To search by Area of Law, select the All Sources option under drop down Menu on the top Right to find and select the Sources to search as follows.
1. Select Area of Law from the menu on the left hand side to begin browsing law sources. Other possibilities are
Publication Type, News & Business Topics, and Industry.
2. Filter by Country (United States) and Publication Type (Cases or Legal News)
3. Select a Category (Education Law) from which to view and select sources.
4. Check the box in front of the source(s) you want to include. Click "OK Continue"
5. Enter search terms in box.
Select your date or date range
Click "Search"
6. To narrow your search, use the Search within results box in the
upper right-hand corner.
POWER SEARCH (recommended)
Tips: ! truncation mark. E.g. terminat! will find terminate, terminated, termination... ; Using the W/n connector. E.g. free speech w/15 student; Segment search can be effective. This is how to select a segment: Source > Fed.& State Cases > Select a segment > e.g. OVERVIEW(due process and player). Overview is the segment that describes the facts about the case; Show (options of displaying case documents): KWIC shows ONLY the segments in which your search terms occur; Full with Indexing shows all but it could make a case reading difficult. Ses some examples:
- student! and dress code
- student! w/15 dress code
- student! w/20 free speech and Texas
- 347 w/5 U.S. w/5 483 [Looking for cases which mention the case 347 U.S. 483]
- faculty and terminat! and retaliat! w/50 criticiz!
Supreme Court Cases
- court ( supreme ) and denial and financial aid
- court (supreme) and university and age discrimination
Path: Power Search > By Type > select > US Law Review
Law review articles in Lexis are divided into three main sections: Title, Summary and Text. See some examples below:
- title (affirmative action and admission w/5 program)
- summary (affirmative action and admission w/5 program)
- text (tenure w/5 denied w/20 race or gender or religion)
- affirmative action and admission w/5 program and hopwood w/10 texas
The search summary(affirmative action and admission w/5 program) will find more than 120 articles. In one of the articles "A Current Perspective: The Erosion of Affirmative Action in University Admissions", you will find several important cases mentioned: Board of Regents v. Bakke; Gratz v. Michigan; Hunter v. Regents of the University of California; and Robert A. Lauer, Hopwood v. Texas. You could also do a TEXT search with parties' names to look for articles on your interested cases.
MORE ABOUT CONNECTORS
AND will retrieve all the term(s) from the same document.
W/N allows one to specify proximity between words. The rules of thumb are:
student! w/5 dress code (same phrase)
student! w/15 dress code (same sentence)
student! w/50 dress code (same paragraph)
student! and dress code (anywhere in the document).
! When used at the end of a word as in "student!", it will find student, students, student's and students'
MORE ABOUT SEARCHING:
Avoid using long phrases. Example: university faculty promotion discrimination. The search may get zero hits because it looks for documents with all those words appearing in that exact order. Solution: add "And" in between: university AND faculty promotion AND discrimination, or use different terms: faculty and tenure denied and discrimination. You may also consider using "!" to optimize the search results, e.g. deni! to include denial, denied or other variations.
Use W/N connector to construct more meaningful search sets. Example: graduate admission rejected and disability. You may change it to: graduate w/5 program and admission w/15 denied and disabl! In this new search, you use W/N to break the long phrase graduate admission rejected into two subsets: graduate program and admission denied, and then combine them with the third component disabled or disability.
Specify in which SEGMENT your search terms occur. See two examples:
- OVERVIEW(due process and player)
- OVERVIEW (tenure w/5 denied) and OUTCOME(reversed)
Goolge it. Example: legal cases tenure denial and sex discrimination. Then search Lexis with the name(s) or citation or keywords you found in Google.
See also the next topic - using law reviews to find cases.
HOW TO READ A CASE?
See How to Read a Case, p. 1-1 (College Administrator & the Courts). Basically, the decision is related to the facts of the case. So grasp the FACTS first, then ask WHAT THE ISSUE IS. This is to determine what the principles the case stands for. The next questions: how the court RESOLVED THE ISSUE & THEIR REASONING and WHAT ARE THE RAMIFICATION OF THE OPINION. Note: opinion does NOT equal decision. An opinion is the court's explanation for its decision; a decision either affirms or reverses the lower court or tribunal.
PSU also publishes an excellent guide on how to read a legal case:
1. Begin with the name and citation of the case.
2. Is this case being decided by a trial court or an appellate court? (Note: most cases you read will be
appellate cases, because the opinions of trial courts have less precedental value)
3. In the original case, who was the plaintiff and who was the defendant?
4. What was the original complaint? (libel, invasion of privacy, violation of a statute, etc.)
5. What were the facts that led to the complaint?
6. What was the trial court's decision? (who "won" the case)
7. What are the legal questions/issues that are being raised on appeal?
8. What is the present court's decision (is the original decision affirmed, reversed, or remanded?)
9. What rule or test is the court using to decide the outcome? This will relate to the legal question
that must be decided.
10.What reason does the court give for using this rule?
Url: <https://www.courses.psu.edu/comm/comm403_jsb15/howtoreadcase.html>
When reading a case, you may see headnotes here and there. A HN gives a brief summary of a point of law. When clicked, a HN whill jump to a specific court opinion in the text of the case, helping readers to understand the opinion relevant to that law. Please note that HN is only an editorial interpretation not a part of the court's decisions.
HOW TO FIND STATUE AND CODES
Path: Lexis> Legal tab> United States Code Services Title 1 through 50
- higher education resources and student assistance programs (if you know the name)
- heading ( title 20 ) and section ( 100* ) (if you know the Title and the section numbers)
You could also click Browse TOC (located on the left panel) to do a search by limiting to a specific section, say, EDUCATION, and then enter your search terms in the Quick Find.
HOW TO FIND FEDERAL OR STATE REGULATIONS AND ADMINISTRATIVE CODES
Path: Lexis> Legal tab>Federal and State Codes > select CFR from SOURCES
- Heading (student loan) (keyword search in the Heading section)
- 5 CFR 537.10* (if you know a specific CFR citation)
HOW TO FIND MISSISSIPPI CODES
Path: Lexis> Legal tab>Federal and State Codes > select MS-Mississippi Code, Constitution ... from SOURCES
- heading (higher education and control of funds)