Publication the federal statutes

• United states statutes at large: "slips" of each congressional session place in chronological order in a hardback set of volumes. Published by the united states government printing office (GPO). Often referred to as our "session laws".
• United states code (U.S.C): The process of developing a set of books that compiles the currently valid laws on the same subject together with any amendments to those laws is referred to as "codification". All statutes Enacted into law Contained in united states statutes at large were analyzed and categorized by subject matter so that at the completion of this project there were 50 categories or "titles" of federal statutes. The 50 titles are further divided into chapters and sections. The U.S.C is "official", a term whose sole meaning is that publication of the set is directed by a stature or that the set is designated as "official" by a statute or court order. Published by the Government Printing Office. West helped organize and maintain the U.S.C. New addition published by the GPO every 6 years. Changes during those 6 years are published in annual hardbound supplements placed on the shelf after Title 50.
• District court (trial court)
• Court of appeals (circuit court) (intermediate)
• Supreme court (court of last resort)
• statutes vs codes difference
• United States Code Annotated: read a statute and immediately be directed to cases that have construed or interpreted that statute. Provides any comment regarding the law or any reference to any cases that may have interpreted that law. "Unnoficial" because the publication of these 2 sets is not directed by statute
  • USCA by West - valuable because of its notes, the "extra" features provided to researchers
  • USCS by Lexis
• Citation for circuit and district court both require the circuit number, the district and year.
• editors at a publishing company (West or Lexis) assign headnote numbers for each legal issue in a case.

VOCAB

• official vs unnoficial publication (pg. 75-76) whether the publication of a set is government-approved or not, not its accuracy or credibility. U.S.C.A. and U.S.C.S. are "unofficial" meaning that it is published by a private company without any government direction or mandate. Pg 124: If cases are published pursuant to some statutory directive or court rule, the sets of books in which they are collected are referred to as "official" reports. Cases published without this type of governmental mandate are collected in sets of books referred to as "unofficial" reports.
• Reports vs. Reporter (pg. 124)
• Encyclopedias (pg 326) - are weak secondary sources and are used primarily to give you introductory explanations of the law and to help you locate cases
• shepardizing - ensure the primary authority is still "good law", still valid
• KeyCite (westlaw)
• History vs Treatment of a case (pg. 374-375)