State Courts

INTRODUCTION

Just as the federal courts interpret federal statutes and decide matters of federal common law, the state courts are the arbiters of issues of state law. They interpret the state's constitution and statutes, and have broad powers in developing common law doctrines through judicial decisions.

Also like the federal system, the courts in each state are arranged in a hierarchical format. Appellate courts decide points of law and establish rules binding throughout the state, while trial courts handle the bulk of judicial business and are the courts with which most people come in contact. In most states, these local courts not only handle litigation but maintain documents such as deeds and wills.

Trial courts go by different names in different states. Some states have circuit courts, some district courts or superior courts, and two states have courts of common pleas. Each state has trial courts with general jurisdiction to hear civil and criminal matters, but most also have courts of limited jurisdiction in specialized areas, such as probate, traffic, or small claims.

Every state has a court of last resort, which hears appeals and has the final word on interpretation of state law. This high court is called the Supreme Court in most states, but there are a few local variations. In Maine and Massachusetts, the court of last resort is called the Supreme Judicial Court, and in Maryland and New York it is called the Court of Appeals. (Just to confuse matters further, the Supreme Court in New York's court system is the general trial court.)

Only 10 states have a simple two-tiered judicial system with just trial courts and a supreme court. The others also have intermediate appellate courts, which generally handle most appeals from trial court judgments. Most states have procedures similar to the federal court system, with an automatic right of appeal to the intermediate level and discretionary review by the court of last resort. A few intermediate courts do not hear direct appeals but instead handle cases assigned to them by the state supreme court.

Intermediate appellate courts have existed for more than a century in a few states, but most have been established since the 1960s to relieve the crowded dockets of state supreme courts. The most recent states to add appellate courts are Nebraska (1991) and Mississippi (1993). North Dakota has a temporary Court of Appeals, established in 1987 and scheduled to dissolve on January 1, 2000. Kansas is on its second Court of Appeals, established in 1977; the first existed only from 1895 to 1901, and was abolished when the Kansas Supreme Court expanded from three to seven justices.

Several states have even more complicated court systems, with separate appellate courts for different subject matters. A few states have more than one intermediate appellate court, and Oklahoma and Texas each have two courts of last resort-a Supreme Court for civil matters and a Court of Criminal Appeals with exclusively criminal jurisdiction. Alabama and Tennessee also have Courts of Criminal Appeals, but in their systems these are intermediate appellate courts.

Structural differences are not the only distinctions among state court systems. Because states vary so dramatically in population and therefore in the amount of work their courts must handle, there are significant practical differences in the body of legal doctrine created by court decisions. State court research is different in large states with hundreds of judges than in states with just a few dozen judges. Because larger states have more courts and more litigation, they produce more cases to guide future disputes. In a smaller state, it is more often necessary to see how neighboring states have handled similar issues. For example, since 1945 the Nevada Supreme Court has cited California cases more than 1,000 times, while the California Supreme Court has such an extensive body of California case law with which to work that it only looks to its neighboring court once or twice a year. The amount of case law in the two states mandates different research approaches when confronted with new legal issues.

Large states produce not only more case law but a more extensive body of legal literature generally. Larger states have more law schools and therefore more law reviews. Their substantial lawyer population can support the publication of state legal encyclopedias, such as California Jurisprudence 3d , and extensive sets of specialized treatises and practice guides. Less populous states may have few secondary sources available. For the most part, this chapter examines basic resources available for all states.

Reference Sources

Researchers often survey cases or court practices throughout the country. Even when study focuses on a specific jurisdiction, the procedures and decisions in other states can be highly influential. This section discusses resources providing broad access to information about state courts in general and surveys ways to find background information on courts in specific states. It focuses on guides explaining the structure and operation of courts, and directories with access information for trial and appellate courts in each state.

Guides

Because state court systems vary so much, familiarity with the structure and terminology used in a particular jurisdiction is important in understanding the nature and effect of its court decisions. Several reference tools provide charts for each state showing the jurisdiction of the various courts and the relationships among them.

The Court Statistics Project of the National Center for State Courts is the leading source for charts of state court structures. These charts appear in several sources, including State Court Caseload Statistics (National Center for State Courts, annual), State Court Organization 1993 (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995), Legal Researcher's Desk Reference (Infosources Publishing, biennial), and BNA's Directory of State and Federal Courts, Judges, and Clerks (BNA, biennial). Slightly adapted versions appear in WANT'S Federal-State Court Directory and Directory of State Court Clerks and County Courthouses (WANT Publishing, annual).

State Court Organization 1993 , the third edition of a work revised every six or seven years, provides the broadest range of information on the structure and jurisdiction of state court systems. The charts in Part 7 of this volume present for each state the different courts, the types of cases heard by each, and the routes of appeal. Exhibit 12-1 shows the chart on the structure of the Massachusetts court system. Information on each of several departments of the Trial Court of the Commonwealth includes the number of judges, a summary of case types, and a statement indicating whether or not jury trials are held. Coverage of the Appeals Court and Supreme Judicial Court shows the jurisdiction of each court and the number of judges each has. The arrows show that some appeals of trial court decisions go to the Appeals Court and some directly to the Supreme Judicial Court. (The higher court can take cases directly if they present novel questions of law or involve matters of constitutional interpretation or significant public interest.)

The rest of the State Court Organization 1993 volume covers a range of other matters, such as selection of judges, court governance, trial and appellate court procedures, juries, and sentencing. Tables, usually based on survey responses, provide convenient comparisons of state procedures and policies. Table 32, for instance, examines rules governing the use of cameras in trial and appellate courts; entries for each court indicate its type (court of last resort, intermediate appellate court, general jurisdiction, limited jurisdiction), the dates experimental and permanent policies were established, and whether consent of the parties is required. Tables include footnotes with more detail on specific state variations. Each of the seven subject sections of the volume begins with an introductory overview and a bibliography of research sources.

Chapter 4 of The Book of the States (Council of State Governments, biennial), "The Judiciary," includes several tables outlining the structure and organization of state courts. Much of its focus is on the way judges are chosen, compensated, and removed from office, but it also lists the appellate and trial courts in each state and the number of judges sitting on each court. Most of its information is condensed from data in State Court Organization 1993 and State Court Caseload Statistics .

Several sources provide a more general, narrative introduction to state courts. Harry P. Stumpf and John H. Culver's The Politics of State Courts (Longman, 1992) is an introductory text examining the hierarchy and organization of state court systems, politics of judicial selection, processes in civil and criminal proceedings, and appellate decision making. Charts on state court structures and caseloads are included, and each chapter includes a lengthy list of articles and books for further study. Robert A. Carp and Ronald Stidham's Judicial Process in America (CQ Press, 4th ed., 1998) is a more general work surveying many of the same issues, although much of its emphasis is on the federal courts. G. Alan Tarr and Mary Cornelia Aldis Porter's State Supreme Courts in State and Nation (Yale University Press, 1988) is a more focused study of the political role of the state judiciary, based on case studies of the supreme courts of Alabama, Ohio, and New Jersey. Extensive footnotes provide references to cases and other sources.

From time to time law reviews publish symposium issues on the role of state courts in the legal system. A recent example, with 10 articles and a panel discussion, is "The Future of State Supreme Courts as Institutions in the Law" in the May 1997 issue of the Notre Dame Law Review (volume 72, number 4). John B. Wefing's "State Supreme Court Justices: Who Are They?," 32 New Eng. L. Rev. 49 (1997), compiles statistical information on the men and women who staff the state courts of last resort, including gender, race, age, education, and prior judicial experience.

Works of national scope can only generalize on state court procedures, so it is usually helpful to find resources focusing on a specific court system. Several state governments have published guides to their court systems. Most of these are short pamphlets with history, charts showing court organization and the processes in civil and criminal proceedings, and perhaps a short glossary of legal terms. Examples include A Guide to Arizona Courts (Arizona Supreme Court, 1997); I'll See You in Court: A Consumer Guide to the Minnesota Court System (Minnesota Supreme Court, annual); and Citizen's Guide to Nebraska's Courts (Nebraska Supreme Court, 1993). Useful guides are also prepared by professional or civil organizations, such as A Resource Guide to Oklahoma Courts (League of Women Voters of Oklahoma Citizen Education Fund, 1994).

Some resources formerly prepared for print distribution are now more widely available on the Internet, such as the New York State Bar Association's The Courts of New York: A Guide to Court Procedures, with a Glossary of Legal Terms ( http://www.nysba.org/public/courts.html ), and A Citizen's Guide to Washington's Courts (http://198.187.0.226/courts/guide/home.htm ) from the Office of the Administrator for the Courts for the Washington State Judiciary. More material such as this is becoming available from state court administrators. Some sites offer not only information on the courts but guides to the legal system, as well as instructions and forms for filing court actions. The Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, has one of the most extensive and helpful sites (http://www.maricopa.gov/supcrt/supcrt.html ).

Links from general state homepages usually lead to descriptive information about each branch of government, including the courts. Some judiciary sites contain little information, but most explain the scope of each court's jurisdiction and provide historical and biographical information. New York's court system sponsors, with the New York Law Journal , an extensive "New York Courts and Law Guide" site (http://www.nylj.com/guide/ ) that contains links to more than 100 documents, such as the New York State Bar Association's The Courts of New York . Other documents, prepared by various private and governmental sources, include overviews of specific courts and guides to dozens of legal topics, such as adoption, employment discrimination, housing law, and estate planning.

Several collections provide access to state court Web sites. Some of these focus on sources for court opinions, but more general guides are provided by the National Center for State Courts (http://ncsc.dni.us/court/sites/courts.htm ); the Center for Information Law and Policy's State Court Locator (http://www.cilp.org/State-Ct/ ); and Superior Information Services, Inc., a Web site development company (http://www.courts. net/ ). Each of these sites provides links to state court systems and to individual courts throughout the country.

Directories

Courts are covered in most of the general state directories discussed in Chapter 11, but they are also the focus of several specialized resources. Directories of state courts serve several distinct purposes. Some focus on courts as policy-making institutions, with biographical information on appellate judges, while others provide contact information for people in search of court records. For example, trial court decisions are not published in most states, so it may be necessary to contact a court clerk's office to obtain copies of opinions or other documents.

The leading source for biographical information is The American Bench (Forster-Long, biennial). This thick tome covers judges throughout the country and at every court level. Each state has a separate section, which begins with a listing of courts, indicating the geographic and subject jurisdiction of each. These introductory sections list the names of the judges for each court, but provide no contact information. Maps of federal and state district boundaries follow, and then an alphabetical listing of judges providing addresses and telephone numbers. For perhaps half of the 18,000 judges listed, biographical information is also available. The biographies are supplied by the judges; most are rather short, but a few go on for two pages or more. An Alphabetical Name Index at the front of the volume indicates the state and court for all judges listed.

The Judicial Yellow Book (Leadership Directories, semiannual) is an excellent source for information on state appellate courts. It includes brief biographies for judges, with photographs of some, and lists judicial administrators, court staff, secretaries, and law clerks. The jurisdiction of each appellate court is noted, and contact information includes addresses of homepages. Judges are indexed by name and by law school. The Judicial Yellow Book is available online through both WESTLAW (JUDYB) and LEXIS-NEXIS (YBJUD).

West's Legal Directory includes information on courts that is accessible through WESTLAW (WLD-COURT database) and on the Internet (http://www.wld.com/ ). The court listings can be found in the "Attorney Resources" section of the Internet site (http://www.wld.com/attorney/ ). Contact information and an outline of the court's jurisdiction are provided. The WLD-JUDGE database on WESTLAW covers trial and appellate judges, and has biographical data, including lists of published works, representative cases, and classes taught. Another Internet source, InfoSpace, has information on appellate courts and court administrators from Carroll's State Directory (http://www.infospace.com ) or through FindLaw (https://www.findlaw.com/11stategov/directories/courts.html ).

Tables in the front of court reports can be a valuable source for quickly identifying appellate court judges. West Publishing (now West Group) began providing this information in each of its series containing state court decisions in 1889. New appointments, retirements, and other changes in status are noted in footnotes. Court reports for individual states also list the judges whose opinions appear in the volume, and some go on to include lists of trial court judges, court administrators, and other officers such as attorneys general.

Other directories focus on the courts themselves rather than the judges. One of the most convenient and comprehensive is BNA's Directory of State and Federal Courts, Judges, and Clerks (BNA, biennial). Sections for each state begin with charts of the court structure and then list appellate, trial, and specialized courts. Court mailing addresses and Web sites are included, as are telephone numbers for each judge. The geographic coverage of each court is noted, but not the subject jurisdiction or the types of records held by the courts. A geographical jurisdiction index indicates the pages on which courts for particular counties appear, and a personal name index lists all judges and clerks in the volume.

WANT's Federal-State Court Directory (WANT Publishing, annual) includes versions of the useful charts showing the structure of each state's courts, but beyond that its directory information for states is slim. Each state is limited to one page (including the structural chart), listing the supreme court justices and the court administrator, and a few executive offices. The entries for state supreme courts are available on the Internet (http://www.courts.com/directory.html ).

Another WANT publication, Directory of State Court Clerks and County Courthouses (annual) is a better source for coverage of state courts. It lists the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of clerks of appellate and trial courts, and indicates the counties in each judicial circuit or district. It also covers county clerks, attorneys general, and state corporation commission offices, and includes instructions for obtaining vital statistics records, deed records, and probate information. The charts of each state's court structure are included here as well.

Other directories provide extensive information on obtaining court records. The leading publisher in this field is BRB Publications in Tempe, Arizona, which produces several guides to public and court records. Its basic guide is The Librarian's Guide to Public Records (annual), which provides a good beginning overview. An introduction explains methods of searching for public records, with a quick summary of state and federal court organization and recordkeeping procedures. The main body of the guide is a state-by-state directory of records sources. For each state, an introductory page provides general help numbers and a list of major state Internet sites. This is followed by a list of statewide agencies with public records, and a county-by-county listing of courts and recording offices with addresses, telephone numbers, and office hours. A "What You Need to Know" page includes details of court structure, searching hints, and sources for online access. This book is also available under a different imprint, with only slight modifications, as Find Public Records Fast: The Complete State, County, and Courthouse Locator (Facts on Demand Press, rev. ed., 1998).

BRB Publications also issues several other more specific works on records sources. Its major state court directory, Sourcebook of County Court Records (4th ed., 1998), lists the same courts as The Librarian's Guide to Public Records but with more detailed entries. It includes information about the records available from each court and the form of payment accepted. Public Records Online: The National Guide to Private and Governmental Online Sources of Public Records (Facts on Demand Press, 1997) surveys electronic sources, and Sourcebook of Local Court and County Record Retrievers (BRB, 1998) indicates what records are available in each jurisdiction and provides information on companies that can retrieve these records for a fee. Information on these firms, most of which are members of the Public Record Retriever Network, includes address, telephone number, billing, and average turnaround time.

A similar work, The Guide to Background Investigations: A Comprehensive Source Directory for Employee Screening and Background Investigations (T.I.S.I., 8th ed., 1998), provides listings comparable to those in BRB's Sourcebook of County Court Records , with coverage of procedures for obtaining criminal and civil court documents as well as other records from state agencies. Dennis King's Get the Facts on Anyone (Macmillan, 2d ed., 1995), although not a directory, provides a thorough overview of an investigator's methods for finding information on individuals and organizations. Chapter 9, "Court Records," covers such topics as searching court indexes, studying case files, and obtaining criminal records.

Two court directories that may be useful but are not as regularly updated are Mark J. A. Yannone's National Directory of Courts of Law (Information Resources Press, 1991) and Elizabeth Petty Bentley's County Courthouse Book (Genealogical Publishing, 2d ed., 1995). The latter work includes some information on types of records held and procedures for obtaining copies.

A final directory, National Directory of Prosecuting Attorneys (National District Attorneys Association, biennial), focuses on officers of the court rather than the courts themselves. It lists the chief prosecutors in each state jurisdiction and includes an index by name. An appendix provides background information on each state's prosecutorial system, including the constitutional or statutory basis, organization, and scope of jurisdiction under which prosecutors operate.

Statistics

The major source for state court statistics is the National Center for State Courts Court Statistics Project. The project's annual report, Examining the Work of State Courts , analyzes the business of trial and appellate courts, with numerous charts and graphs showing trends in caseloads and filings in trial and appellate courts. Cases are examined by subject, with separate sections on tort, domestic relations, and criminal proceedings. The report is designed to present conclusions, not just raw data, and each section includes a thorough, straightforward discussion of major issues and findings.

The data are found in a separate annual supplement, State Court Caseload Statistics . In addition to extensive tables with caseload figures, this volume include some useful features, such as the state court structure charts found in State Court Organization and tables on jurisdiction and reporting practices in each state. Figure C, for instance, lists the maximum dollar amount and procedures for small claims courts, and Figure G lists the number of judges for the various components of each state's court system. Several of the charts, however, simply focus on the methods of counting cases for statistical purposes. A small sampling of NCSC statistics, Caseload Highlights , is available on the Internet (http://www.ncsc.dni.us/research.htm) .

More specialized statistics are also available. Felony Sentences in State Courts (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, biennial) is a brief bulletin with about a dozen tables providing national totals and composites, but no information for individual states. Much of its data also appear in Section 5, "Judicial Processing of Defendants," in the Bureau's Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (annual). Juvenile Court Statistics (U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Pre, annual) provides information on juvenile cases by type, age, sex, and race. Its two major sections cover delinquency cases (criminal matters) and status offense cases (behavior that is an offense only when committed by a minor). An appendix lists the sources of data for each state, including a few annual reports but mostly unpublished data files.

Two databases of state court cases available on the Internet from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research make it possible to perform statistical analyses based on type of case, parties, disposition, and other factors. A civil cases database (http://teddy.law.cornell.edu:8090/questcvs.htm ) covers a sample of about 30,000 tort, contract, and property cases terminated in 1992, while a civil trials database (http://teddy.law.cornell.edu:8090/questtrs.htm ) is limited to about 6,500 cases that went to jury trial.

Court Decisions

Local trial courts may be the judicial tribunals with which most people come in contact, but their role in creating legal doctrine is minimal. Juries decide cases on the basis of the facts before them. Trial judges must decide how to apply the laws, but their decisions rarely result in written opinions. Even fewer of these opinions are published and available to serve as guides in other proceedings, and those that are published have limited value as precedent.

Creating and refining the law, on the other hand, is a principal purpose of the appellate courts. Their decisions are available in published volumes, through commercial databases, and, to a growing extent, on the Internet.

In some ways, publication of court decisions has come full circle in the past 150 years. In the nineteenth century, courts published their own decisions, and each state had a series of reports similar to the U.S. Reports containing the case law of its supreme court. Efficient and timely commercial publication, however, caused several states to reconsider the expense of producing their own series of publications, and in the past 50 years 19 states have discontinued their official reports. With the growth of the Internet, however, many courts are once again disseminating their own opinions.

Printed Reports

Generally, state court opinions are published in two sources. One source is an official series of court reports published by or under the auspices of the state itself, and the other is part of a comprehensive reporting system covering cases from appellate courts in every state, West Group's National Reporter System. The same opinions appear in both sources, and the two versions are known as parallel citations . There are two exceptions to this rule, namely old cases and recent cases from some states. National Reporter System coverage for most states did not begin until the 1880s, so earlier cases appear only in the official state reports. In the past several decades, a number of states have discontinued publication of their official reports, so recent cases from those states may appear only in the National Reporter System.

The series of official state reports follow a standard format of designation and citation. The title page may have a long title such as Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Vermont , but the volume's spine is labeled Vermont Reports and the series is cited simply as "Vt." Exhibit 12-2 shows the first two pages of a decision in Volume 417 of Massachusetts Reports . The case, Hamilton v. Ganias , begins on page 666 and is therefore cited as "417 Mass. 666 (1994)." The opinion of the court begins near the bottom of page 666, following the name of the justice who wrote the opinion (Wilkins, J.).

Most states with intermediate appellate courts publish separate series of reports for those courts, such as Massachusetts Appeals Court Reports . These reports add the abbreviation "App." to the name of the state in a citation, as in "Mass. App." A few states combine the decisions of their supreme and appellate courts in one series, but a citation to an intermediate appellate court decision must identify the court either as part of the citation or in parentheses preceding the date of the decision. The abbreviation for the state, standing alone, means that the case is a decision of the state's court of last resort.

There are some oddities in official reports. Arkansas Reports and Arkansas Appellate Reports are bound together, so that the spine of each volume indicates two volume numbers, as in "328 Ark. / 57 Ark. App." This format undoubtedly simplifies the state's distribution of court reports, and it allows both courts to publish at the same time even though the Arkansas Court of Appeals generally issues fewer published opinions than the Arkansas Supreme Court. On the shelf, however, it makes the courts look like oddly conjoined twins.

Every state except Alaska has had an official series of reports, such as Massachusetts Reports , for most of its history, but, like the lower federal courts, a number of states now rely on commercial publication of their decisions. Despite this prevailing trend, new seies continue to spring up. Nebraska Appellate Reports began publication in 1994 with the first decisions of Nebraska's new Court of Appeals.

The major commercial publisher of state court decisions is West Group, publisher of the Supreme Court Reporter, Federal Reporter , and Federal Supplement . Its National Reporter System dates back to the 1880s and covers the entire country with uniform editorial treatment. West publishes state cases in a series of seven regional reporters , each covering a section of the country. These reporters are: Atlantic (A.2d), North Eastern (N.E.2d), North Western (N.W.2d), Pacific (P.2d), South Eastern (S.E.2d), Southern (So.2d), and South Western (S.W.2d). Note that all these publications are in their second series, each of which began after the first 200 or 300 volumes. Two of the sets (Pacific and South Western ) are fast approaching 1,000 volumes in their second series, and will probably soon become P.3d and S.W.3d. Exhibit 12-3 shows the first page of the Hamilton v. Ganias decision, as printed in West's North Eastern Reporter 2d . Note that it includes the same synopsis and headnote treatment as cases in West's reporters of federal court decisions.

Geographers and pollsters have tried for years to divide the country into identifiable regions, and none is ever entirely successful. Is Ohio, for example, in the East or the Midwest? West's regions were devised in the 1880s and may once have made some sense. In part, they were simply based on convenience. The North Eastern Reporter began publication in 1885, and includes Massachusetts, the largest of the New England states, along with Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and New York. Decisions from the other New England states appear in the Atlantic Reporter , which began a year later and includes Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Virtually unchanged for more than a century, the West regions are simply arbitrary groups of states with no geographic meaning. Kentucky is in the South Western Reporter , and Kansas is in the Pacific Reporter . This makes about as much sense as putting the Atlanta Falcons and the Carolina Panthers in the Western Division of the National Football Conference, and ultimately it matters as little.

Also part of the National Reporter System are separate reporters for two of the states with the busiest court systems, West's California Reporter (Cal. Rptr. 2d) and New York Supplement (N.Y.S.2d). The decisions from these states would swamp their regional reporters, so their lower court cases are excluded from the Pacific and North Eastern Reporters . The New York Supplement dates all the way back to 1888, but the California Reporter only began in 1959. Decisions of the California Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals appear in both regional and state reporters, so for these cases there are three parallel citations. Table 12-1 indicates current sources, with Bluebook abbreviations, for opinions from courts of last resort and intermediate appellate courts in each state.

In addition to the regional reporters, West also publishes what are known as offprint reporters containing the decisions of individual states but with regional reporter pagination. Thus, West's Massachusetts Decisions contains the text of Hamilton v. Ganias exactly as printed in the North Eastern Reporter (and as shown in Exhibit 12-3), including the N.E.2d volume and page numbers. Massachusetts Decisions may appear on library shelves, but it is never listed as a source for court decisions because it does not have its own numbering system. It is simply a way for Massachusetts lawyers to buy their own state's cases without having to fill their shelves with cases from Illinois and Indiana as well. Each volume of Massachusetts Decisions may contain cases from several North Eastern Reporter 2d volumes. These offprint reporters are published for more than 30 states. If a state has discontinued its official reports, the offprint series is the only published source limited to its case law. The opinion in Hamilton v. Ganias , for example, is the same in Exhibits 12-2 and 12-3.

In those states in which cases are published in both official and National Reporter System editions, the two versions should be identical with only different editorial headnotes. Case citations have traditionally included both the official reports and West's regional reporter so that researchers could find decisions no matter which source was available. References to cases in legal encyclopedias or texts generally include both of these parallel citations.

In recent years, however, this standard citation format has seen two changes. A change for the worse came in 1991, when the 15th edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation decreed that law reviews should cite cases only to the regional reporter. A law review following this rule, as most do, would omit the Massachusetts Reports citation for Hamilton v. Ganias , even if it is published in Massachusetts and focuses on issues of state law. The Bluebook's edict has simplified the work of law review editors, but at the expense of people who use official state reports. (Another problem with this Bluebook rule is that inexperienced writers sometimes forget to identify the jurisdiction in parentheses, making the citation nearly meaningless.)

The exclusion of state reports in citations remains the rule in the current 16th edition (1996) of the Bluebook , but there has been an additional change. The preferred source is now a public domain citation if one is available. These citations, in which the court assigns each decision a number as it is issued, are now used in six states. The first of these, Louisiana, began citing its cases by docket number and date in 1994. Its format, as in "97-0956 (La. 05/01/98)," has not been duplicated in other jurisdictions. Instead, the five other states all follow a standard format using the state's postal code and sequential decision numbers. Under this approach, "1999 SD 1" represents the first decision issued in 1999 by the South Dakota Supreme Court. Besides South Dakota, which began using public domain citations in 1996, the other states adopting this format are Maine (1997), North Dakota (1997), Oklahoma (1997), and Montana (1998).

The other feature of cases using public domain citations is that each paragraph in a decision is numbered. Together, the numbered decisions and paragraphs mean that a particular discussion or quotation from a case can be cited from any print or electronic source and then found by someone using a different source or different medium, without reliance on a specific printed version.

The new public domain citations have the most significance for electronic retrieval of decisions, but they appear in the printed sources as well. West's regional reporters note the citations at the beginning of decisions from public domain states. Similarly, citations in official state reports are indicated at the beginning of some decisions in the regional reporters. Note in Exhibit 12-3 that the official citation, 417 Mass. 666, appears above the name of the case. Another feature shown in this exhibit is star paging , which indicates the exact page breaks in the official reports. Thus the symbol ^667 in the middle of the right-hand column shows the break between the text shown on the first page of Exhibit 12-2 and that shown on the second page of Exhibit 12-2 in the official reports.

The regional reporters include citations and star paging for fewer than half the states with official reports. A few states have citations at the beginning of decisions but no star paging, and others have no references at all. Some official reports are simply published too slowly for their citations to be included in the regional reporter. West's reporters, however, include the paragraph numbers in public domain citation states, and opinions instead of using paragraph numbers, the Southern Reporter indicates the page breaks in each slip opinion.

The official and regional reporters have several features in common. Most are published first in weekly advance sheets to provide current notice of new court decisions, and then several advance sheets are compiled into a bound volume. Both advance sheets and bound volumes include tables of the cases they contain; the regional reporters have an alphabetical table of all cases and separate tables for each jurisdiction. Every volume includes a digest or index to provide subject access to the cases. West's digests are based on its familiar key number system, while the state reports employ a variety of approaches. Some have extensive digests, while others have brief indexes with nothing but broad headings and strings of page numbers. In addition to an index, Kansas Reports includes a complete table of all cases ever overruled by the Kansas Supreme Court. Ohio State Reports 3d and Ohio Appellate Reports 3d include lists of opinions written by each judge.

While West's regional reporters follow a standard pattern, the official reports are a diverse lot. Some of these series are published by the states themselves, but several are issued under official sanction by commercial publishers. Many of these are published by West. For some states, the official and regional versions of cases appear identical, except for the number on each page. Other West series have the same synopses and headnotes as the regional reporter but a different layout, and a few series formerly published by other companies receive different editorial headnotes. These series may have headnotes keyed to case-finding publications for their specific states. Headnotes in California's and Wisconsin's reports are assigned section numbers from California Digest of Official Reports (West Group [originally Bancroft-Whitney]) and Callaghan's Wisconsin Digest (West Group [originally Callaghan]). Even though these are now West publications, they have retained their own editorial approaches to state case law. North Carolina Reports , which is published by the state, has headnotes keyed to the state legal encyclopedia, Strong's North Carolina Index 4th (West Group [originally Lawyers Cooperative]).

Having different editorial approaches in the state reports and the National Reporter System can be helpful at times. Some judicial opinions are straightforward and clearly delineate the scope of their holdings, but not every judge writes plainly and simply. Some opinions are deliberately vague because a court may rely on future cases to shape the law over the course of time. Just as two people may see a painting differently, two people may draw different conclusions from the same court opinion. The lack of an independent perspective in the state reports make it more likely that a West editor's interpretation will become the standard view of a case. To make matters worse, that interpretation extends beyond reports published by West to include some reports published by the states that now use West synopses and headnotes under license. Other states, however, continue to provide their own editorial embellishments. Michigan Reports and Michigan Appeals Reports , for example, have thorough, precise syllabi similar to those published in the United States Reports .

The syllabus and headnotes preceding an opinion, of course, are merely editorial features designed to make decisions easier to understand. The opinion itself is the lawÑexcept in Ohio, where the Ohio Supreme Court prepares an official syllabus to announce its holding. The syllabus controls if there are discrepancies between it and the opinion. The syllabus and opinion must be read together, of course, because the opinion provides the facts and discussion that explain the scope of the holding.

The state reports include other features not found in the National Reporter System. Even those published by WestÑincluding the offprint reportersÑtend to include more extensive listings of judges than those in the National Reporter System. Some states simply list the appellate judges, but others also list every trial court judge in the state. Montana Reports includes court reporters, clerks, and city attorneys as well, and North Carolina Reports lists assistant attorneys general, district attorneys, and public defenders. Several state reports include lists of newly admitted attorneys, and some publish notices of disciplined attorneys. Other individual touches appear here and there. West's Hawai`i Reports , for example, includes the `okina as the sixth letter in the state's name. (This symbol, which looks like an upside-down apostrophe, is actually a letter of the Hawai`ian alphabet and represents a glottal stop between vowels.)

Several reports include photographs of the justices. This may seem a trifle, but it can help considerably to humanize the decisions published in otherwise drab series of hundreds of identical volumes. Michigan Reports has included a color photograph of the assembled Michigan Supreme Court every two years since 1973, and the Ohio Supreme Court, looking cheerful and collegial, is featured in every three to five volumes of Ohio State Reports . Georgia Reports and Georgia Appeals Reports of their jurists, but these are not as endearing as the group shots from Michigan and Ohio. The Wisconsin Supreme Court is photographed on the bench, sitting beneath a huge mural by Albert Herter of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. To take in the entire court and the painting, the photograph ends up with a row of tiny justices along its bottom margin.

While West's National Reporter System now covers all published appellate court decisions throughout the country, its oldest cases date from 1879. This leaves nearly a century of earlier decisions for which individual state reports are the only sources. Like the U.S. Reports , many of the state reports began as unofficial enterprises but were later taken over by the government. In 25 of the older states, the early volumes were once cited by the names of their reporters, like the early nominative Supreme Court reports. In 13 of these states, the nominative volumes were incorporated into the official numbering system, much like the volumes by Dallas, Cranch, and their successors were assigned U.S. Reports numbers. In the other 12 states, however, early nominative reports are still cited today by their reporters' names.

This is not a purely academic matter for legal historians. Just as Marbury v. Madison , 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), is still read and cited as defining the scope of federal judicial power, state courts continue to look to their earliest decisions to aid in the resolution of current controversies. Some cases in the nominative reports remain a vital part of state common law. An Alabama Supreme Court decision in Stewart & Porter's Reports may still guide an Alabama court today. In Gober v. Stubbs , 682 So. 2d 430 (1996), Justice Gorman Houston quotes Aldridge v. Tuscumbia C. & D.R.R. , 2 Stew. & P. 199 (Ala. 1832), in which "this Court eloquently and succinctly defined a Ôpublic use.'" It may seem odd from a modernist perspective to refer to a decision of "this Court" after 164 years, but it is indeed the same lawmaking body. A rule established in 1832 is still part of the law of the state.

Alabama had only four nominative reporters before the official series of Alabama Reports began. Some states, particularly New York and Pennsylvania, have a far more extensive and confusing roster of reports. In Vermont, the first reporter was Nathaniel Chipman (1752-1843), who also served as chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, U.S. district court judge, and U.S. senator. A few years later, he was followed by his younger brother Daniel Chipman, so their reports are cited as "N. Chip." and "D. Chip."

Finding these early nominative reports can be troublesome because abbreviations such as "N. Chip." are no longer familiar to many readers. A citation to a nominative reporter should, but does not always, indicate the jurisdiction and court in parentheses. Even if it does not, standard sources such as Mary Miles Prince's Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations (William S. Hein & Co., 4th ed., 1993) or Donald Raistrick's Index of Legal Citations and Abbreviations (Bowker-Saur, 2d ed., 1993) can explain what the citations stand for and what jurisdictions they represent.

To place nominative reports into perspective among a state's court reports, several tables are published listing the reported case law from each state. The simplest and most convenient is found in Table 1 of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation . For each appellate court, this table lists the sources with their dates of coverage and proper abbreviation forms. More extensive tables of early reports are published as appendixes in several legal research texts. These include Morris L. Cohen, Robert C. Berring, and Kent C. Olson's How to Find the Law (West Publishing, 9th ed., 1989); Miles O. Price and Harry Bitner's Effective Legal Research (Little, Brown, 1953) (but not later editions of this work); and Frederick C. Hicks's Materials and Methods of Legal Research (Lawyers Cooperative, 3d ed., 1942). Keith Wiese's Hein's State Reports Checklist (William S. Hein & Co., 2d ed., 1990-date) provides an extensive list of reports and includes reprints of several earlier compilations, including the Price/Bitner and Hicks lists.

Reports cited by the names of their reporters are a thing of the past, but legal tradition dies hard. Sixteen of the current series of state reports still indicate the names of the state reporters on the spine. A few even provide a volume number for both the series (e.g., 165 Vermont) and the reporter (e.g., 32 Abbott), even though nobody but the reporter's immediate family would use the latter citation. This tradition even extends to some of the offprint reporters. West's Tennessee Decisions has only S.W.2d page numbers, but a spine label identifies a recent volume as "316 Tenn. (Walkup 4)."

In most states, only decisions from courts of last resort and intermediate appellate courts are published, and these courts have been the focus of this discussion. In some states, however, decisions are also published from other courts. For example, a few states have additional reports for trial court decisions, such as New York Miscellaneous Reports 2d and Ohio Miscellaneous Reports 2d , and several states have reports from tax courts or other specialized tribunals. Several of Pennsylvania's counties have their own reporters for trial court decisions. Whether decisions of these other courts are included within the scope of West's National Reporter System varies from state to state. Further information on decisions from these courts can be found in sources such as the Bluebook or Hein's State Reports Checklist .

Electronic Sources

While a law library's collection of printed volumes of court reports is the only comprehensive source for decisions dating back to the beginning of the state court systems, electronic sources provide more extensive coverage of modern decisions and are heavily used by researchers. Free Internet sites for recent decisions are available in most states, and commercial online and CD-ROM resources provide much deeper coverage.

Based on the wide availability of statutes, legislative information, and administrative codes on the Internet, one might assume that state courts would be turning to the Internet as a means of broadening access to their opinions. To date, however, developments are rather disappointing. Although nearly all state appellate courts have Web sites, some post no opinions. Others present recent opinions chronologically, but with no means of searching by subject. In some, the opinions must be downloaded because they cannot be viewed online. Even those sites with searchable databases generally do not begin coverage until the mid-1990s. This degree of access may be sufficient to begin a research project, but at this point it is inadequate for any serious investigation into state case law. The 1994 Hamilton v. Ganias case shown in this chapter is not available, let alone the cases from 1986 and 1991 on which it is based.

Those sites that simply provide access chronologically, or only by party name, are better than nothing, though, because they can provide the text of recent decisions cited in texts or articles. Several states, however, have sites that are worse than nothing because decisions are removed after just a few short weeks. A notice at Alaska's official court site, for example, states "Opinions are removed from this site once they are printed in Pacific Reporter, 2d, the designated official reporter of Alaskan appellate decisions." Idaho removes opinions after 60 days, and Washington after 90 days. Kentucky's web site has a few recent opinions that are accompanied by the following bizarre notice: "These opinions are not intended to be used for Legal Research. They are being provided for Informational Purposes only."

Considering the small investment required to store data electronically and maintain a Web site, these states are basically thumbing their noses at the public's right to learn about the workings of their government. The only people who can read decisions after 60 or 90 days are those with access to commercial databases or law libraries.

The best of the state court sites, by far, is the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network, which has decisions dating back to 1964. Several databases are available, including case law from Oklahoma and federal courts, statutes, court rules, attorney general opinions, and jury instructions. These can be searched separately or together, and results can be listed in chronological order or ranked for relevance. The search template for cases allows retrieval by citation, case name, court, author, or text.

A few other sites have some promising innovations. Mississippi only has decisions since 1996, but it is adding hypertext links to documents cited in its decisions. North Dakota has opinions since 1993 and allows searching by citation, party, trial judge, supreme court justice, and keyword. It also lists cases by topic under several dozen headings, with short summaries included for cases dating back to mid-1996. North Dakota also offers an e-mail notification service when new opinions are released.

Table 12-2 contains the addresses of Web sites providing free access to opinions from state courts of last resort. In some instances, these sites also provide access to decisions of intermediate appellate courts, but in several states those opinions are available at separate sites. Sites from which decisions are removed after a few weeks or months, or that are not being kept up-to-date, are excluded.

Any published list of Internet sites dates quickly, but several Internet resources for finding state court opinions are updated regularly.

• From FindLaw's State Resources page ( http://www..findlaw.com/11stategov/ ), "Courts" leads to court homepages (with or without opinions), and "Primary materials" leads to sites with opinions. The direct path to the list of statutes, cases, and other primary sources for a particular state is (https://www.findlaw.com/11stategov/xx/laws.html ), where xx is the state's postal abbreviation.
• Cornell's Legal Information Institute has a list of states (http://www.law.cornell.edu/opinions.html ), linking to a standardized form for each state indicating whether opinions are available from supreme courts and courts of appeals, as well as background and directory information for the state judiciary. The advantage of this approach is that the unlinked entries clearly indicate when opinions from a particular court are not available.
• Piper Resources State Court Directory (http://www.piperinfo.com/pl03/statedir.html ) focuses on sources for opinions, including subscription-based commercial sites. Each site includes scope of coverage (courts and dates) and notes on access restrictions and other material available.
• legal.online ( http://www.legalonline.com/courts.htm ) has a regularly updated guide to sites for federal and state courts, "Where to Find Court Opinions."
• Washburn University's State-Law page (http://lawlib.wuacc.edu/washlaw/uslaw/statelaw.html ) leads to judicial sites rather than opinion sites, but it links to a State Courts Broker (http://cat.wuacc.edu/Harvest/brokers/courts/query.html ) that searches more than two dozen sites with opinions.

The Internet court sites are most valuable as sources for obtaining the text of specific recent opinions known by name, date, or docket number. Searching for court opinions by subject, either from an individual state or through a multistate search engine such as Washburn's, may lead to a few relevant cases that can be used as beginning points in research, but it is no substitute for more comprehensive coverage in print or in online commercial databases.

For most states LEXIS-NEXIS and WESTLAW are the most comprehensive electronic sources for case law. Coverage varies significantly from state to state. WESTLAW has recently increased its retrospective coverage significantly, and now has the most extensive collection for most states. As competitors, however, both systems make sure that they keep up with each other's improvements in a particular market.

Both systems provide several means of access to state case law. One can search a particular state's courts or access a database combining those decisions with cases from the federal courts in the state. These more comprehensive databases may contain cases in which the federal courts apply or interpret state law, but they also include every Supreme Court case and every case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the state. In most instances, it is probably best to limit research at first to state court cases. In addition, both LEXIS-NEXIS and WESTLAW have extensive and powerful databases with the decisions of all jurisdictions, either limited to state courts or combining all federal and state case law. These are huge databases with more than four million documents. Table 12-3 shows the format used for identifying these various databases.

Two other commercial services also provide extensive access to court decisions on the Internet. These are LOIS (Law Office Information Systems) (http://www.pita.com ), and V. ( http://www.versuslaw.com ). These systems offer different approaches to searching court opinions. LOIS has an extensive template in which citation, party name, docket number, court, date, judge, or attorney name can be entered, as well as a "search all fields" blank for full-text access. V. has a simpler approach limited to search terms and a specified date range, but it accepts more flexible, natural-language searches.

LOIS and V. are generally less expensive than LEXIS-NEXIS and WESTLAW. V. has a variety of pricing plans, including an option for unlimited access during a single 24-hour period. LOIS is generally available by annual subscription only, but it is possible to purchase a one-day visitor's pass up to three times a year. One of these temporary subscriptions may be the most cost-effective means of electronic searching for someone who does not regularly need access to legal materials.

Table 12-4 indicates the beginning dates of coverage for the courts of last resort of each state through the four commercial systems. LOIS, unlike its competitors, does not yet cover all 50 states. For each state the earliest date is highlighted in bold. The systems also provide access to decisions of intermediate appellate courts. In a few instances, coverage for these courts is not as extensive, but in most states intermediate appellate courts are covered since their inception.

CD-ROM is another format for electronic access to case law that is found in many law firms and in some public law libraries. A disc cannot match the comprehensiveness of LEXIS-NEXIS or WESTLAW's multistate databases, but it is well suited for locating the decisions of individual states. For research focusing on one particular state, CD-ROMs can be a powerful and effective resource. The coverage is often comparable to that online (which is not surprising because the same publishers provide the data in both formats), and there are no charges incurred each time a search is performed. Most state case law CD-ROMs, however, are designed for lawyers who need access to legal information on a daily basis, and cost several hundred dollars with monthly license fees.

Two thorough directories of state court CD-ROM products are Chapter 27, "State Legal Publications and Information Sources," of Kendall F. Svengalis's Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual (Rhode Island LawPress, annual); and Directory of Law-Related CD-ROMs (Infosources Publishing, annual). Products are listed alphabetically by title in Directory of Law-Related CD-ROMs , but case law discs are indexed under "Court decisions-[state]."

Case Research

Researching court decisions is a similar process for both federal and state law. The same types of tools are used-digests, annotations, citators, electronic databases-and the search procedures are comparable. This section focuses on some resources designed for finding cases from individual states, and some that allow comprehensive researching of courts throughout the country.

Generally, it makes sense to begin a research project by looking for case law from one state. On an issue of state law, only the decisions of the home state are binding precedent. Any other decision may or may not be persuasive, depending on a number of factors such as the similarity in fact, the authority and reputation of the court and judge, the age of the opinion, and its treatment in other court decisions.

When examining a decision, even from one's home state, one must consider the place of the deciding court within the structure of the court system. Most published decisions are from appellate courts and are generally binding on lower courts within the state, but some decisions are from trial courts or specialized courts and may have little bearing in subsequent cases.

In examining the following resources, we look at the issue confronted by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Hamilton v. Ganias , the case presented in Exhibits 12-2 and 12-3. This is one of a series of decisions in which the court determined the scope of liability for a person who serves alcohol to someone who then causes an injury while intoxicated. The court first indicated in McGuiggan v. New England Tel. & Tel. Co. , 398 Mass. 152, 496 N.E.2d 141 (1986), that it would recognize a social host's liability to a third person injured by an intoxicated guest's negligent operation of a motor vehicle. In Manning v. Nobile , 411 Mass. 382, 582 N.E.2d 942 (1991), the court held that a social host was not liable for injuries an adult guest suffered as a result of consuming alcohol. The issue in the Hamilton case was whether this holding extended to an underage drinker. The court decided that the same reasoning should apply.

In these and related cases, the court has gradually defined the legal doctrine of social host liability in Massachusetts on the basis of specific cases presented to it. This is the way the common law operates. Whereas legislatures enact sets of rules at one time, a court develops the law on a gradual, case-by-case basis. This line of cases on social host liability can be found through several research methods.

State Digests

The official state reports have the answers to most questions of state law. The hard part, however, is finding those answers. Each volume of cases is usually indexed, but few states publish cumulative indexes providing access to more than one volume. Since the mid-1970s, every tenth volume of the Illinois Reports 2d has consisted of an index to the preceding nine volumes, but even this exception covers only a few volumes at a time-and it neglects decisions from the Illinois Appellate Court.

For comprehensive subject access to case law, researchers must turn to commercially published digests. A few states, such as California and Wisconsin, have their own unique digest systems, but the most widespread approach is the West key number digest system. Just as West Group publishes decisions of every state appellate court in its National Reporter System, it also publishes digests arranging the headnotes from these decisions by subject. Some of its digests cover a number of states, but the most convenient starting point is usually the digest for an individual state. These are published for every state but Delaware, Nevada, and Utah. The Dakota Digest and the Virginia and West Virginia Digest each covers two states, but the other 43 states have their own digests.

For some states, a single digest series covers all the decisions since the beginning of its reported case law, but many states have begun a second series for modern cases. Massachusetts is one of these states. West's Massachusetts Digest 2d (32 vols., 1986-date) supplements the original Massachusetts Digest Annotated (51 vols., 1933-84), which covers cases all the way back to 1761. New York has had four series, more than any other state, with cases since 1978 in New York Digest 4th . The site for most research is the current digest, with the older sets used only if nothing is found in the most recent set or if comprehensive historical research is needed.

Some states have digests that are called "second series," but have replaced rather than supplemented the earlier digests, and cover all reported case law in the state. Whether a state has one or two digests depends primarily on the amount of case law to be covered but it may also depend on consumer response to supplementary digests. Up until 1986, every digest which began a second series started coverage in 1930 or later. Since then, only Michigan Digest 2d in 1989 has taken this approach, and 15 other digests have published in second series with comprehensive retrospective coverage. Nineteen states still have their original digests, with individual volumes revised occasionally, but if these states publish new sets they will most likely be comprehensive.

Each of West's reporters uses the same key number system, and each of its state digests is organized in exactly the same manner. This minimizes differences in the structure of state law while allowing one to begin research in one state and expand it to others with ease. A state digest presents a comprehensive view of the case law of a particular state. In smaller jurisdictions without state legal encyclopedias and other specialized publications, the digest may be the most thorough and accessible summary of case law available.

West's digests have more than 400 topics, some broad ("Constitutional Law," "Criminal Law") and some narrow ("Abstracts of Title," "Cemeteries," "Party Walls"). A few old topics have been weeded out and a few new topics added, but the basic outline has changed little in more than 100 years. The classification schemes used for individual topics have been expanded and revised over time, but as the law changes, coverage of new issues is generally inadequate for several years. The law of social host liability has developed considerably in recent years, but cases on this issue appear together in the digest's "Intoxicating Liquors" topic under the key number for "Civil damage lawsÑPersons liableÑIn general." The 1986 volume of West's Massachusetts Digest 2d had no cases at all under this number. A decade later its pocket part had more than a dozen. Exhibit 12-4 shows a reference to the Hamilton case, as well as several other recent decisions, in the Massachusetts Digest .

In addition to cases from Massachusetts courts, West's Massachusetts Digest 2d covers cases from the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit originating in Massachusetts, and cases in the U.S. Supreme Court from Massachusetts state or federal courts. These federal cases can be useful even in state law research because federal courts must often apply and interpret state law. Although guided by state court decisions, they must often address issues on which the state courts have not yet ruled. In Exhibit 12-4, the first two notes are from a U.S. District Court decision applying Massachusetts law.

The most important part of many digest volumes is the annual pocket part supplement, which provides access to the recent cases. For newly developing areas of law, such as social host liability, this may be the place where all relevant cases are found. Supplements too bulky to fit in the back of the volume are issued as freestanding pamphlets, and eventually the material may be recompiled and republished as two separate volumes. Each digest is further updated between annual supplements by an additional pamphlet issued every few months, and the latest cases can be found through digests in recent reporter volumes and advance sheets.

Researchers can access state digests in two ways. The first is through the "Descriptive-Word Index," shelved at either the beginning or the end of the set. This index, usually occupying three or four volumes, lists factual and legal concepts appearing in the digest. The basic format is the same from state to state because the indexes are based on digest topics and key number definitions, rather than state case law. Even if a state has no cases on a particular issue, it remains in the index. Guardian and Ward key number 5, "Guardians in Socage," has had cases from only four states, and from just one state since 1900. Yet it remains in every digest and an entry under "Socage" appears in every state digest's descriptive-word index.

The descriptive-word indexes are not always responsive to developments in state case law. Whether "Social host" appears in the index varies from state to state, but its inclusion seems to have little relation to whether the state has cases on the issue. Georgia and Pennsylvania both have cases on social host liability, but neither index includes an entry under "Social host." The index volumes are updated with annual pocket parts, but these are invariably scrawny supplements that do not even attempt to keep track of state case law developments. Occasionally a specific entry will appear, such as "Shopping centerÑInjuries to child jumping over trench near loading dock," but generally and unfortunately the indexes are the neglected backwaters of the digests. A simpler and more reliable method to find cases in the digest bypasses the index. If other research approaches are used to find a relevant case, its headnotes can be used to determine appropriate digest topics and key numbers. A person researching social host liability in Massachusetts, for example, might read a law review article that discusses the McGuiggan v. New England Tel. & Tel. Co . and Manning v. Nobile cases cited earlier in this chapter. Those cases, as published n the North Eastern Reporter or on WESTLAW, contain headnotes classified to Intoxicating Liquors 299 and can lead directly to other cases, such as Hamilton v. Ganias , discussed earlier.

Each state digest also includes a "Table of Cases," listing decisions by plaintiff's name, and a "Defendant-Plaintiff Table." Both provide citations to regional and official reports, if available. The "Tables of Cases" list the key numbers under which case abstracts are found and indicate if there were any subsequent developments in the case such as an affirmance or reversal by a higher court. These tables are updated in annual pocket parts, but only the "Tables of Cases" are further updated in the interim supplements. For recent cases, it may also be necessary to check the "Cases Reported" tables in the reporter volumes and advance sheets. The regional reporter advance sheets list cases by jurisdiction, or by plaintiff only, but the bound volumes also include a table listing all cases alphabetically under both parties' names.

Another feature that may be of occasional use is the "Words and Phrases" table, generally found in a volume at the end of the set. Unlike the more general publication Words and Phrases , discussed in Chapter 2, this table does not reprint definitions but simply gives the names and citations of the cases (including the page on which the definition appears). It is not, therefore, as convenient a place to study the meaning of a term, but it is a handy research source because it is limited to a specific jurisdiction. Like the case tables, this feature is updated in pocket parts, supplements, and recent reporter volumes and advance sheets.

Multistate Digests

It may be necessary to expand research beyond an individual state for a number of reasons. Perhaps no cases on point can be found in the state's courts, making it necessary to look for relevant case law from other jurisdictions. Or perhaps the ruling case law from the state is old and seems ripe for reconsideration. More modern cases from other jurisdictions may persuade a state supreme court to reconsider its earlier position.

For research into the law of more than one state, the uniform editorial treatment of the West system is invaluable. It is a simple matter to transfer research from one state to another, or to resources covering all states at once.

Besides the digests for individual states, West Group publishes several digests with broader coverage of state courts. A series of regional digests match the coverage of West's regional reporters, while Decennial Digests contain references to cases from the entire country, including both federal and state courts.

West publishes digests covering four of its regional reporters-Atlantic, North Western, Pacific , and South Eastern . It has discontinued digests covering the other three regions, North Eastern , South Western , and Southern . The digests for the Atlantic , North Western , and South Eastern regions are in second series, covering back to the 1930s, and the Pacific Digest is in five separate series with the most recent beginning coverage in 1978.

The valuable service the Atlantic and Pacific Digests provide is coverage of court decisions from Delaware, Nevada, and Utah, the states omitted from West's roster of state digests. For states other than these three, the value of these sets is marginal if other digests are available. Federal cases, even on topics of state law, are not included, and the grouping of states is based on the artificial boundaries of the West reporters. A Kansas researcher has access in the Pacific Digest to cases from Alaska and Oregon, but not cases from Missouri or Nebraska. It makes more sense either to focus on Kansas law or to use a comprehensive digest that does not draw arbitrary distinctions among other states.

West's comprehensive digest is a truly mammoth publication known as the American Digest System . This set of publications covers every case West publishes from the federal and state courts, as well as cases in other reporters before West began its publications. It consists of three distinct publications: the Century Digest , Decennial Digests , and General Digests .

The Century Edition of the American Digest , or Century Digest (50 vols., 1897-1904), covers decisions from "the earliest times" to 1896. This is a valuable source for historical research, but it is little used in modern legal research. The Century Digest uses a somewhat different classification system from the key numbers used in later digests, but cross-references are provided to it from its successor, the First Decennial Digest .

From 1897 to 1976, eight Decennial Digests each compiled 10 years' worth of headnotes. These grew increasingly cumbersome, and now Decennial Digests appear every five years. The Tenth Decennial Digest, Part 2 is the most recent installment, covering cases from 1991 to 1996. Even at five-year intervals, these are still massive sets with dozens of volumes. The topic "Criminal Law" covers more than nine volumes in the 1991-96 compilation, with some individual key numbers spanning more than 100 pages. Criminal Law 1134(3), "Scope of reviewÑQuestions considered in general," occupies 156 pages, with most states represented by dozens or hundreds of cases for this five-year period alone. Intoxicating Liquors 299, the key number shown in Exhibit 12-4, takes up about seven pages in this digest, with 116 cases from courts in 31 states.

The latest Decennial Digest is supplemented by General Digest volumes, published every three or four weeks to provide access to new cases. Each General Digest gathers the digest references from the advance sheets in West's federal and regional reporters into one sequence of about 1,200 pages. The individual volumes do not cumulate, and over the course of five years 70 or more volumes are published. These are then compiled into a new Decennial Digest , which is published gradually over the course of a year or two.

To ease the burden of checking dozens of recent volumes for a specific key number, General Digest volumes include a "Table of Key Numbers" listing the volumes in which each number appears. These tables cumulate over the course of 10 volumes and then start over. After 37 General Digest volumes, for example, it would be necessary to check these tables in volumes 10 (covering 1-10), 20 (11-20), 30 (21-30), and 36 (31-37). Intoxicating Liquors 299 appears in about half the volumes, but some numbers may appear in one or two volumes or not at all.

Hunting for cases in several Decennial Digest and General Digest volumes may not be painless, but these sets will continue to serve a purpose until everyone has access to comprehensive full-text databases. Until then, they are the most extensive sources of case information available to the public in most law libraries.

In Decennial or General Digests , abstracts under each key number are printed in the same order by jurisdiction. Federal cases are first, starting with the Supreme Court and then the courts of appeals and the district courts. These are followed by state cases, beginning with the Alabama Supreme Court, in chronological order with the most recent first; Alabama appellate courts; Alaska Supreme Court; and on to the Wyoming Supreme Court at the end of each listing. It is thus possible to isolate cases from a particular state in the Decennial and General Digests if the state digest is not available. The advantage of a state digest is that references spanning 50 years or more are gathered in just two places: a volume and its pocket part. New cases in the state digests are cumulated into pocket part supplements every year, while dozens of General Digest volumes remain uncumulated until the end of a five-year period.

As the law develops, the digests gradually change to accommodate new issues and new legal doctrines. When state digests are issued in revised volumes, headnotes under the older numbers are actually reclassified to where they would be under the new system. The Decennial Digests , however, are not revised once they are published, and tracking an issue backward in time may require consulting cross-references to find earlier classifications. As an example, the topic "Chemical Dependents" was introduced in the Ninth Decennial Digest, Part 1 (1976-81); for earlier cases, a table provides references to the older topic "Drunkards" and to selected portions of "Drugs and Narcotics."

Occasionally, when new topics are introduced, the Decennial Digests include retrospective coverage of cases in the area. When the topic "Mental Health" was added in the Sixth Decennial Digest (1946-56), it included notes of cases dating back to Ex Parte Drayton , 1 S.C. Eq. (1 Des.) 144 (1787). The same procedure has been followed for several other added topics, including "Zoning and Planning" 10 years later and "Securities Regulation" in 1976. This approach is not always used, however; when the topic "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations" debuted in 1991, only cases from the preceding five-year period were listed.

Like other West digests, the Decennial Digests are accompanied by descriptive-word indexes. These are generally no better or worse than the indexes for the state digests. The 1986-91 index has no entry for "Social host," but includes "Socage," even though there have been no cases assigned to its key number since 1956. The General Digests have short and unhelpful descriptive-word indexes, in which the same few entries keep appearing volume after volume.

Among the Decennial and General Digests' more valuable features are their comprehensive tables of cases. If a case is mentioned without reference to its jurisdiction (or its citation), finding it may require checking these tables. It helps to have some idea of its date because it may otherwise be necessary to check several Decennial installments. Only the oldest and the most recent tables cumulate. The cases in the Century Digest and the First Decennial Digest are listed in a combined five-volume table covering all cases through 1906, and General Digest tables cumulate in every tenth volume.

The tables in older Decennial Digests and in General Digest volumes list cases by plaintiff only, but Decennial Digests since 1976 include defendant-plaintiff tables as well. One useful purpose for tables such as these is finding cases involving particular corporate defendants, although it is important to remember that digest coverage is limited to reported cases and by no means represents a comprehensive list of lawsuits.

Although the Decennial and General Digests are huge, unwieldy publications, they represent an enormous effort to analyze and classify millions of court decisions. This may seem increasingly archaic in an age of electronic dissemination and full-text access, but digests still handle some research queries better than computers can. The resolution of legal issues often requires consideration of rules applied in analogous situations, even if the same search terms do not necessarily appear. A tool that gathers legally similar cases by subject serves a valuable purpose.

WESTLAW users can have it both ways by combining full-text access and keyword searching with the digests' editorial enhancements. WESTLAW incorporates the digests into its online system in several ways. The most significant is by including in the case databases the headnotes and digest classifications for cases published in West reporters. As a result, the terms appearing in the headnotes, as well as digest topics and key numbers, can be incorporated into searches. Topics can be searched by name, as in topic ("intoxicating liquors "), while key number searches combine numbers for the topic and section. "Intoxicating Liquors" is topic 223, so a search for 223k299 and underage would lead directly to the Hamilton case discussed earlier.

Case headnotes displayed by WESTLAW are linked to the digests themselves. Clicking on the number next to the name of a topic or one of its subdivisions leads to a choice of exploring the digest outline or incorporating the classification into a new search. This search is run not in the full-text cases but in a database of just headnotes. For most purposes, full-text databases provide more flexibility and greater power, but these databases limited to case headnotes are worth mentioning for one reason. Because they are based on the digest entries, not the cases themselves, they are more comprehensive than the full-text files. The full-text MA-CS database goes back to 1885, but the MA-HN database includes the earliest reported colonial cases from Massachusetts. Links are provided from digest entries to the full text of cases available online.

WESTLAW also has databases combining headnotes from every state (ALLSTATES-HN) and state and federal courts (ALLCASES-HN). The headnotes include the names of the cases, making these the most comprehensive sources for finding cases involving specific parties and a valuable resource for historians and genealogists. A search in ALLCASES-HN for ti(smith) retrieves more than 250,000 documents, while ti(exxon) finds just under 5,000. Be aware, however, that these numbers represent the number of headnotes and not the number of cases involving these parties. Each headnote is a separate document, and most cases are represented by several entries. A search for ti(oryx) retrieves 146 documents, but these represent just 16 cases.

American Law Reports (ALR)

Another means of access to opinions from courts around the country is American Law Reports: Cases and Annotations (ALR ), which contains articles summarizing cases on particular topics. ALR was published for decades by Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company, but it is now a West Group product. ALR has been published in several series since it began in 1919; its current fifth series began in 1992. (A separate series covering issues of federal law, ALR Federal , has already been discussed in Chapter 9.)

ALR fills a unique niche in legal research literature because it is somewhat like a legal encyclopedia, somewhat like a digest, and somewhat like a law journal. Like an encyclopedia, it provides a broad overview of legal doctrine. Like a digest, it contains extensive summaries of cases and serves primarily as an aid in finding relevant case law. Like a journal, it is published periodically with no particular order to its contents. Each annotation includes one illustrative case, as a vestige of ALR's origin as a selective case reporter. Until the beginning of ALR5th , the cases were printed before each annotation, but now they appear in a separate section at the back of the volume.

Some ALR annotations are on rather narrow topics, such as "Liability for Injuries Caused by Cat," 68 ALR4th 823 (1989), while others are relatively broad. Recent annotations on the liability of landlords for failure to protect tenants from criminal acts, 43 ALR5th 207 (1996), and for repairs authorized by tenants, 46 ALR5th 1 (1997), have run several hundred pages apiece. One of the lengthiest annotations, "Propriety of Execution of Search Warrant at Nighttime," 41 ALR5th 171 (1996), occupies almost 600 pages.

On issues of social host liability, ALR has published two substantial annotations. "Social Host's Liability for Injuries Incurred by Third Parties as a Result of Intoxicated Guest's Negligence," 62 ALR4th 16 (1989), has been followed by "Social Host's Liability for Death or Injuries Incurred by Person to Whom Alcohol was Served," 54 ALR5th 313 (1997). The latter annotation collects decisions from 22 states on this issue, sorts them according to the theories of liability on which they are based and particular circumstances affecting the decisions, and summarizes the holdings. Liability can be based, for example, on common law negligence, reckless misconduct, intentional tort, or violation of statutes. The ages of the host and the guest can be important factors, as can their behavior. Did the host induce a state of intoxication or fail to assist a guest in need? Did the guest knowingly decide to ride in a vehicle with an intoxicated driver?

Under each of these circumstances, decisions in some cases have held the host subject to liability, and others have not. These diverging results are indicated by the division of most sections of the annotation into "[a]" and "[b]" subsections. Comparing the cases provides an opportunity to analyze how a court might consider particular circumstances. Exhibit 12-5 shows a summary of Hamilton v. Ganias under ¤ 22[b], as an example of a case where the court considered the age of the guest as a factor and decided not to impose liability. Note that this summary is more extensive than a digest entry, with background on the facts of the case and the reasoning behind the court's decision.

Several other features make this ALR annotation a useful research source. A page of "Research References" at the beginning provides leads to other publications, including legal encyclopedias, digests, and law review articles. The electronic search queries that were used to find cases on point are also included. This is followed by a detailed alphabetical index of specific factual and legal issues discussed, such as "Absence of homeowners from premises" and "Adult guest still under legal drinking age," and by a jurisdictional table listing the cases discussed as well as statutes in issue. Under Massachusetts, the two cases listed are Hamilton and Manning v. Nobile . Several of these editorial features were expanded and improved for the current ALR5th series. Earlier annotations, for example, lack references to digests and online searches, and their tables of jurisdictions simply list the section numbers at which cases from each state appear, omitting the names and citations of the cases.

The social host liability annotation begins with a summary of its scope and a list of other ALR annotations on related topics. This list can be useful in suggesting analogous situations. In this instance, it includes not only the earlier work on social host liability but annotations on such topics as the liability of colleges or fraternities for injuries incurred during initiation activities, proof of causation of intoxication, and products liability for alcoholic beverages. Scanning these annotations might raise issues that might not otherwise have come to mind.

Section 2[a] of the annotation then goes on to provide a general overview of the topic, integrating as best as possible the conclusions drawn from case law in two dozen jurisdictions. Section 2[b] notes several "practice pointers" for counsel bringing or defending a cause of action for social host liability. The rest of the annotation summarizes and analyzes the individual cases, as shown in Exhibit 12-5. Unlike a digest, which simply consists of individual abstracts, ALR attempts to coordinate the various cases into a reasonably coherent picture of the state of the law.

A major advantage of ALR is that each annotation is supplemented after publication by notes of new cases and references to more recent annotations on related topics. Modern annotations (since 1965) in ALR3d , ALR4th , and ALR5th are updated with annual pocket parts in each volume. Pre-ALR3d annotations are less frequently used and have different updating systems. Volumes in the ALR2d series (100 vols., 1948-65) had no flaps for pocket parts, so they are updated with separate Later Case Service volumes, each of which covers up to four ALR2d volumes; these in turn have pocket parts for recent developments. The first series of ALR (175 vols., 1919-48) is rarely used today except for long-settled areas such as property law. Many of its annotations have been superseded by more recent treatments in later series, but some continue to be updated through an annual ALR Blue Book of Supplemental Decisions , which simply lists the citations of more recent cases. One set of Blue Book volumes covers the entire set of 175 ALR volumes. Of course, these older annotations may be useful for historical research, as may their predecessors in American Decisions (Bancroft, 100 vols., 1878-88), American Reports (Parsons, 60 vols., 1871-88), American State Reports (Bancroft-Whitney, 140 vols., 1888-1911), and Lawyers' Reports Annotated (Lawyers Cooperative, 146 vols., 1888-1918).

When using an ALR annotation, it is always important to check the latest supplement, not only for notification of the most recent cases but also for cross-references. From time to time, older annotations are superseded or supplemented, and the pocket part or supplement simply provides a cross-reference to the newer treatment instead of noting new cases. (This information is noted as well in an "Annotation History Table" in the final volume of the ALR Index .)

The ALR sets are accompanied by two indexes providing subject access. The more comprehensive is a six-volume ALR Index , covering ALR2d through 5th, ALR Federal , and Lawyers' Edition 2d , with quarterly pocket parts. (An ALR First Series Quick Index covers the little-used first series.) A separate ALR Quick Index , covering ALR3d , ALR4th , and ALR5th , is an annual paperback which may be more convenient. Its typeface is smaller, but the entire alphabet is contained in one volume. These indexes are fairly easy to navigate, perhaps because they do not have to be as comprehensive as the indexes to digests or statutes. There is no entry under "Social host," but "Social guest" provides a cross-reference to "Guests, invitees, or licensees," where the social host annotations can be found under the subheadings "Driving while intoxicated" and "Intoxicating liquors."

Shelved near the ALR Index , and possibly subject to confusion with it, is a separate set of 18 volumes labeled ALR Digest to 3d, 4th, 5th and Federal . This set classifies the annotations and cases printed in ALR by topic, in a manner similar to West's digest series. There is no separate index to this set, so the main means of access is from the headnotes ALR provides for the cases it publishes. Because ALR is an alternative to the digest system, it is hard to imagine much reason for the ALR Digest's existence. Perhaps it may be of occasional use in placing an issue covered by ALR in a broader context.

ALR3d through 5th are also available on CD-ROM and on WESTLAW (ALR database), and coverage in LEXIS-NEXIS (ALR library, ALR file) goes all the way back to the beginning of ALR2d . Online searches may be more effective if they are limited to the titles of annotations. Because the facts of each case are summarized, whether or not they are pertinent to the topic of the annotation, a full-text search may retrieve a large number of annotations on completely unrelated issues. A search for title (social host ) retrieves the two annotations specifically on point, while a full-text search for social host retrieves several dozen documents, including annotations on insurance company insolvency, admissibility of hospital records, and applicability of strict liability rules to injury from electrical current escaping from power lines.

In addition to the ALR Index , several other legal publications provide access to annotations. Many state codes include references to ALR annotations, and the citators to be discussed in the following section include annotations among the material they list citing cases.

Shepard's Citations and KeyCite

The producers of both LEXIS-NEXIS and WESTLAW offer comprehensive resources listing cases and other documents citing decisions from the state courts. Shepard's Citations (formerly published by Shepard's, Inc., but now owned by Reed-Elsevier) is available in print as well as in CD-ROM, through both LEXIS-NEXIS and WESTLAW, and on the Internet (http://www.bender.com/ ). KeyCite is available only electronically, through WESTLAW or on the Internet ( http://www.keycite.com/ ). A third service, Auto-Cite, provides more limited information and is available only through LEXIS-NEXIS.

Shepard's Citations and KeyCite are powerful tools for checking the status of a case and for finding more recent cases on related issues. Both work from citations of cases, so they are not places to begin research or to find cases by subject. Once a relevant case has been found, however, they can provide a broad range of information.

The simplest and most straightforward function of Shepard's and KeyCite is to verify the accuracy of a citation and to supply its parallel citation, if one is available. Finding the parallel citation is valuable for someone with a regional reporter citation who needs the official citation for a brief, or for someone with an official citation who needs to find a case in a library with only regional reporters. Parallel citations are not available for all cases; the West reporters do not cover cases before the 1880s, and 19 states no longer publish official reports.

The parallel citations are followed by references to other documents, some of which represent different stages of the same litigation and some of which cite the case. These are important resources for determining a case's value as precedent. A case's status can be affected in several ways, including reversal by a higher court or a later overruling by the same court. Later cases may either limit a decision's holding to narrowly defined facts or apply its reasoning to other situations. Someone looking for information on McGuiggan v. New England Tel. & Tel. Co. in Shepard's Citations or KeyCite would find references to Manning v. Nobile and Hamilton v. Ganias , which distinguish its reasoning in cases of injuries to third parties from cases in which an intoxicated guest has injured himself or herself. This information is presented in different ways in the two systems.

Exhibit 12-6 shows a page from Shepard's Northeastern Reporter Citations , including the citation for McGuiggan , 496 N.E.2d 141. Shepard's arranges cases chronologically by jurisdiction, with Massachusetts cases listed first. Note that the citations for several cases are preceded by one-letter abbreviations such as "d" or "f." A table at the front of each Shepard's volume explains these abbreviations, noting that "d" stands for "distinguished" and "f" for "followed." In the McGuiggan listing, the Hamilton v. Ganias reference, 632 N.E.2d 408, is one of several that distinguish their circumstances from those in McGuiggan . Other recent cases, however, follow McGuiggan or explain its holding ("e"). The Hamilton reference is followed by a federal case from the First Circuit and by cases from several other states.

Shepard's publishes two separate citators covering Massachusetts cases: Shepard's Massachusetts Citations and Shepard's Northeastern Reporter Citations . Either source can be used to determine if a case has been reversed or overruled. There are, however, differences between the two publications. The most significant is in their scope of coverage of citing material. Both include later cases from Massachusetts, as well as federal court decisions and ALR annotations. Only the regional Shepard's (including Shepard's California Reporter Citations and Shepard's New York Supplement Citations ) have references to cases from other states, however, and only the state Shepard's provide any references to law review articles and other sources such as attorney general opinions. This means that a thorough search for documents citing a particular case may require checking both Shepard's Massachusetts Citations and Shepard's Northeastern Reporter Citations . (For cases before the start of the National Reporter System, and therefore without regional reporter citations, Shepard's does list cases from other states under official citations in the state volumes. If a state has discontinued its official reports in recent years, it is still necessary to check both the state and regional Shepard's units, but all information is listed under the regional citation.)

Shepard's presents different information based on the citation used. Only Shepard's Massachusetts Citations lists cases under their official Massachusetts Reports citations, with references to later cases in the same set of volumes. Shepard's Massachusetts Citations also contains a section listing cases under their North Eastern Reporter citations, with citations in later cases in that reporter series. This duplicates much of the coverage in Shepard's Northeastern Reporter Citations but omits the cases from other states. There may be differences between the references listed under these two reporter citations. Some citing references, including several listed under McGuiggan in Exhibit 12-6, include small numbers indicating which McGuiggan headnote's point of law is being discussed. If the official reports use different systems of headnotes than the regional reporters, these numbers will not be the same in the two sources. McGuiggan , for example, has four headnotes in Massachusetts Reports , and three in the North Eastern Reporter . When searching for cases on a particular topic, it is important not to get these headnote numbers mixed up.

Exhibit 12-7 shows a KeyCite display for McGuiggan . The arrangement of the citing cases is not based on date or jurisdiction but on (1) whether their effect on McGuiggan can be seen as negative, and (2) the extent to which they discuss the case. The negative cases are listed first. These may not necessarily affect the strength of McGuiggan as precedent. They may be decisions from other states that decline to follow its rules in their jurisdictions or decisions that choose not to extend the McGuiggan rationale to other situations. These are followed by "positive cases," or cases that do not criticize or limit McGuiggan . Cases listed first examine the case at length, followed by those that discuss it and merely cite it. In Exhibit 12-7, Hamilton is number 11, listed among the cases that cite McGuiggan . Quotation marks after some of the cases listed (not Hamilton ) indicate that they quote directly from the language of the McGuiggan opinion.

Both Shepard's Citations and KeyCite can be used to find later citing cases. The results are similar, but arranged differently and with different editorial features. Only Shepard's notes cases that follow or explain a holding, but it simply lists the Hawaii and Indiana cases while KeyCite notes that they decline to follow the McGuiggan rationale. Each has some information about later cases that the other lacks.

Both services also provide references to journal articles citing cases, but here Shepard's Citations is no match for KeyCite. Shepard's claims to list articles from major journals in a court's home state as well as 19 national law reviews, but it does not even cover comprehensively this small group. KeyCite's coverage of law reviews, based not on a list of selected journals but on the articles in WESTLAW's databases, is far more thorough. For McGuiggan v. New England Tel. & Tel. Co. , Shepard's lists five articles. KeyCite has only one of these, the 1988 Boston University Law Review note listed at the bottom of Exhibit 12-7, but it adds articles from 20 other journalsÑincluding several that Shepard's claims to cover, such as Cornell Law Review, Harvard Law Review , and Northwestern University Law Review . Generally, the only articles listed in Shepard's but lacking in KeyCite are those too old to be included in WESTLAW's full-text online databases.

The Internet sites for both Shepard's Citations and KeyCite are fee-based, with a charge incurred for each citation checked. The Shepard's site has one advantage, in that no fee is charged until information on a specific citation is requested. The preliminary part of this process, finding the appropriate citation, is free. A citation can be entered, and the name and date of the case and its parallel citation display. Even more valuable is the ability to find cases by party name. The search hamilton in Massachusetts cases retrieves a list of 98 cases, including Hamilton v. Ganias . Party name searches cannot be run in the entire national database, but must be limited to particular state or regional databases.

Other resources provide some of the information available from Shepard's Citations and KeyCite. West publishes a series of National Reporter Blue Book volumes (7 vols., 1928-89, with annual pamphlet supplement) with cross-reference tables for finding parallel citations.These are updated in tables printed at the front of regional reporter volumes and advance sheets. Auto-Cite, a citator service on LEXIS-NEXIS, provides parallel citations and references to any subsequent cases that affect the validity of a case as precedent, but it does not list all citing cases. For McGuiggan , it lists no later cases. It does, however, include references to ALR, so it may be a convenient method for finding relevant annotations.

Rules and Procedures

Anyone needing to deal directly with a court rather than simply study its decisions must have access to the rules governing its procedures. These rules take different forms in different states. Although a number of states base their rules on federal models, such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the Federal Rules of Evidence, other states have their own unique systems. Some state court procedures are governed by statutes or procedural codes, and some are a mix of statute and court rules.

State court rules are available in a number of printed and electronic sources. The simplest sources are pamphlets published by the states themselves, but these are usually limited to one particular set of rules and are not often updated. Commercial paperback compilations provide a much broader range of rules and related procedural statutes. Publications such as Massachusetts Rules of Court and Nebraska Court Rules and Procedure (both West Group, annual) are designed to provide quick access to the text of the rules. Some of these paperbacks contain rules for both state courts and local federal courts; others have local federal rules in a separate volume. The official comments of the committees or reporters who drafted the rules are usually included, but not annotations of subsequent cases in which the rules are applied. These paperbacks are designed for lawyers who are familiar with the rules, and, thus, they do not provide much explanation or background information.

More thorough editions of court rules are generally published as part of state codes, sometimes in bound volumes updated by pocket parts and sometimes as softcover volumes replaced annually. These versions provide more in-depth coverage of the rules in a format similar to that used for statutes. The text of each rule is accompanied by annotations of court decisions in which it has been applied and interpreted. Massachusetts General Laws Annotated , for example, includes three volumes of annotated rules governing civil procedure, criminal procedure, and appellate procedure. Some annotated collections of rules, such as Virginia Rules Annotated (LEXIS Law Publishing, annual) are published separately rather than as part of state codes.

The most extensive and informative sources for information on court rules are practice treatises, which combine the text of the rules with commentary and discussion of cases. Like Federal Practice and Procedure or Moore's Federal Practice , these works explain the background and application of the court rules and discuss any relevant cases. Practice treatises may not be available for every state, but they are published for most of the larger states. In Massachusetts, for example, two extensive rule-by-rule commentaries are James W. Smith and Hiller B. Zobel's Rules Practice (West Publishing, 4 vols., 1974-81, with annual pocket parts) and Edward M. Swartz et al.'s Massachusetts Pleading and Practice: Forms and Commentary (Bender, 7 vols., 1974-date, updated annually). Other works, such as Joseph R. Nolan's Civil Practice (West Publishing, 2 vols., 2d ed., 1992, with annual pocket parts) and Kent B. Smith's Criminal Practice and Procedure (West Publishing, 2 vols., 2d ed., 1983, with annual pocket parts) take a broader view of procedural issues.

Two other print sources for information on court rules are worth noting. The advance sheets to most court reports, including the West regional reporters, contain the text of new amendments to court rules. Shepard's Citations includes coverage of court rules following statutes in its state publications, providing another way to find cases and other citing documents.

Court rules from all states are available online through LEXIS-NEXIS (for Massachusetts, the MARULE file in the MASS, CODES, and STATES libraries) and WESTLAW (MA-RULES). LOIS, on the Internet ( http://www.pita.com/ ) has a growing collection of court rules covering more than a dozen states.

A number of court systems have posted rules on their Internet sites, although these can be harder to find than other primary sources. Checking court homepages through the multistate sites listed earlier in this chapter may lead to online court rules, as well as to other features, such as answers to frequently asked questions about filing procedures. Washburn University's State-Law (http://lawlib.wuacc.edu/washlaw/uslaw/statelaw.html ) is one of the few multistate collections that includes links to court rules as well as to statutes and case law. For some states, rules may also be available at commercial sites. Rules for the New York Court of Appeals, for example, are posted by the New York Law Journal ( http://www.nylj.com/rules/ctapindex.html ).

States usually have official forms prepared for use in specific situations, such as filing complaints or responding to summonses, which are included in sources for court rules. More extensive collections, with a wider range of forms, are also available for most states. Publications for Massachusetts, for example, include Massachusetts Pleading and Practice: Forms and Commentary , cited above; Paul G. Garrity and James A. Frieden's Massachusetts Standardized Civil Practice Forms (Little, Brown, 4 vols., 1986); and Robert M. Rodman's Procedural Forms Annotated (West Publishing, 4 vols., 5th ed., 1990, with annual pocket parts). One way to find these publications is to check online catalogs under headings such as "Forms (law)-[state]" or "Civil procedure-[state]-Forms." Law libraries usually carry sets for their home states but rarely have forms for other jurisdictions.

Each state also has model jury instructions for use in preparing the explanation of the law with which the judge guides jurors' deliberations. Because jury instructions are designed to make sense to nonlawyers, they can provide useful summaries of legal doctrine in plain English. These are available online for a few states, through LEXIS-NEXIS (California, Florida, and Virginia), WESTLAW (California, Illinois, and Washington), and LOIS (Arkansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma). Publications for more than 30 states can be found in Legal Looseleafs in Print (Infosources Publishing, annual) under the index heading "Jury instructions," and online catalogs generally list them under the subject heading "Instructions to juries." A comprehensive state-by-state list published in the Legal Reference Services Quarterly several years ago is still useful. Cheryl Rae Nyberg and Carol Boast's "Jury Instructions: A Bibliography. Part I: Civil Jury Instructions," 6(1/2) Legal Reference Services Q. 5 (Spring/Summer 1986) was followed by Cheryl Rae Nyberg, Jane Williams, and Carol Boast's "Jury Instructions: A Bibliography. Part II: Criminal Jury Instructions," 6(3/4) Legal Reference Services Q. 3 (Fall/Winter 1986). Part 2 of the bibliography includes a cumulative list of acronyms, useful for determining the jurisdiction for mysterious references such as BAJI (California) or CRIMJIG (Minnesota).

State appellate courts have briefs similar to those filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, but these are not as widely available. A pair of articles by Gene Teitelbaum in Legal Reference Services Quarterly surveyed library holdings as of the mid-1980s. "State Courts of Last Resort's Briefs and Records: An Updated Union List," 5(2/3) Legal Reference Services Q. 187 (Summer/Fall 1985) was followed by "Intermediate Appellate State Courts' Briefs and Records: An Updated Union List," 8(1/2) Legal Reference Services Q. 159 (1988). According to these surveys, a few states do not distribute their briefs to libraries, but in most states they are available at the state library and one or more law schools. For some states, briefs are also available on microfiche. In Massachusetts, for example, microfiche copies of Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court briefs can be found at a dozen libraries around the state, including four law schools and six local trial court libraries open to the public.

Information on matters such as jury verdicts and settlements is often hard to find. A number of newsletters known as verdict reporters report these developments, but they are not widely distributed. These newsletters provide brief summaries of cases, indicating the nature of the complaint, the jury verdict, and the names of the attorneys and expert witnesses for each side. Most, such as New England Jury Verdict Review and Analysis (Jury Verdict Review Publications, monthly) and The Ohio Trial Reporter (Judicial Advisory Services, monthly), cover specific states or regions. Two publications of national scope are The National Jury Verdict Review and Analysis (Jury Verdict Review Publications, monthly) and Verdicts , Settlements & Tactics (West Group, monthly). Several of these publications are available through LEXIS-NEXIS (VERDCT library) and a few through WESTLAW (separate databases for individual publications, including VST for Verdicts, Settlements & Tactics ). Using a simple search string such as "chairlift and California," for example, turns up attorneys who have represented people suing California ski resorts for injuries caused by faulty chairlift equipment, as well as attorneys defending the ski resorts, experts for each side on design and medical issues, and the outcome of each case.

Lawyer Conduct

A final area of state court activity is the regulation of lawyers, not only through malpractice litigation but through the enforcement of professional standards. In most states, the supreme court has jurisdiction over the admission and discipline of lawyers, although in many instances these matters are delegated to boards of bar overseers or state bar associations. Materials governing the ethics and discipline of lawyers are found in rules, court decisions, and ethics opinions.

Lawyers' actions in most states are regulated by versions of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, prepared by the American Bar Association in 1983. A few states continue to use rules based on the ABA's earlier codification, the Model Code of Professional Responsibility (1969), and California has its own rules based on neither ABA model. The rules for a particular state are usually published with other court rules in paperback compilations such as West's Massachusetts Rules of Court . The rules governing lawyers can be hard to find because they are sometimes buried amid other rules promulgated by the court of last resort. The Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct, for example, are Supreme Judicial Court Rule 3:07. State codes usually provide annotations of court decisions applying the rules, but cases can also be found through the court rules section of a state's Shepard's Citations . The rules for all states, in unannotated versions, appear in the National Reporter on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (University Publications of America, 4 loose-leaf vols., 1982-date).

The Annotated Model Rules of Professional Conduct (ABA Center for Professional Responsibility, 3d ed., 1996), although not keyed to any specific jurisdiction, is a convenient research source. It includes comments, legal background, and notes of decisions from jurisdictions that have adopted the rules. The Annotated Model Rules is available from WESTLAW as the ABA-AMRPC database. The CODES file in the ETHICS library on LEXIS-NEXIS has the Model Rules and official comments, but no annotations.

The ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct (BNA, 2 loose-leaf vols., 1984-date) is another useful multistate resource. One volume is a reference manual treating major ethical and disciplinary issues, with each one divided into a "Practice Guide" summarizing the area, "Background" explaining the history and scope of state rules, and "Application" discussing cases under the rules. The other volume, "Current Reports," contains biweekly newsletters with information about court decisions, ethics opinions, disciplinary proceedings, and other developments. The Lawyers' Manual is also available on WESTLAW as the ABA-BNA database.

While court decisions on issues such as lawyer discipline and disbarment are published like any other cases, advisory opinions from state and local bar associations can be much harder to find. Some state bars do not publish their opinions in full, but include digests of ethics opinions in their bar journals. Obtaining the full text may require contacting the bar. The National Reporter on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility provides access to opinions from 42 states. Besides the four loose-leaf volumes covering the current year, annual transfer binders contain older opinions dating back to 1981. Each year has its own subject published in the National Reporter in the ETHICS library, ETHOP file. WESTLAW has ethics opinions from 18 states, accessible separately or combined as the METH-EO database.

Most state bars and disciplinary agencies now have Web sites, with some information about procedures for filing complaints and resolving problems with lawyers. The "Lawyer Discipline in Massachusetts" Web site (http://www.state.ma.us/obcbbo/ ), for example, includes the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct, other relevant rules, and explanations of complaint procedures and sanctions. Legalethics.com (http://www.legalethics.com/ ) provides the most extensive collection of Internet resources in this area. Its "EthicSites Index" ( http://www.legalethics.com/states.htm ) has links to state bar associations, rules, and available ethics opinions. Not all organizations are accessible electronically, but the list includes addresses and telephone numbers. The ABA Center for Professional Responsibility also provides a directory of lawyer disciplinary agencies (http://www.abanet.org/cpr/disciplinary.html ) listing contact information for the agency in each state responsible for fielding and handling complaints.