Hi all,
I have looked at the analytics from the following CALI lessons:
Subject Specific Treatises, Introduction to Search Logic and Strategies, American Law Reports, Internet Legal Resources – Free Resources, and Evaluating Websites.
This post will cover Subject Specific Treatises, Introduction to Search Logic and Strategies, and American Law Reports. Another post will discuss the two other lessons.
Let’s start with American Law Reports (ALR). At the beginning, West Publishing had decided that they would publish every case decision that they could get their hands on. So that was their business model – the National Reporter System. Lawyers Cooperative Publishing came along and they realized that they could not compete with West’s business model so they decided to publish an important case and then to write an annotation that described other decisions on similar issues to accompany the case. So the case is just a starting point for them. You should cite the “important case” using the West cite – the National Reporter System cite and possibly the state cite, if appropriate. You could include if you thought it important the ALR citation of the case and annotation but folks are going to want to read and cite the case using the National Reporter System Citation and possibly the state cite, if appropriate.
Next – Introduction to Search Logic and Strategies. I will talk about this lesson when I post on the Module 2 Assessment Quiz.
And – Subject Specific Treatises. Just a couple of points. One of the asked is an administrative regulation was a good place to consult in order to locate a treatise. Neither a regulation nor a statute would be a good place to locate a treatise. Both are primary law. You might find a citation to a treatise if you were using a resource that annotated the statute or regulation. That is to say, included information about the statute or regulation as well as the statute or regulation itself. Now case decisions which are also primary law might mention a treatise but a case decisions would not be good places to consult to locate a treatise on a specific topic.
Hope this is useful. Please let me know your questions.
