Paralegal Studies (LEX)

Welcome to your Paralegal Studies Subject Guide! Here you will find books, eBooks, databases, articles, and more. In addition, this guide contains resources pertaining to careers and research assistance. 

Check out SPCC's Law Subject Guide for more helpful resources and database tutorials! 

Legal Research/Writing (LEX 120) Guide 

Statutes are laws written and enacted by the legislative branch of government. Most new laws are created through statutes (as opposed to being created by judges through case opinions); therefore, it is important to know that you will frequently begin your research projects by looking at a statute rather than cases.

At the federal level, each statute is published in three versions. First, a statute is enacted as a slip law, which is printed on a single sheet or in pamphlet form. When a slip law is published, it will be assigned a Public Law Number to identify it. The Public Law Number (e.g., Pub.L. No. 112-25) consists of two parts: The first number represents the number of the Congress that passed the law, while the second number represents the chronological order in which the law was passed. In the above example, Pub.L. No. 112-25 is the 25th law passed by the 112th Congress.  Slip laws/Public Laws are available in print or online through the Library of Congress's Congress.gov site.

Next, the statute is published as a session law. Session laws are the slip laws bound chronologically by Congressional session (each Congress lasts two years and is divided into two sessions). The Statutes at Large is the official U.S. government compilation of federal session laws.

While it's important to acknowledge the existence of slip laws and session laws, there are several problems with researching statutes using these formats:

1. Usually you will be searching by subject, and neither slip laws nor session laws are arranged by subject.
2. A statute may cover several subjects, and the subject matter you are looking for may not be apparent from the title of the statute. For example, would it be obvious from looking at the title of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 that this statute includes tax law provisions? 
3. Each time a statute is amended, a separate Public Law must be passed, so you may have to read through several slip laws to get the complete and current version of a statute's language.
4. Finally, from looking at slip laws or session laws, there's no way to tell if a statute has been repealed.

Therefore, when researching, you'll want to use the third version of a statute, which is published in a code. A code arranges the statutes by topic (rather than chronologically), indexes statutes to allow for subject access, and incorporates any amendments and repealed language such as to always give you the current picture of the law.

The official codification (i.e., the version published by the U.S. government) of federal statutes is the United States Code (U.S.C.). The U.S.C. is broken down into 53 subject Titles, with each Title representing a major subject area (e.g., Banks and Banking, Labor, Transportation). The newest Title (Title 54) covers the National Park Service and was added in December 2014 (note that there is currently not a Title 53). The U.S.C. is published in full every six years, but cumulative bound supplements are issued each year in between. Publication of the full code and annual supplements may lag several years behind; for example, the Law Library didn't receive the complete set of 2006 U.S.C. bound volumes until 2009. Because of these long delays, and because the U.S.C. doesn't contain any explanatory material to help researchers understand the statutory language, it's more efficient and effective to use an unofficial code. An unofficial code is a commercially published version of an official code, which is used for legal research. Unofficial codes include references (called annotations) to primary and secondary sources that relate to each code section and are updated much more frequently than the U.S.C. 

There are two unofficial code print versions of the U.S.C.: United States Code Annotated (the U.S.C.A., published by West) and the United States Code Service (the U.S.C.S., published by Lexis). Both sets include the entire U.S.C., as well as other material (e.g., the Constitution, Federal Court Rules, Federal Rules of Evidence). All of the content is annotated with references to case law and secondary sources (such as law reviews, treatises, and ALR annotations) that interpret the statutory language; plus there are cross-references to related regulations. Both versions also include a multivolume index at the end of the sets, along with a Popular Name Table that facilitates searching for a code section when you know the name of the statute (e.g., USA PATRIOT Act, Megan's Law). Both versions also include volumes that contain tables showing parallel references for Public Laws, session laws, and code sections. Both versions are updated annually with pocket parts and/or softbound pamphlet supplements (just as we saw with the digests), and both include advance legislative service volumes that show changes to the code sections in between the times when the pocket parts are issued. You can also use an online citator to determine if a statute is still valid and to find cases and other materials that analyze or interpret the statutory language. Use KeyCite (in Westlaw) for the U.S.C.A and Shepard's (in Lexis) for the U.S.C.S.