BUS 121 - Legal
Research |
The assignment has 3 options. For each of the options, you need to find at least one case. LexisNexis is THE place to go to find case information. If you need further practice using library resources for legal research or reading case citations use the links below:
Option A
You can find the whole text of the law on the governments’ website by googling the name of the law. You can find information about the specific department by going to the department website. You can also find some good articles in Gale Database by doing a subject guide search for “Homeland Security Act of 2002.”
To find cases dealing with the department, go to LexisNexis and use the "Get a Case" search box on main page. Search by party name (BLANK V. BLANK) but you can enter just one name. Put in the name of the department (since they names of the department are long you can put in a partial name; if you put in the abbreviated name you get different # of results. For example "FEMA" gets you less results than “Federal Emergency Management Agency”). After hitting “submit” you get a list of cases. Go in and look at the years of the cases to make sure they took place after 2002. If there are a large # of cases, narrow down to a certain year by using the “Focus” box. Enter a year (for example “2006”) and all the cases with “2006” in the text will come up.
Option B
For this option you will "Outline the procedural steps involved in the process of appealing a case to the Supreme Court.” In the beginning of each volume of our reference set “Supreme Court Drama,” there is a section called “Guide to the Supreme Court of the United States” that goes over the Supreme court appeals process (for further information about specific terms such as Writ of certiorari use the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court-also found in our reference section).
You need to find a case that has recently been appealed to the Supreme Court (i.e. a case that hasn’t been decided yet) . Go to the Supreme Court’s website (http://www.supremecourtus.gov) and click on “docket.” The trick is finding a case that isn’t decided yet. Try searching “pending and 2007”. You should be able to find some cases that weren’t decided or the petition denied. Once you have the case, go to LexisNexis’ “Get a Case” and search for the case by party name (note: if a person’s name is one of the party’s, use their last name only).
Option C.
For this option find a case that went to court after the “Statute of Limitations” was over. It is best to search not by a specific topic—but to pick a state and find what crimes/issues have a statue of limitations. To find information about the whys and wherefores of having “statue of limitations” Black’s Law Dictionary is a good place to go. You can also do a keyword or subject search in Gale Databasefor “statue of limitations.”
To find laws that have a statute of limitations, go to LexisNexis, click on the “Legal Research” Academic Search Form (on the left).Then click “state codes” under “codes and regulations.” This will take you to a list of states. Click on the state you are researching. In the “keyword” box put either “Statue of Limitations” or “limitations of actions”. Try both ways (statue of limitations and limitations of action) if keyword searching. In the list of laws that comes up look for the phrase “LIMITATION OF CIVIL ACTIONS” in the first few lines to figure out which laws fit. The Codes available in LexisNexis are annotated, which means throughout the section (particularly near the end) there will be references to certain cases dealing with that section. You need to take the information about the law (either the party names or the citation) and search in the “Get a Case” section of LexisNexis to find the actual case.
What type of issues/crimes/civil actions have statue of limitations varies from state to state. For example, South Carolina doesn’t have statute of limitations dealing with crimes, they are all civil. So for this one it is best not to have a particular crime/civil action in mind—until you look through the code.
Note: state codes are available through the web—but these aren’t annotated!
Also be aware: when searching by party name, more than one case may come up—make sure you look carefully at the cases and get the right one!
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Last update
03/26/2008