Starting Your Research with Secondary Sources | Types of Secondary Sources | Encyclopedic Works | Treatises | Online Search Tips |Restatements & Principles of Law | Law Reviews & Journals | Reference Works | Study Aids | Problems
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Secondary sources are sources that are not technically binding authority, meaning no one has to follow what they say as the law. They are authored by individuals commenting or expounding upon the law in a given area. A few like Nimmer on Copyright, Corbin on Contracts, or Restatements of the Law are cited regularly in court, but most are not.
Some research is best started with primary law, like when you have a case name or reference to a statute, but most problems present themselves as subject problems requiring background knowledge about a subject so that you can proceed. The illustration, borrowed from Lexis, below stresses the need to build a base in Secondary Authority at the beginning of the research process. Link to explanation about the difference between primary, secondary, and combined resources.
For an explanation of other problem types than subject problems, see link.
With Westlaw and Lexis it is possible to get to secondary sources in at least three ways (the same applies to primary law), especially when state law is involved.
A few works are encyclopedic in scope, encompassing both law from the American states and the federal government. Secondary sources, including encyclopedic works which are primarily found on Westlaw, can be found at link. Alternative link (use if Panopto is down).
Two of the biggest Encyclopedias as noted in the video are American Jurisprudence 2nd (AmJur 2nd) and Corpus Juris Secondum, the latter of which has been cited over 90,000 times in U.S. Courts. Click on their links to see their current scope and cost. Some states are big enough to have their own Encyclopedias. For example, there are New York Jurisprudence and California Jurisprudence. Missouri has Missouri Practice, which is more of a practice series, almost as expansive as a full encyclopedia, but not quite. Kansas has nothing similar.
Treatises may be one to thirty or more volumes. They may look encyclopedic, but they are dedicated to one general or specific area of the law. For instance, both the single-volume Missouri DWI Law and Practice and the exhaustive, 31-volume Williston on Contracts are treatises. Some treatises are bound and produce paper supplements to update. Others are in "looseleaf" format--essentially four-inch wide notebooks--which have to have pages inserted when updates are made. Consequently, while some prefer handling them in print, there are good reasons to use them online. The University of Colorado has kept up an extensive "libguide" of treatises organized by subject at link.
The video below covers Lexis and Westlaw because they are exhaustive in their coverage. Bloomberg Law, which originated as a news service and added law topics and sources, has more limited coverage of treatises. Also important are Bloomberg Law portfolios.
Alternative link (use if Panopto is down).
A powerful tool for searching secondary sources (as well as primary) is the "atleastN( )" command as in "atleast5(habitability)" which will search out documents with at least five references to a given term or phrase (if in quotes). It works well with secondary sources (and primary) to filter out the mere passing reference to a concept and focus on the articles that are really important.
This can technique can be particularly powerful when searching law reviews and journals.
All databases have fields or segments. Secondary sources may offer title, section, and heading fields. They are found under the advanced search link, usually next to the search bar. Each database has different fields or segments. In the example below, we have used the "Heading" field to search Missouri Contracts (MoBarCLE) for information on adhesion contracts.
Note on the right the "Segment Examples" which show how a document may have different segments.
Below are the results from the search.
Restatements of the Law (Westlaw > Secondary Sources > Restatements and Principles of Law) are addressed to courts and others applying existing law. They are formulated by attorneys, judges, and academics for the American Law Institute. "Restatements aim at clear formulations of common law and its statutory elements or variations and reflect the law as it presently stands or might plausibly be stated by a court." They are often persuasive and instructive in legal analysis. The Restatements are annotated with new cases added on a regular basis.
Principles "may be addressed to courts, legislatures, or governmental agencies. They assume the stance of expressing the law as it should be, which may or may not reflect the law as it is."
Law reviews and journals including both academic and professional journals are an excellent way to find insightful commentary into the law on almost any conceivable topic. Lexis and Westlaw have large journal databases that go back to a given point in time. They have powerful search commands and they include bar journals.
HeinOnline (see library databases page) carries journals in PDF formats back to their inception. In addition, it is accessible by Google Scholar at https://scholar.google.com while you are in law school. Finally, it will be a part of FastCase during law school (see library databases page), and if you are admitted to either the Missouri or Kansas Bar after lawschool, you will receive FastCase with Hein Online access as part of your bar membership.
Google Scholar also scans online repositories like SSRN and law school's Law Commons (BePress/Elsevier) which carry many articles and papers even before they have been published in journals. Note that SSRN and Law Commons allow advanced searching by fields such as summary and abstract. It is an excellent way to research cutting-edge issues.
Reference works include dictionaries and other tools.
Funded by the Student Library Fee, the law library has licensed access to various study aids from West Academic and the LexisNexis Digital Library. West Academic has the only location for Horn Books mentioned in your readings in Missouri Legal Research (which is also in the LexisNexis Library). The databases are located on the library database page (shortcut - https://umkclaw.link/db).
Hint: Try American Jurisprudence 2nd and Corpus Juris Secundum on Westlaw
The following problems come from Beau Steenken & Tina Brooks, Sources of American Law: An Introduction to Legal Research (4th ed., CALI eLangdell Press 2019) (Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License)
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