legal research Legal research is "the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making. In its broadest sense, legal research includes each step of a course of action that begins with an analysis of the facts of a prob ...

, a citator is a

citation index A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century H ...

of legal resources, one of the best-known of which in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Shepard's Citations ''Shepard's Citations'' is a citator used in United States legal research that provides a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. The verb ''Shepardizing'' (sometimes written lower-case) refers t ...

. Given a reference of a legal decision, a citator allows the researcher to find newer documents which cite the original document and thus to reconstruct the judicial history of cases and statutes. A citator can also be used to determine whether a statute or regulation has been amended, repealed, superseded, or held unconstitutional. Using a citator in this way is

colloquially Colloquialism (also called ''colloquial language'', ''colloquial speech'', ''everyday language'', or ''general parlance'') is the linguistic style used for casual and informal communication. It is the most common form of speech in conversation am ...

referred to as "Shepardizing".

Use in legal research

Topical research

Because cases cite related cases, citators can be used to find cases which are on topics related to a given topic. A common research strategy is to use "one good case" to find related cases.

Establishing authority

Another important application is to determine whether the conclusions of one case have been followed, overturned, or modified in later cases, especially by higher courts. This is important for legal systems in which the binding authority of a case is contingent on

precedent Precedent is a judicial decision that serves as an authority for courts when deciding subsequent identical or similar cases. Fundamental to common law legal systems, precedent operates under the principle of ''stare decisis'' ("to stand by thin ...

. Citators often include annotations indicating the history and treatment of a case in citing opinions. Shepard's notes 'history' as affirmed, modified, reversed, same case, Superseded, or vacated; and 'treatment' as criticised, distinguished, explained, j dissenting opinion, ~ consenting opinion, Limited, overruled, or questioned. Although originally distributed only as printed and bound volumes, citators are now typically on-line services such as

LexisNexis LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York, New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper searc ...

's online ''Shepard's Citations'', Justis Publishing's provider-neutral JustCite,

Westlaw Westlaw is an Computer-assisted legal research, online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of ca ...

's KeyCite, Bloomberg Law's BCite, and the Oxford Law Citator of

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

History

Citation indexes to the Bible date to the 13th century.see

Citation index A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century H ...

article. In English legal literature, volumes of judicial reports included lists of cases cited in that volume starting with ''Raymond's Reports'' (1743) and followed by ''Douglas's Reports'' (1783). Simon Greenleaf (1821) published an alphabetical list of cases with notes on later decisions affecting the precedential authority of the original decision. The first true citation index dates to the 1860 publication of Labatt's ''Table of Cases...California...'', followed in 1872 by Wait's ''Table of Cases...New York...''. But the most important and best-known citation index came with the 1873 publication of

.Fred R. Shapiro, "Origins of Bibliometrics, Citation Indexing, and Citation Analysis: The Neglected Legal Literature" ''Journal of the American Society of Information Science'' 43:5:337-339 (1992) Frank Shepard Company started publishing citators in New York City in 1873 and other companies provided similar services at around the same time, ''e.g.'' George Fred Williams's ''Massachusetts citations: a table of cases, overruled, denied, doubted, criticised, approved, and cited by the Supreme Judicial Court'' (Boston, 1878). The name 'citator' appears to have been coined by the Citator Publishing Company (Detroit) in 1908 in ''The Citator: an annotated compilation of citations of the

Kansas Supreme Court The Kansas Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in the U.S. state of Kansas. Composed of seven justices, led by Chief Justice Marla Luckert, the court supervises the legal profession, administers the judicial branch, and serves as t ...

...''.

Notes

External links