Upon completing this State Case Law unit, you will be able to:
- Explain the relationship of case law to the sources of law from other branches of government.
- Describe the mandatory or persuasive authority of state cases to other state cases and specific courts based upon precedent (stare decisis), the jurisdiction, and the hierarchical structure of the state court system.
- When presented with a case in print, Lexis, or Westlaw, distinguish the various parts of the opinion.
- Recognize case reporters containing state court opinions by name and citation and identify the courts and jurisdictions reported in each one.
- Analyze a case and determine its relevance to a legal issue in the context of a set of facts.
- Find both Westlaw Topics and Key Numbers and Lexis Headnotes and Topics and use them to find additional relevant cases by subject.
- Retrieve relevant state cases in Lexis, Westlaw and select free Internet resources by citation, party name, and keywords using the search functions and appropriate filters.
- Interpret citator signals and demonstrate using the Lexis and Westlaw citators how to update a case and locate additional cases and secondary sources citing to that case.
- When presented with a legal problem, identify key search terms and design an efficient legal research strategy for locating cases relevant to that problem.
- Cite a state case using the Bluebook and local court rules and be able to interpret the citation.
