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Court decisions or opinions comprise one of the most important sources of legal authority. Under our common law system, courts are bound by the decision made by higher courts of that jurisdiction when the case involves the same issues. Legal documents, briefs, and memoranda will often refer to these cases, or precedents support arguments for or against a particular point of law.
Finding a case cited in a document is simple if it includes a complete and correct citation (see Guide on Legal Citations). However, there are instances where references to cases are made without a citation. A person may refer to a case only by its name. References made in popular media like newspapers or magazines may not include a citation.
One method for finding a case is through digests. Digests are series of books that contain brief abstracts describing various points of law in cases and then grouping the abstracts together by subject.
Importantly, for finding cases, digests include volumes with tables of cases. These tables of cases are found in the last few volumes of the digest. The Table of Cases volumes provide alphabetical lists of cases by name. Cases are listed by the plaintiff's name or the first party's name. There are also defendant-plaintiff table volumes that list cases by the defendant's name or the opposing party's name. If the case cannot be found by its name in the plaintiff-defendant volumes, it is important to check the defendant-plaintiff table because the names of the parties may have been reversed. This can happen when a case is appealed to a higher court. If the case you have is a more recent one, you need to check the pocket part or paperback supplement to the Table of Cases.
Another source researchers use to locate cases by name is Shepard's Acts and Cases by Popular Names. This set lists cases by their popular names and then gives the complete citations to them. In this set, cases are listed in the third or last volume.
As wilth all legal research, computers have changed the way that case citations can be found. Databases like Westlaw and LexisNexis allow the researcher to look for cases by doing a segment search within a library of cases that limits the search to the case name only. Case citations can also be found by using the names of the parties as search items.
Posted: 1 Oct. 2004