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quasi-legislative power authority to adopt rules and regulations quasi-judicial power authority to render decisions official publications rules published by the issuing legislature, court, or agency primary legal publishers West Publishing Company and Lawyers Cooperative Company substantive law law that establishes and defines the basic rights and duties that govern a society substantive law type of law that includes constitutions, legislative enactments, common law (judicial decisions), and certain executive actions constitution embodies the government's authority to exist and serves as an outline for the exercise of governmental powers charter a local government constitution statute a legislative enactment ordinance a local government law or regulation common law type of law that includes case law and judicial decisions judicial opinions used to explain and to clarify existing constitutional and statutory law through judicial interpretation constitutional grounds a particular judicial decision can overrule a specific statute on these types of grounds stare decisis the process used to synthesize legal principles from all prior cases with similar facts and similar issues of law to arrive at a decision in a specific case instant case a prior case in which its facts and legal issues are substantially similar to the facts of the current case before the court executive order issued by the President under special authority granted by Congress. It may direct the Justice Department to place emphasis on the enforcement of specific civil rights laws. treaty agreement made between the U.S. and one or more other sovereign nations of the world interstate compact agreement made by two or more states concerning such things as disposal of radioactive waste or use of a common waterway procedural law type of law which prescribes the manner in which substantive laws must be enforced Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure govern the way in which a defendant is charged, tried, and sentenced for a federal crime Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern how civil actions are handled, including rules that cover the complaint, summons, answer, discovery process, trial, and post-trial procedures Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure govern the form and procedure for appeals from the U.S. District Court to the Court of Appeals within the federal system Federal Rules of Evidence govern the types of evidence that are admissible in criminal and civil trials and in the manner in which the evidence can be presented during trial United States Code the U.S. Constitution is found in front of this particular code with an index of its articles and amendments included in the index of this code bill a proposed legislative measure slip law what a bill becomes once it is adopted and it is printed by itself rather than as part of a group of laws session laws at the close of each legislative session, all slip laws enacted during the session are arranged in chronological order according to the date of enactment and are published as these types of laws subject matter statutes that are codified or collected into a statutory code are arranged how? Statutes at Large Stat. Statutes at Large federal session laws are published in United States Code federal session laws are codified and published in Statutes at Large the only complete collection of federal statutory law official publication when an official body, such as Congress, authorizes and directs the collection and publication of law unofficial publication not specifically authorized or sanctioned by an official body but is compiled by a private publisher West publisher of United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A) Lawyer's Co-op publisher of United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.) key number system every topic and subtopic is assigned its own key number. The same key numbers are reserved to the same topics throughout all West publications. annotations explanatory notes which may contain references to cases municipal code ordinances of larger cities often publish their codified laws or rule in this type of code Federal Register Fed. Reg. Federal Register publication of administrative rules and regulations at the time of their adoption; they are listed chronologically Code of Federal Regulations C.F.R. Code of Federal Regulations publication in which administrative rules and regulations are codified reported case a case which is published ratio decidendi rationale obiter dictum dicta dicta comments of the court about minor issues or concerns other than the specific holding, rationale, and decision. decision result or disposition of the case rationale court's reasoning or basis for its holding and decision holding rule of law for which the case is cited as precedent; it is the legal effect of the facts of the case parallel citations if the same case is published in another case reporter, the volume and page number of that reporter is shown caption identifies the court issuing the opinion, the parties, and the docket number assigned to the case majority opinion opinion issued by the majority of judges of the appellate court; the holding of this opinion may be cited as precedent if all other criteria is met. There is only one for every case. concurring opinion opinion issued by one or more judges of the appellate court which agrees with the result reached by the majority but disagrees with the reasoning of the majority opinion. There can be more than one in a case. dissenting opinion opinion issued by one or more judges of the appellate court which disagrees with both the result and the reasoning of the majority opinion. There can be more than one in a case. per curiam opinion opinion of the entire court as opposed to an opinion written by a specific judge en banc the entire court participates rather than the permissible quorum. memorandum opinion a very brief opinion; a cursory opinion; an opinion so abbreviated that it is hardly an opinion at all single opinion a memorandum or per curiam opinion reached by a court sitting en banc. It is a very brief opinion written unanimously by the entire appellate court de novo anew; from the beginning; the case is tried in the appellate court as if it had not been tried previously and witnesses are allowed to testify de novo on the record anew on the record; the appellate court must base its decision on the record (no new testimony can be received) but may reach an independent factual finding if the facts from the trial court are "clearly erroneous" based on the record as a whole. on the record the appellate court reviews the record for prejudicial errors committed in the trial court but gives great deference to the findings of fact; factual findings generally are reversed only when they are "arbitrary and capricious" (little or no factual basis) slip opinion issued when a federal court first decides a case; it is a single opinion of the court issued without headnotes and indexing advance sheets format by which slip opinions are collected and published in a softbound or in loose-leaf; they typically mean in the advance of the next bound volume of the case reporter series chronologically the arrangement of cases within a particular reporter United States Law Week U.S.L.W. United States Law Week set of advance sheets in which slip opinions are collected from the U.S. Supreme Court and published; publisher is the Bureau of National Affairs United States Supreme Court Bulletin set of advance sheets in which slip opinions are collected from the U.S. Supreme Court and published; publisher is Commerce Clearing House United States Reports U.S. United States Reports the official case reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court star paging used to show where each new number began in the original volume because the pagination as different in the reprinted versions of the first 90 volumes of the United States Reports star paging a star, asterisk, or insertion in the text of the opinion, followed by the page number Supreme Court Reporter S. Ct. Supreme Court Reporter unofficial case reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court published by West United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition L. Ed. or L. Ed. 2d United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition unofficial case reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court published by Lawyer's Co-op United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition the only Supreme Court case reporter to include summaries of the briefs of counsel United States Court of Appeals formerly Circuit Court of Appeals United States Court of Appeals only reporter for this court is unofficial and published by West Federal Reporter, Third Series F.3d Federal Reporter, Third Series reporter for United States Court of Appeals United States District Court no official reporter; has only one unofficial reporter published by West Federal Supplement F. Supp. Federal Supplement current reporter for the United States District Courts U.S. Court of International Trade formerly U.S. Customs Court U.S. Court of International Trade cases are reported selectively in the Federal Supplement Federal Rules Decisions reports cases related to federal rules of civil and criminal procedure Bankruptcy Reporter reports decisions of federal bankruptcy courts from 1979 to present Uniform System of Citation uniform citation guideline published by Harvard Law Review Association New York, California only two states that report lower court case decisions National Reporter System divides the U.S. into 7 geographic regions and reports the decisions of the highest appellate court of each state within that region. West publisher of National Reporter System case of first impression an issue has not been decided previously within a particular jurisdiction Corpus Juris Secundum legal encyclopedia published by West American Jurisprudence, Second Series legal encyclopedia published by Lawyer's Co-op American Jurisprudence, Second Series legal encyclopedia that cites directly to Annotated Law Reports American Law Reports leading annotated law reporter published by Lawyer's Co-op Restatement of Law published by the American Law Institute since 1923 on major legal topics Restatement of Law compiled by committees of prominent legal scholars restatement collects and distills the primary, general rules in a given legal topic area (what the rules are and what the committee believes they ought to be) Black's and Ballatine's Law Dictionary two types of legal dictionaries treatise sometimes called a hornbook treatise a single-volume text written by a legal scholar in a given legal area Prosser on Torts example of treatise Corbin on Contracts example of treatise Index to Legal Periodicals used to access law review articles and other law publications in a specific topic area digest a finding tool for case law, usually compiled by the publisher or the case reporter which it relates American Digest System published by West; it is a continuing digest series that collects headnote summaries from all federal and state courts during consecutive 10 year periods; called a Dicennial Digest Words and Phrases published by West; a separate set of reference books devoted exclusively to the headnotes of court cases interpreting specific words and terms Shepard's Citations the most comprehensive collection of legal ciation Looseleaf services consists of one or more looseleaf binders devoted to a specific topic of law in which pages can be added and removed so that changes in law can be incorporated more quickly and easily than other topical sources Looseleaf services examples include The United States Law Week, Criminal Law Reporter, Family Law Reporter, Securities and Regulation & Law Report. Mead Data Corporation publisher of Lexis database Shepard's Citations for Statutes use to determine whether a statute was reviewed by a court shepardizing the process of determining whether a case still is good law by checking the citation in the appropriate set of Shepard's Citations infra short form of citation that may be used to indicate that the full citation appears later in the memorandum, brief, or other work id short form of citation used to indicate that the full citation appears immediately above, meaning that no other citations intervene between the full citation and the short form citation signals citations related to propositions made by the writer of a memorandum or brief are introduced by signals see generally signal which means that the cited authority presents helpful background information about the proposition see, e.g., citation signal which means that the cited authority directly supports the proposition; other authorities also could have been cited but were not cited to avoid duplication Cf. citation signal in which the cited authority states a proposition that is different from the proposition stated by the writer, but the proposition stated in the cited authority is sufficiently similar to lend support to the writer's proposition contra citation signal in which the cited authority contradicts the proposition stated in the memorandum