ARE 306: Agricultural Law
Citators
Statutory, regulatory, and case law are all subject to subsequent review by
the judicial branch of the states and federal governments. For example,
having found a case that supports the position of a litigant, a trial lawyer
(or a thorough student) needs to know whether the law established by that
decision remains in effect.
In general, the court system holds to the principle of stare
decisis, to stand by (previous) decisions. Have later cases affirmed the
earlier decision in a case? Or have later cases overturned the original
decision? Perhaps there has been considerable debate or criticism of the
decision that has left its authority eroded.
Citators are the tool to determine the current status of statutory,
regulatory, or case law. The prime publisher of these volumes is Shepard's,
and the verb, "to Shepardize," is used to mean that the subsequent history of
a cited case has been examined to determine its continued relevance to a new
case at hand. For a student, shepardizing a case is a good way find whether a
case has been cited by subsequent cases, and to trace how a law has been
interpreted and applied over a period of time.
Citators exist for the different levels of the states and federal judicial
systems, for bodies of regulatory law, and for statutory law. The NCSU
Libraries, since the university doesn't offer a legal degree, has few of these
resources. To locate most citators you need to visit the N.C. Supreme Court
Library just south of the capitol in Raleigh, or the law libraries at UNC-
Chapel Hill and Duke.
The NCSU Libraries provides access to Shepard's Citator for U.S. Supreme
Court cases through the LexisNexis Academic product.
-
LexisNexis Academic
- NCSU's Information System; restricted use via remote
access.
Choose "Legal Research," then "Shepard's for U.S. Supreme Court" in the
"Case Law" section. You can search for a case only by its citation, but you
are able to search on most of the several different citations to a U.S.
Supreme Court case.
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