Legal ResearchMark Kloempken

Course Procedures McCrate Report Authority Research Process

Search Terms Secondary Sources

Blue Book First Assignment

Course Procedures

1. Attendance

2. Weekly Assignments

a. Collaboration

3. Readings

4. Grading

Authority1. Basic civics

a. judicial -- court cases

b. legislative -- statutes

c. executive -- rules & regulations

2. Primary vs. Secondary Authority

a. “the law”

b. about “the law”

3. Mandatory vs. Persuasive Authority

Research Process

1. Analyze the situation/facts/law2. Search terms

a. Who; what; when; where; why; legal theory; relief sought.

b. Sloan: parties/relationships; places/things; claims/defenses; relief.

c. Bottom line -- pull out relevant factual and legal concepts or keywords.

d. synonyms and broader/narrower terms

Facts Matter

1. You are sleeping all snug in your bed. Five guys break down your bedroom door (they also broke down the front door). They drag you from your bed into the front yard, screaming at you all the while.

2. Your neighbor thought you were dealing drugs and dropped a dime on you. They are busting you.

Facts Matter

1. You are sleeping all snug in your bed. Five guys break down your bedroom door (they also broke down the front door). They drag you from your bed into the front yard, screaming at you all the while.

2. Your neighbor saw that your roof was on fire. They are rescuing you.

Frame the Issue1. You are presented with a fact pattern

a. Frankie and Johnny were lovers, but he did her wrong. He slapped her. She shot him, twenty seven times.

b. Legal terms of art are especially importanti. Spousal abuseii. Self defenseiii. Battered wife

2. Understand the fact patterna. Does the fact that she shot him twenty seven times impact

your theories. With most weapons, she would have had to reload.

b. Had he slapped her in the past?3. Using the terms selected, write out the issue and generate

search terms which yield authority.

1. While Nicorette gum has helped many people quit smoking, for some, it has led to a dependence of its own. Deborah chewed the stop-smoking aid Nicorette all day, piece after piece. The package said to stop using the gum after 12 weeks. Deborah used it for 10 years. She estimates that she has spent $20,000, far more than she had ever spent on her three-pack-a-day cigarette habit. The gum become so essential - and so expensive, at about $50 for a "starter kit," containing 108 small pieces - that Deborah began to shoplift the gum from the drugstore. Some pharmacies lose more that $2500.00 worth of Nicorette over a period of two months. 

2. One Sunday afternoon, Deborah slipped several boxes of Nicorette into her purse and walked out the front door of her local pharmacy. A member of store security stopped her after she had left the store and asked to view the contents of her purse. She resisted and the police were called. Deborah has been charged with shoplifting.

3. Deborah is claiming false imprisonment. She is also asserting a defense of addiction. Nicotine is addictive because it triggers a biochemical reaction in the brain. "The brain likes the peak," said Frank Leone, professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College and director of the tobacco-intervention program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. A 1996 study conducted by the National Institutes of Health found that 30 percent of those who use Nicorette do so for longer than the recommended three months. About 5 percent chew the gum for more than a year, the study found. Those 5 percent are "truly dependent" on the gum, said John Hughes, a psychiatrist who was a researcher on the NIH study, which was funded by the NIH and the drug company. And living without it can be difficult. Don Imus, the WNBC-AM radio host, has tiny little tantrums on the air when his supply of Nicorette runs out. Is the claim of false imprisonment valid?

4. What is/are the Issue(s)?

Nicorette

1. Factual who: customer, shoplifter2. Factual what: shoplifting, shoplifter, false

imprisonment3. Factual when: arrested, detained4. Factual why: suspected shoplifter5. Legal Theory: false imprisonment, detained for

a reasonable period6. Relief: money damages for false imprisonment7. Issue?

Define legal terms

Dictionary

Thesaurus

Generate synonyms

Thesaurus

1. Burton’s Legal Thesarus

a. Imprison: bring into custody, cast into prison, circumscribe.

2. Black’s Law Dictionary 618 (7th ed. 1999).

a. False imprisonment: A restraint of a person in a bounded area without justification or consent; this is a common-law misdemeanor and tort; applies to private as well as governmental detention.

3. Issuea. Customer suspected of shoplifting. Customer detained and

questioned - - false imprisonment. Detained for half hour - - reasonable time period

Secondary Sources1. Will lead you to primary. Will help you

interpret primary.2. Give general state of the law (vs. analyze it)3. Will give you background in unfamiliar area (all

areas now) including jargon & terms.4. Undeveloped areas of law5. Are generally NOT for citing or relying on.

Using Secondary Sources1. Internal Finding Aids

a. Look for an index

b. Look for a TOC

c. Using either or both of above, find potentially relevant sections in main volume(s)

2. Update -- pocket parts or supplements or both

Using Secondary Sources

1. Immigration Law and Procedure by Gordon, Mailman and Yale-Loehr

2. Multi-volume treatise in looseleaf format3. Updating is done via interfiling, NOT with

supplementary pamphlets4. Index Volume at end of set 5. There are several other major types of

secondary sources that will be covered later in the semester

Next Class

1. Next Class

a. Boolean Searching

b. Boola, Boola; Boola, Boola; Boola, Boola;When we "roughhouse" poor old Harvard,They will holler Boola Boo.Oh! Yale, Eli Yale!

2. Readings

a. Sloan  Chap. 10

b. RECOMMENDEDi. Oates Chap. 18, 3rd (In Class Distribution)

First Assignment1. The first assignment from Cali, www.cali.org/

2. Click on: CALI or use the cd, your choice.

a. You will have to register.

b. At the right hand side of the page you will see: Not a registered user yet, click here.

c. Fill out the form, the law school authorization code for Washington University Law School is: WAUNIVstu230. You must read and accept the license agreement.  

3. Click on Legal Research, listed under CALI Topics

4. Click on Legal Research Methodology, listed on the second page.

5. Click on Run Lesson

6. Do the first three sections: Introduction, Brainstorming, and Developing a Search Query (Developing a List of Search Terms and Framing a Research Issue).

7. Cali Exercises are also on a disk which you should have received.

8. If you need assistance, see me.