A little organization can help make the research process a little less daunting.
Consider:
Primary Sources:
Primary legal sources are the actual law in the form of constitutions, court cases, statutes, and administrative rules and regulations.
Look for Statutes! What is a Statute? The word statute refers to a law passed by a state legislature or the U.S. Congress that commands, prohibits, or declares something. It is sometimes called legislation.
Secondary Sources:
In legal research, secondary sources refer to a variety of resources that explain, interpret, and analyze primary sources. They include legal dictionaries, encyclopedias, law reviews, American Law Reports, treatises, restatements, and jury instructions. Secondary sources are a great way to start research and often have citations to highly relevant primary sources.
Secondary sources are not law, and as such are not mandatory authority. They are always persuasive authority. Persuasive authority can be used to support a legal position or argument, and courts may choose to consider it when deciding an issue. However, it is not mandatory that they do so
Research assistance - help finding sources, evaluating sources
Online workshops for citing and plagiarism are held throughout the semester. To request a citing workshop, please email library@rcbc.edu