of your research professors for this MOOC
course.
Today I'm here to talk to you about
citation.
Which is a system for finding U.S. law.
In particular, we'll focus today on cases.
And you will learn from other parts of
this MOOC course,
that American lawyers rely heavily on
cases to support their legal arguments.
It is a skill for every American lawyer to
be able to interpret a citation to
a case, so that they can find the
case quickly and use it to support their
arguments.
Let's take an example.
This is a citation to a case.
An American lawyer can tell you instantly
without
thinking the names of the parties of the
case.
Whether the case is a civil case or
a criminal case, which court decided this
case?
Where this case was published?
When it was decided?
And how to find it.
Would you like to learn how to do that?
I'm sure you do.
So let's do it together.
It's really easy once you get the hang of
it.
We'll just break it down together.
First, a citation to a case begins with
the case name.
The v in between Mapp v Ohio stands for
versus, or against.
So here we have a case name of one party
against another.
In this situation the party, one party is
named
Dora Lee Mapp, a woman, against the state
of Ohio.
Whenever you see a last name of a person
versus an individual state or the United
States in general.
That is a good indication that this is a
criminal
case, and here we have no exception to
that rule.
Mapp versus Ohio is a criminal case.
Now let's skip over the number 367 for
now, and jump to the abbreviation U.S.
Cases are not always published, but when
they
are published they're published in books
called reporters.
Now there are all different types of
reporters by, that go by
all different names and each reporter
publishes cases from a certain court.
For this citation we are told the U.S.
abbreviation stands for a reporter.
Called the United States Reports.
And that United States Reports publishes
cases from
our highest federal court, the United
States Supreme Court.
So now, an American attorney would be able
to
look at that abbreviation, US, and know
that this
case, Mapp versus Ohio was decided by the
U.S.
Supreme Court and published in the United
States reports.
Now let's go back to that number 367 that
I skipped over earlier.
That stands for the volume.
Remember, a reporter is a book.
So if you were to pull volume 367 of
the United States Reports, which I've done
here and
you were to turn to the page number
indicated
by the number following that abbreviation
of U.S. 643.
You would be able to read the case, Mapp
versus Ohio.
So an American lawyer would be able to
pull volume 367 of
the United States Report, and turn to page
643 to read the case.
The last piece of the puzzle is the
information in parenthesis.
1961.
That is the year the case was decided.
So, now you know how to interpret a legal
citation to a case.
Mapp v.
Ohio was decided in 1961 by the United
States Supreme Court.
It was published in United States reports,
and if you pull
volume 367 and turn to page 643, you can
read it yourself.
Or, you can plug in the citation on the
screen into
your search engine of your choice, and
read the case online.
So why don't you practice that.
You go do it, and I'll check in with you
later.
Happy researching.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
0 comments:
Post a Comment