SYLLABUS: Introduction to American Legal Research
University Of Leiden/Columbia Law School Program, June-July 2004
COURSE MATERIALS:
Basic Introduction to Researching the Law of the United States
The "Bluebook", ie: A Uniform System of Citation, Cambridge: Harvard Law Review, 2000
Additional reading: AALL:
Core Legal Research Competencies: A Compendium of Skills and Values as
Defined in the
ABA Macrate Report (7/1997)
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FIRST WEEK
Monday, June 28th
Assignment: Review the "Core Legal Research Competencies " text at the AALL Website.
What it is we are trying to do when we are trying to find "the law"
Sources of legal information: The search for authoritative texts
What are the sources in other jurisdictions?
The United States
The role of the Constitution
Federal - State divisionsThe three traditional sources of law
Statutes
Judicial Decisions
Executive Action
Computer skills assessment
Basic Web Tools
English language legal dictionary
Tuesday, June 29th
Statutes: Legislatures & publication of statutes
Bills
Session Laws
Recompiled Statutes ("Codes")
Federal Websites
Wednesday, June 30th (LAB)
Statutes: Finding statutory information by subject
Indexing
Word searching
Annotated Codes
Thursday, July 1st
Cases: Judicial structure & finding cases by citation
Friday, July 2nd (LAB)
Lexis workshop on case law: Finding cases by subject & updating
"Word-search"
Shepardizing and its equivalents
Monday, July 5th
Introduction to Administrative Law
Agencies: Structure, Regulations and Decisions.
Tuesday, July 6th (LAB)
Administrative Law through the computer systems
Agency websites and commercial systems
Wednesday, July 7th
Recap of general principles, focusing on the tools used to research Constitutional Law.
Thursday, July 8th (LAB)
Secondary Sources
Books
Library Catalogues
Journals
Indexing systems
Friday, July 9th
Tying it all together
When to stop