts for your command's location. Not all states have individual reporters available. Many states use the National Reporter System developed by West Publishing Company. The size of your office, as well as the type of services provided by that office, will have a large hearing on determining what type of reporters will be maintained in the library.

Finding Tools

As you can see from the previous discussions concerning primary sources, there are many different sources that cover a vast number of laws, regulations, and court decisions. To help the reseacher, several different types of materials have been developed to aid in finding the information contained in the primary sources. The three basic types of finding tools are digests, legal encyclopedias, and citators. l Digests--To impose some sort of order for the

more than 3 million reported case decisions related to federal and state laws, digests were developed to classify these cases according to their legal topics and then arrange these topics in alphabetical order. These digests provide the reseacher with citations to specific uses and a very brief, often one-sentence digest of each point of law addressed in each case. The digest (called a headnote when appearing at the head of the case in the reporter) is provided to help the researcher decide which of the cases cited might prove helpful to the researcher if the entire opinion of a particular case were to be examined.

Probably the most comprehensive of these digests is the American Digest System published by West Publishing Company. This digest system was developed for use in conjuration with West's National Reporter System. Three of the other digests published by West are the Federal Digest, the Modern Federal Practice Digest, and the Federal Practice Digest 2d. The Federal Digest is used for finding federal case law from 1754 to 1939, the Modern Federal Practice Digest from 1940 to 1960, and the Federal Practice Digest 2d from 1961 to date. All three sets are needed to complete federal case law coverage although upkeep and accounting to JAG is required only to the latest. These three digests are common to all the NLSO law libraries you will encounter. They use a system where general topics are subdivided into smaller subtopics identified by key numbers that can be used for easy reference. The key numbering system was developed by West Publishing Company to help the researcher quickly find applicable laws. The topics and subtopics are set out alphabetically in these digests and identified with key numbers to give the researcher cross-reference to cases involving similar subject matter. Detailed instructions on how to use this key number system can be found in each of the digests and in Price and Bitner's Effective Legal Research, which is published by Little, Brown, and Company. l Encyclopedias-A second source for finding cases is through the use of a legal encyclopedia. Even though these encyclopedias state the law, they are of dubious value in that they tend to overgeneralize. The researcher may, however, find in the footnote citations in encyclopedias a source of cases that can be used to branch out through the use of digests or a citator. The national legal encyclopedias are American Jurisprudence 2d and Corpus Juris Secundum, published by the Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company and West Publishing Company, respectively. . Citators-Still another type of finding tool that

can be used, more for determining the history or status of a case than as an initial source for finding the case, is the citator. The most common of these is Shepard's Citations. This particular citator is the most comprehensive and widely used citator available in that it allows the researcher to accomplish the following actions: . To trace the judicial history of each reported case, including proceedings following the cited decision . To verify the current status of each reported case so as to determine whether it is still effective law, or has been modified or overruled . To find later cases that have cited the main case . To find citations in periodical articles and attorney general's opinions

Additionally, pamphlets are issued on a regular basis by Shepard's to reflect the most recent developments and then the information printed in these pamphlets is eventually printed in bound volumes. Specific instructions on how to use this citator can be found in each of the bound volumes and in How to Use Shepard's Citations printed by Shepard's Citation, Inc.

One final case finder you may encounter while working with the law library is Words and Phrases which is published by West Publishing Company and contains thousands of legally significant words and phrases arranged in alphabetical order. Each of these words or phrases is followed by a definition and a citation to the decision from which the definition was taken. Additionally, this particular case finder is kept up to date with pocket parts issued annually by the publisher.