Shepard's Citations for Cases is possibly the single most powerful research tool in the law library. Once a case a case is located, Shepard's gives a list of every later case that has referred to it.
Shepard's works only when the case you are
interested in has actually been referred to in the later case by name. If a
later case deals with the same subject but doesn't mention your case, Shepard's
won't help. One of the happy by-products of the adversary system is that
attorneys arguing appeals usually dredge up and present to the court every
possibly relevant case. These cases, and others located by the court's own
clerks, are typically included in the court's opinion.
Know the basics:
Shepard's Citations for Cases are dark red,
thick, hardcover volumes with separate update pamphlets that may be gold,
bright red or white, depending on how recently the hardcover volumes were
published.
Separate Shepard's Citations for Cases are published
for each state, for federal court cases and for U .S. Supreme Court cases.
Sometimes the Shepard's Citations for Cases is in a separate volume; sometimes
it is combined in the same volume with Shepard's Citations for Statutes for
that state.
The outside of each Shepard's volume tells
whether it covers statutes, cases or both.
Shepard's Citations for Cases is organized
according to the case reporters that publish cases.
To use Shepard's Citations for Cases, you need
the case citation-the name of the case reporter your case appears in, its
volume number and the first page on which the case appears.
Shepard's hardcover volumes for the cases of a
particular state's courts, or the federal courts, cover different time periods.
Shepard's Citations for Cases is kept in
different places in different libraries.
Shepard's Citations for Cases uses its own
citation system-which is different than the "Blue Book" system. Every Shepard's volume has a table of
abbreviations.
Step 1. Identify
the citation of the case you wish to Shepardize.
Step 2. Find the
Shepard's volumes that cover the reporter in the citation.
Step 3. If a Shepard's
volume contains citations for more than one reporter, find the part that covers
citations for the reporter named in the citation selected.
Step 4. Note the
year of the case you are Shepardizing. Select the volume or volumes that
contain citations for cases decided after the case you are Shepardizing.
Step 5. Find the
volume number (in boldface) that corresponds to the volume number in the
citation to the case being Shepardized.
Step 6. Under
this volume number, find the page number of the citation for the cited case.
Step 7. Under
the bold page number, review the citations given for the citing cases.
Step 8. Use the
letters to the left of the citation to decide whether the case is worth
reviewing.
Step 9. Use the
numbers to the right of the citation to decide whether the citing case is
referring to the cited case for issues you might be interested in.
Step 10. After
you write down all potentially useful citations, go on to more recent Shepard's
volumes and up-date pamphlets and repeat these steps.
Once you have a case you are interested in, you
want to find out whether it has been appealed and, if so, whether the appeal
affected the case as a source of law. Shepard's uses a code next to its
citations that instantly gives you this information.
For example, suppose you read a case called
Jones v. Smith, which is located at 500 F. Supp. 325. Since the case is
published in the Federal Supplement, we know it was decided by a U.S. district
court. The district court case may not
have had the last word, however; the case quite possibly was appealed to a
higher court-typically, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but in rare instances
the U.S. Supreme Court.
Once a case is appealed, the published opinion
of the lower or intermediate appellate court mayor may not continue to be a
valid expression of the law. When a higher appellate court reverses a published
decision of a lower court, it usually vacates the lower court's opinion. This
means that the opinion is not to be considered as law for any purpose. When a case is directly affected by a higher
court on appeal, Shepard's places a small letter just before the citation of
the case. For instance, if the higher court vacated the cited case's opinion, a
"v" will appear next to the citation.
a affirmed
cc connected case
D dismissed
m modified
r reversed
s same case
v vacated
When an unsuccessful attempt has been made to
take the cited case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Shepard's uses certain
notations to tell you exactly what happened.
US cert den. This means that the U.S. Supreme
Court refused to issue a writ of certiorari.
When this happens, the cited case is considered to be very good law,
since the Supreme Court refused to review it.
US cert dis. This means that the petition for
cert was dismissed, usually for procedural reasons. It's possible that the Case may still be taken by the Supreme
Court at a later time.
US reh den. This only appears when the cited
case is a U .S. Supreme Court case and means that the U.S. Supreme Court
refused to grant a rehearing in that case.
US reh dis. This means that a request for a
rehearing was dismissed.
The law is constantly changing. New fact
situations call for different decisions in order to reach a just result. New
social or technological developments (for example, in vitro fertilization,
changing racial attitudes, the computer) give rise to entirely new legal
theories and cause massive changes in existing legal doctrine. This means that
a case you find in your research mayor may not represent the way current courts
would decide the same issue. Accordingly, each time you find a case that
appears relevant, you must find out whether it is still "good law."
Shepard's helps you do this by using a second set of abbreviations to explain
why the citing case referred to the cited case. This set of abbreviations is
used only when the citing case is unrelated to the cited case-that is, not
reviewing the cited case on appeal. The most commonly used abbreviations are
shown below.
f this means that the citing case explicitly
“follows” the reasoning and/or decision of the cited case.
d the citing case “distinguishes” its own fact
or legal situation from that of the cited case.
e The citing case “explains” the holding or
reasoning of the cited case.
c The citing case “criticizes” some aspects of
the cited case.
j The cited case in mentioned in a dissent of
the citing case.
o The citing case “overrules” the holding of the
cited case. This occurs when a court
overrules its holding in a previous case or when the citing case is an opinion
of a higher court that disapproves of the opinion of the lower court.
q The citing case “questions” the reasoning
employed by the cited case.
h The cited case has been harmonized with the
citing case.
p The cited case is almost exactly the same as
the citing case.
Once a case is found that is relevant, Shepard's
can be used to find other cases dealing with the same issue. Every citing case
is potentially relevant; thus, if you start out with one cited case, you may
find any number of useful cases that have referred to it. Then, each of these citing cases can itself
be Shepardized.
Shepard's identifies the specific issues that the citing case was interested in when it referred to the cited case. It does this by:
The West Digest System
Digests are collections of headnotes - the
one-sentence summaries of how a particular case decided specific legal
issues-that are taken from cases as reported in case reporters and grouped
together by topic. For example, in Nationwide Insurance Co. v. Ervin, 231
N.E.2d 112 (1967), one of the issues is classified under "Insurance."
The
court's holding on that issue is
summarized in Headnote 5, and has been assigned a topic key number, 435.3(1).
That headnote has also been published in
West's Northeastern Digest, with headnotes from other cases that have
been assigned the same key topic and key number. Recently West stopped publishing a digest for this region, and
for the Southern and Southwestern regions as well. Consequently, some states are not included in regional digests.
They can be found in the General Digest, and some of them have their own
digests.
The most
important point to understand about this system is that West Group reports
virtually all published cases that emerge from the state and federal courts.
This means that West has been able to create a uniform and comprehensive
classification scheme for all legal issues raised in these cases. This
classification system is called the West Key Number system. The West Digest key
number system has 414 key topics and many numbered subtopics. Any given
headnote from one case anywhere in the U.S. is grouped with the headnotes from
all other cases that deal with that same issue.
There are a number of different West
Digests. There is an overall digest that groups all headnote entries from all
parts of the country and from all courts. This is made up of two
sub-digests--the Decennials and the General Digest. West has
divided this huge digest into smaller ones:
West publishes
individual digests for every state (and Washington, D.C.) except Nevada, Utah
and Delaware, but many other states' digests are being phased out over time. If looking for decisions of the courts of
your state, it is usually most efficient to start with the West Digest for that
state. On the other hand, if you live in a small state and are used to using
the law produced by courts in adjoining states, you might want to start with
the regional digest.
West publishes
digests for four regions of the country: Atlantic, Northwestern, Pacific and
Southeastern. The regions are the same as those used in the regional reporter
system. Accordingly, if the cases
decided by your state's courts are reported in the Pacific Reporter, start
with the Pacific Digest. If they
are reported in the Southeast Reporter, use the Southeastern Digest. If
your case has been reported in the Atlantic Reporter but you want to
locate similar cases from California, you can use either the California
Digest or the Pacific Digest.
If you want
summaries of federal court decisions, go to the federal case digests in the
West system. West publishes the Federal Practice Digest in four series:
·
The Modern Federal Practice Digest (for
cases decided before 1961)
·
The Federal Practice Digest Second Series (for
cases decided between 1961 and 1975)
·
The Federal Practice Digest Third Series (for
cases decided between 1975 and 1992), and
·
The Federal Practice Digest Fourth Series (for
cases decided since 1992).
West also
publishes the Supreme Court Digest (for all cases decided by the U.S.
Supreme Court).
The Federal
Practice Digest (all four series) contains headnotes from cases reported
in:
·
The Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.)
·
The Federal Reporter (which publishes
U.S. Court of Appeals cases) and
·
The Federal Supplement (which publishes
U.S. District Court cases)
The Supreme
Court Digest also contains headnotes from the U.S. Supreme Court cases reported
in the Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.).
So the Supreme Court Digest and the Federal Practice Digest overlap with
respect to U.S. Supreme Court Cases.
The Decennial
and General Digests contain all the headnotes from all courts and
all parts of the country.
Most of the time
it is more useful to use a state or regional digest for state cases, and a Federal
Practice Digest or Supreme Court Digest for federal cases, than it
is to use the Decennialor General Digests.
To do an extremely thorough research job you will find the Decennial
or General Digests a big help.
Initially, Decennial
Digests were published in editions covering ten years' worth of cases. As
of 1976, the Decennials are cumulated every five years and issued in two
parts. For example, the Ninth Decennial Digest Part 1 covers 1976 to
1981, and Part 2 covers cases from 1981 to 1986.
Between
publication of each new Decennial series, headnotes are collected in a
publication called the General Digest.
About ten of these are published each year, so about fifty will be
on the bookshelves before a new Decennial emerges. For example, Part 1
of the Tenth Decennial will be on the shelves in 1992, covering the
period between 1986 and 1991. Until the
Eleventh Decennial emerges, the General Digests must be used for
cases decided after 1991. Once the Eleventh Decennial is published, the General
Digests start anew and the Decennials can be used for
all cases decided before 1991.