Constitutional law refers to the category of law that studies the laws of the Constitution as a means of interpretation and analysis.  (This is in reference to the federal Constitution, many states have their own constitutions, but they, too, must adhere ultimately, to the U.S. Constitution).

 

Finding and reading constitutional law happens on two fundamental ways, through primary examination and secondary examination (or resourcing).  Finding the actual Constitution, as well as State Constitutions,  Unlike many collections of legal codes, Constitutions are not prone to frequent update and revision, due to the fact that the laws outlined in a Constitution have to be ratified as opposed to simply being legislated. 

 

Secondary examinations Constitutional Laws often forms the more common field of legal research that will be completed, as this will be the substantive material resources that have been formed critically or interpretively in regards to the written word of the Constitution.  There are many avenues open to a paralegal looking to find this information, which include indexes, digests, annotations, and catalogs, as well as encyclopedias, dictionaries, and loose leaf services.

 

Indexes, digests, and annotations all involve listings that provide references to existing material.  Digests uses key words as means by which to cross reference material from many different sources, and can be valuable as a means by which to locate articles and cases that have relevance to the element of Constitutional law a researcher is currently examining.  (Catalogs are generally services that provide access to all of these services).

 

There are a fair amount of legal encyclopedias that are devoted to Constitutional law, and even some legal dictionaries, and they can be very good sources for comprehensive information, though likely in a more historical sense than a contemporary one, which is due simply to the nature of publication.

The monitoring of proposed legislation is an important facet of legislative law, as the writing of new laws can continuously undermine and override the existence of standing statutes or regulations, and therefore can have  Some pieces of proposed legislation, especially those that can be seen as enacting a controversial measure, will often have legal forces marshalling against it before it is even signed into law, and therefore many may keep tabs on proposed legislation in the interests of eventually contesting the nascent law in court through stare decisis.

 

Many of the laws passed today, no matter the jurisdiction, are also very complex and complicated, usually as a means for being able to endure legal action (”covering all the bases,” proverbially speaking), and due simply to the give and take nature of political legislation, so keeping track of ongoing changes to these laws can be very important to an individual looking to eventually contest those laws.

 

Often knowing the nature of pending legislation has an important effect on standing litigation.  If the law is passed, even in another jurisdiction, its relevance under the oversight of a larger government (in the form of a constitution) can make it relevant by similarity to a similar action in another jurisdiction. Therefore, the potential law, whose passage can generally be determined by monitoring its legislative process, especially if cited as corroborating primary sources to that higher legal authority, which in the case of the overall federal authority would be either a federal court or the Supreme Court.

 

There are many means of monitoring proposed legislation available to a research paralegal.  Minutes to a legislative session also become a matter of public record, and can be accessed from the office of the clerk of that legislative body, usually in person.  Many political news sources will at least have some coverage of legislative news, commonly online these days, and they can be a prime source of up-to-date information.  All of these are valuable sources for a paralegal who needs to stay up to the moment on proposed legislation.

 

In some ways monitoring proposed legislation can become involved in the ongoing debate about the role of legislative history should play in judicial review.

 

Legal research, especially for a litigating attorney (meaning one who presents and develops legal actions to be presented in court, whether they be criminal, civil, tort, and so on), their paralegals, or firm presents the majority of the activities that need to be undertaken to get a case to the level where it can be considered “actionable.”  Thus, the legal research undertaken in formulating a case must usually not only find support for an argument, but usually seek out anything that represents a counterargument.

 

To contend with this, most legal research these days is performed by paralegals, or legal assistants, who are tasked with helping lawyers with the legal work that is not necessarily required to be completed by a lawyer.  Research paralegals emerged in private practices for two reasons, one was economic and the other competitive.

 

The economic reasoning for paralegals was that lawyers were billing too many hours where they would be performing time consuming research at a point in history (this would have been the 1960s to 1970s) where legal costs were growing beyond the capability of most people to afford them.

 

The competitive reasoning was due often to matters where legal issues would be centered on issues of policy, especially when one side was supported by an attorney who also functioned in an academic capacity, namely as a law professor.  To counteract this, private practices hired their own legal professions tasked for research purposes, which led other firms and even government agencies to follow suit as a way of staying competitive.

 

What the rise of paralegals has led to has been an increase in the overall quality of legal research, which has led to more valid legal arguments being presented and argued in most courts, which many feel has been an boon to the legal system. 

Legal research materials can be drawn from a number of different sources.  Most legal research materials are centered on either two categories of legal research – primary resources and secondary resources.  Secondary resources refer to articles, opinions, treatises, and other reference materials that describe laws as it relates to specific contexts, interpretations, and arguments.

 

Commonly, research materials can be found in number of areas, a brief listing of which can be found below.

 

Databases – Legal databases have become a key element of modern legal research, and have honestly been a boon to the industry.  Legal databases have been able to provide legal research from the comfort of an office, bringing materials that often were previously the domain of law libraries to anywhere in the world, especially now that many of these databases have gone online. 

 

Dictionaries – Legal dictionaries are often a valuable resource for trying not only to decipher legal language and jargon, but also for listings of prominent laws, precedents, statutes, and even legal cases, which are then defined and described in objective terms.  most popular law dictionary and the one that sets the industry standard is Black’s Law Dictionary, followed by Ballantine’s Law Dictionary, although most dictionary publishers, such as Merriam-Webster, McGraw-Hill, Barron’s and so forth produce many of their own legal dictionaries. 

 

Encyclopedias – Legal encyclopedias are generally far more comprehensive than a dictionary, providing extensive articles that go very in depth on particular subjects, laws, statutes, famous cases, judicial branches, agencies, and categories of law.  Most legal encyclopedias are multi-volume, and more and more are available in database format via software and even online.  Encyclopedia are often extremely expensive, and are thus usually found only in law libraries or high end law firms.

 

Journals – Legal journals are where many academic style discourse on the law is published on an annual basis.   These articles can take the form of case studies (both historical or contemporary), try to forecast coming trends or events, examine theoretical concepts in a way to contextualize them, or even present new legal theories to the legal community. 

 

Treatises – Legal treatises are works written either by individual author(s) or committees that are focused on particular elements and subjects of the law, within particular contexts.  They can include textbooks, academic texts, and even books for laypersons.

Legislative history is a controversial element of legal research, because some of the means and extent of its application, it is argued by some, can be irrelevant to the understanding and interpretation of the law as it is legislated in the form of statutes.

 

Legislative history generally consists of any materials that record the means by which legislation is enacted into statutes.  Some materials can be as precise as witness testimony of a legislative session or even the written or recorded minutes of a legislative session.

 

Where legislative history becomes controversial in some circles is because it can lead to charge of intentionalism, which incorporates the notion of intent into the perception and understanding of law. 

 

The fear is that by incorporating legislative history into the judicial review process will allow judges to decide precedent and opinion on political issues and political arguments presented in another venue of government, undermining the separation of power between the three branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive) and the system of checks and balances.

 

There are arguments for intentionalism and legislative history, based on the belief that all statutes are at least in part, determined by historical context, and some feel, especially from the position of arguing against a standing law, that the context and intentions are extremely important tools to pointing out how laws passed in one context may become invalid in another.

 

In the simplest terms it provides more information than is necessary to determining the constitutional validity of the law by allowing them to incorporate political argument, which can account for imprecise language within laws. 

 

Finally, most observers feel that it represents too much information for the court to consider as it determines and interprets laws, more than judiciaries can honestly incorporate fairly and accurately.

Validating legal research can be the most important moment in any process of legal research, and it may be the area of research that the Internet has proven to be the most beneficial in assisting.  Validation does this by determining that the research one has, for example, a judicial decision has been referenced elsewhere, and to what effect.  legal precedent through judicial review).

 

The most common means to trace validity historically has been through the use of a citator  Though there are other services that also provide a citator indexes, Shepherd’s is so affiliated with the process of determining the validity of research (it was originally published in the 19th century),  in this manner is called “shepherdizing.”  

 

Usually, Shepherd’s would consist of a multitude of volumes, published every three years, but since 1999 the service has been associated with LexisNexis, the online legal portal, which has increased its accessibility and allowed the service to be updated daily.  There are other minor services that have tried to enter the market, but Shepherd’s and KeyCite dominate the market.  Shepherd’s though, has experimented with a per citation rate 0f $4.25, which has opened up the market to validation services substantially, especially to law students.

 

Due to being such prominent online presences, and enhancing the efficiency by which paralegals and other legal researcher can validate their research, validating has become a viable means of not only substantiating research, but as a fundamental research tool itself.  Thus, while validation had once been seen as a means of showing that a reference has been substantiated, or in essence, “validated,” 

 

Legal research is one of the basic activities in the practice of the law, and the one probably most undervalued by the lay public.  While lawyers on television are shown grandstanding in court rooms or meeting clients in offices, the reality of the the law is that it is predicated not on performance and oration, but on research and study.  Legal research is the core of any legal action, as nearly all laws and legals actions are based on the construction of legal arguments, and legal arguments are constructed by the support gained through research.  All legal research is drawn from three kinds of resources: primary, secondary, and evidential.  Primary resources generally refers to the rule of law, or letter of the law, or in simplest terms, laws as they are written.  Secondary resources are anything for which supports legal research other than the specific words of the law, and as a result it can be a very broad category.  Evidential refers to the physical, material, or testimonial elements that become part of a case and subsequently part of a legal argument; in simple terms, evidence.  

 

 

Legal research, especially for a litigating attorney (meaning one who presents and develops legal actions to be presented in court, whether they be criminal, civil, tort, and so on), their paralegals, or firm presents the majority of the activities that need to be undertaken to get a case to the level where it can be considered “actionable.”  Combined with this need of research, as well as the sheer volume of legal discourse and documentation that has been produced just in American legal history alone, the process of legal research is daunting in the extent to which it can be time consuming.  To contend with this, most legal research these days is performed by paralegals, or legal assistants. The rise of paralegals has led to an increase in the overall quality of legal research, which has led to more valid legal arguments being presented and argued in most courts, which many feel has been an boon to the legal system…

 

 

The assorted terminology of legal research consists of an extended glossary of legal terms, the entirety of which is too great to be categorized here.   But there are still a number of key legal terms that can be emphasized, that an aspiring paralegal should absolutely know and understand if one is to become in anyway engaged with the legal process and specifically with legal research.  Of primary importance to these legal terms is the understanding of the various forms of law that exist in society.  The term “Law” itself  can be a term open up to very broad interpretation,  referring not only to the entire expanse of the legal system, but also to its most basic element: the individual rules upon which the entire system is constructed…

 

 

Law libraries are the fundamental locations where legal research takes place.   It is in these law libraries that attorneys and paralegals are able to find access to the material by which they can support their arguments and legal actions, and where law students go to devise their assignments, and where legal scholars go to find the research and theory to compose their law articles and treatises.   Because the law is such a common practice throughout all of American society, law libraries are located all throughout the United States.  As a rule, most law libraries serve the primary function of providing access to the law to anyone who needs it, but there are private law libraries just as there are private libraries. Therefore,  many law libraries have varying degrees of accessibility, depending upon where they exist in the private or public sectors… 

 

 

Legal research categories can be determined on two different categories: the nature of the research, and the nature of the law.  The nature of research often describes the form of research that an attorney or paralegal is tasked with completing, in terms of it being primary, secondary, or evidential, or specifically the material that needs to be researched (such as legal articles).  Nature of law specifically refers to the categories of law that one is trying to research, and are as varied as the categories of law itself.   Some particular areas of legal research can involve particular categories of material.  Often a paralegal or researcher will be tasked, on the basis of the work of their firm, with research laws related to that category of law, but since many legal actions cross these legal categorical boundaries, it is not uncommon for a researcher to perform research outside of their realm of experience…

 

 

Legal research, when tended as interoffice reports within a firm or organization, in presentation to the courts, or in publication of legal articles, are generally required to adhere to certain standards of legal writing.  Legal writing is accomplished according to particular formatting requirements and rules of citation, and commonly expected to rely heavily use of legal terms (or jargon) as well as clear, or concise arguments.  The basic idea though, is that anyone working in the profession would be able to gain the information they want by going to the specific area of the document based on its formatting.  Legal writing  is not writing performed in “lay terms,” since it is commonly directed to a very specified audience.   In relation to a court of legal proceeding, attempting to file a document without the proper legal format will often cause the document to be rejected flat out, regardless of the content of the document…

 

 

Legal research materials can be drawn from a number of different sources.  Almost all legal materials are published and presented in many different formats, what matters is finding where specifically to look for this information.  Most legal research materials are centered on either two categories of legal research – primary resources and secondary resources.  Primary resources refer to resources that refer directly to the letter of the law, or the law as written; which includes law as regulated by agencies or legislated by varying legislatures.  Secondary resources refer to articles, opinions, treatises, and other reference materials that describe laws as it relates to specific contexts, interpretations, and arguments.  Commonly, research materials can be found in number of areas, a brief listing of which can be found within…

 

 

Authority in legal research and writing is a description of the need for legal arguments to reference key sources that will support their writing.  In other words, it is a measure of research’s validity in terms of supporting its overall argument.   A legal motion is said to have to submit itself to authority, meaning either texts, laws, precedents, regulations, and similar legal resources by which the writing bases its argument.   Most authority is determined on primary and secondary sources, with primary, being the letter of the written law, holding the most authority.  Authority in secondary sources, which encompasses the rest of legal discourse, such as articles, treatises, case records, and judicial decisions, requires more comprehensive understanding and description, because not all secondary sources have the same authority as others…

 

 

Citations are a necessity for any piece of legal writing, and not in abstract terms.  Any legal document such as a motion or brief that does not feature citation will not even be examined by any legal organization or court.  Citation is the key purpose of legal research, as the presence of citation indicates not only research but also authority, which can emphasize the strength of the material used to support the argument. Ensuring that a legal document has the proper citation is one of the most important elements in drafting a legal argument, just like a criminal case has to check all evidence, a legal argument must be verifiable by the members of the legal institution that read the document as part of a legal proceeding.  An unchecked typo could cause an unseen error that could lead to a document to be rejected by the court…

 

 

There are many resources available to paralegals, attorneys, or law students who are looking to perform comprehensive legal research for the preparation of a case, motion or article.  Legal research supports an industry all its own, and because of this, it has produced a substantial amount of services to satisfy customer demand.   Listed within and described in depth  are nine search resources that will form the bulk of the tools a paralegal or legal researcher will use when researching their cases.  These include catalogs, which provide access to assorted legal services, digests, which index case material by subject, and annotations, which catalog secondary material based on the laws that is devised in reference to.  With the onset of the Internet, many of these tools are more accessible than they have even been, so knowing how they can work will be a requirement of being part of the modern legal profession…

 

 

Case law is predicated entirely on the laws that are interpreted and implemented, and even invalidated,  through the process of stare decisis, or judicial review; its rule of law is thus based on judicial opinions and precedents that are derived from these cases that are contested before a higher court judiciary.  Searching case laws is a vital part of nearly all legal actions, especially those that are based on questions of legal interpretation, where the point of the case contested is the interpretation of the law at hand.   Therefore. all of these articles are required to heavily site existing cases as a means of giving their cases authority.  Fortunately for paralegals, attorneys, and legal researchers, finding case law is far easier than it used to be…

 

 

“Statute” is the term most used in the legal profession to refer to a law that was created through legislation.  Thus, statutory law specifically examines statutes as they are written and legislated into being, unencumbered by secondary legal analysis from articles and treatises, and even of the opinions and precedents associated with judicial review.  Finding, reading,  and analyzing  statues are a key part of any legal action, as nearly every legal suit, motion, or argument  requires the authority associated with referencing the primary source of law upon which it is based, which are often the original statues.  While everyone knows laws exist, finding them, as written, can be somewhat tricky for a paralegal or legal researcher, especially if he or she is unaware of  where to look…