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Chapter 6 Secondary Authority

Chapter 6 Secondary Authority. After reading this chapter, you will be able to: Describe secondary authorities Explain why secondary authorities are useful tools

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Chapter 6 Secondary Authority

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  1. Chapter 6Secondary Authority After reading this chapter, you will be able to: • Describe secondary authorities • Explain why secondary authorities are useful tools • Know when to use dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, American Law Reports, treatises and hornbooks, restatements of the law, and legal periodicals

  2. Secondary Authority • Secondary authority describes, analyzes, and comments on primary authority.

  3. Dictionaries • Legal Dictionaries provide the legal definition of a word or term. • Researchers use a legal dictionary when they do not understand the legal meaning of a word or term.

  4. Thesauri • A thesaurus provides synonyms and antonyms for words.

  5. Encyclopedias • A legal encyclopedia divides the law into topics and offers broad coverage of the legal rules pertaining to each topic. • Two predominant encyclopedias that are national in scope are: • American Jurisprudence (Am. Jur. And Am. Jur. 2d) • Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S.)

  6. Methods of Using Am. Jur. • The index method • The table method • The topic outline

  7. Methods of Using C.J.S. • The general index method • Title analysis method

  8. American Law Reports The American Law Reports (A.L.R.), formerly published by Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Co. and newly produced by West, contain annotations on narrow, well-defined legal topics. Each volume contains at least a half dozen annotations, or in-depth articles, about a legal issue and the pivotal case that prompted the examination of the issue.

  9. Methods for Using A.L.R. • The index method • The digest method • The computerized method • Shepard’s

  10. Treatises and Hornbooks • Treatises are scholarly works that examine one legal topic in great detail and with very broad coverage. These are generally multi-volume sets. • Hornbooks, also scholarly but designed for students of law, are generally one-volume works providing an overview of a single legal topic.

  11. Methods for Using a Treatise or Hornbook • The table of contents method • The table method • The index method

  12. Restatements of the Law • Restatements of the Law, published by the American Law Institute, are the most prestigious source of secondary authority. • The purpose is to codify the common law holding so that a researcher does not have to unearth the legal rule from the text of an opinion, and to make common law principles straightforward and succinct, like statutes.

  13. Methods of Using the Restatements • The table of contents method • The index method • The table of cases method • The online method

  14. Legal Periodicals • Major categories of legal periodicals: • Academic law reviews • Bar journals and practitioner’s periodicals • Commercial journals and newsletters • Legal newspapers

  15. Major Indexes for Legal Periodicals • Current Law Index • Index to Legal Periodicals • Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals • HeinOnline • Lexisweb.com • Google scholar at scholar.google.com

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