What are law reviews?

Law reviews are periodical publications of law schools, bar associations, or commercial publishers that contain articles providing analysis of legal issues or practical legal information.

Legal Citations

A citation is a reference to legal authorities and precedents such as statutes, cases, regulations and law review articles. Citations are used in arguments to courts, legal textbooks, law review articles and the like to establish or fortify the propositions argued.

Citations to legal materials follow a standard format which makes it possible for anyone using a law library to find cited cases, statutes, regulations, and law review articles.

Most legal citations consist of three basic parts:

Secondary sources are works that are not the law but discuss or analyze legal doctrine. Treatises and law journal articles are secondary sources. Secondary sources are often the best place to begin legal research as they can help to clarify legal issues and lead to primary as well as other secondary materials.

A Research Guide on Finding Cases

Court opinions, or cases, are published in reporters.  Reporters collect cases in chronological order.  Often sets of reporters are limited to opinions from a single jurisdiction or a single court.  Federal reporters contain opinions from federal courts while state and regional reporters offer opinions from a state or states in a particular geographic region.  Regardless, all reporters are arranged chronologically.