Frank@su-csli.arpa (Frank Chen) (02/11/86)
Well, I wouldn't say I was a *legel* [sic] expert (since I am still in law school), but I'll try to answer your question about how people sight [sic] cases.... Once you are in law school, you'll soon find out what all these cites are. Basically though, a case citation looks something like this (in its most abbreviated form). For example: United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411 (1975) This tells you the case name (who is suing who), and that you can read what the court said about this case in volume 423 of United States Reports on page 411, and that the case was decided in 1975. People have information about these cases because they've looked up and read the cases in a law library. There are two major computerized legal services called LEXIS and WESTLAW which help lawyers and law students do their work. You will undoubtably encounter them in law school and when you work in a law firm. They are accessed by network. (They're not simple programs for which you could get a copy to run on your PC, and they're certainly are not public domain software to do all of this. By the way, computerized research is very expensive.). Frank Chen UCLA School of Law -------