Sources
U.S. Reports (United States Supreme Court)
Supreme Court Reporter (United States Supreme Court)
Federal Reporter (United State Circuit Courts of Appeal) Federal Supplement (United States District Courts) |
Citation
Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972) .
Sierra Club v. Morton, 92 S. Ct. 1361 (1972) .
Sierra Club v. Hickel, 433 F.2d 24 (9th Cir. 1970).
Navajo Nation v. U.S. Forest Service, 408 F. Supp. 2d 866 (D. Ariz. 2006). |
Federal Cases
There are two types of courts: trial courts and appeals courts. Trial courts are where attorneys present the evidence in the case to the jury and the jury makes its decision based on the facts. Most of the time laws are applied during a trial but there is no law made. Judges do not usually write opinions in jury trials so there is nothing published.
If one of the parties is unhappy with the outcome of the case and has a legal reason to appeal the case, that party appeals to a court of appeals. In the appeals court, there is no jury and the judges do not rehear the evidence in the case and do not decide if facts are true or not; the appeals court only determines the law was correctly applied during the trial. When the appeals court makes a decision on what the law means or how it should be applied, the judges write an opinion. These opinions are what legal researchers are looking for.
Opinions are published in books called reporters. In the federal court system, each level has a separate reporter. When judges in the Federal District Courts (the trial level courts) do write opinions, they are published in the Federal Supplement (F. Supp.). Opinions from the Circuit Courts of Appeal (intermediate appellate courts) are published in the Federal Reporter (F.). United States Supreme Court (the highest court) opinions are published in the official United States Reports (U.S.) and in two commercial reporters, the Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) and the Supreme Court Reporter, Lawyers' Edition (L. Ed.).
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The Importance of Case Law in the American Legal System
The American legal system is based on the idea that once a court has made a decision on a particular legal issue, that court and other courts will follow that decision in the future to decide cases with similar facts and legal issues. You may hear this referred to as stare decisis.
There are some limitations to this idea and not all decisions from all courts have to be strictly followed by all other courts. For example, the Montana Supreme Court does not have to follow a decision of the Idaho Supreme Court. However, how the Idaho Supreme Court decided the case may be persuasive to the Montana Supreme Court so legal researchers often look for all the cases about a particular topic or all the cases that are similar to the cases they are working on.
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