PUBLIC SCHOOL LAW Part 19: Comprehensive Legal Databases Public School Law: Part 5: Citators

Comprehensive Legal Databases Comprehensive Legal Databases means that the databases contain all primary law sources, such as court cases, statute law and administrative law.  They may also contain citators, and secondary sources of the law such as periodicals, treatises, and other law books.  The following list contains three of the most well known comprehensive databases. The law is not set in stone Laws, whether case law, statute law or administrative law are constantly in a state of change A court decision may be overturned. A statute may be declared unconstitutional, or go out of date, or replaced by another statute

We have already seen LOISLAW Loislaw is a leading provider of legal research services in the U.S., and a Wolters Kluwer brand, within the Law and Business unit. Wolters Kluwer is the second largest worldwide provider of content to the legal market. Loislaw is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, and affordable online legal research service. From its beginning in the late 1980s, Loislaw has pioneered new products and new technology for the digital legal information market. Or to put it simply, LoisLaw is where you can find caselaw, statutes and regulations We have already seen LOISLAW When you find primary legal sources, you need to make sure that they are still good law You do that with a citator

WESTLAW Westlaw is a comprehensive legal database that contains various amounts of information based on your subscription plan. It does include all federal court cases, state court cases, federal and state statute law, federal and state administrative law, plus you can access profiles of judges and opposing attorneys, Current briefs and dockets, all relevant to your topic, Relevant court filings and jury verdicts, Practical guidance from real-world experts, All the forms and checklists you need, information from public records. You can also search the laws of other lands and countries. Westlaw was designed for practicing lawyers and the information offered is quite impressive. Westlaw is a part of West Publishing Company, the same company that publishes paper reporters, such as the Supreme Court Reporter The purpose of a citator is: To help you find out what subsequent cases have done to your case To help you to determine whether an authority (case or statute) is still good law To help you locate additional authorities that pertain to your research question

LexisNexis® is a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. LexisNexis originally pioneered online information with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. A member of Reed Elsevier, LexisNexis serves customers in more than 100 countries with more than 15,000 employees worldwide Citators catalog cases, statutes, and administrative law They then indicate subsequent cases, statutes, and administrative law that have cited the first case They also tell if any subsequent cases, statutes, and administrative laws have supported, or overturned the first case

Print Citators Now that was quick! You are done with Part 19 already! Now on to Part 20! The first citator is called Shepard’s Citations The name derives from a legal service begun by Frank Shepard (1848–1902) in 1873, when Shepard began publishing these lists in a series of books indexed to different jurisdictions. Initially, the product was called Shepard’s Adhesive Annotations. The citations were printed on gummed, perforated sheets, which could be divided and pasted onto pages of case law. Known as “stickers,” these were literally torn to bits and stuck to pertinent margins of case reporters. By the early 20th century, the Frank Shepard Company was binding the citations into maroon volumes with Shepard’s Citations stamped in gold on their spines, much like the ones still found on library shelves.[1] In 1996 Shepard’s Citations was purshased by LexisNexis, another big publisher of legal materials, in 1996.