Common Legal Research Assignments

Revision as of 13:37, 13 December 2011

LexisNexis Academic is the premier database for legal research in the Academic market. Many professors and librarians send their students to LNA for all of their legal research assignments. Whether you're a pre-law student or just looking for basic legal material to round out your research, the following common assignments will surely help you with your research.

The topic "Human Trafficking" will be used in all of the following examples to illustrate each search scenario.

Find Federal Statutes on a Specific Topic

What are Federal Statutes?

Federal statutes are laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. Federal Statutes are collected in the United States Code.

Search Strategy

1. Click on the US Legal bar in the left navigation pane and click on “Federal Statutes, Codes & Regulations”.
2. Select the check box next to “Annotated U.S. Code (USCS)” (the default option) and search for the word “trafficking”.
3. Select "Headings” from the drop down next to the search box. This will limit your search to the statute section headings, which are the catchlines of statutes.
4. After running the search, you will see, in your results set, that the primary provisions in the United States Code that relate to human trafficking are in Title 18 (Crimes and Criminal Procedure), starting primarily with Section 1590.

Determine When Federal Statutes Were Enacted and See Changes Since Then

History Line

Each statute has a history line immediately following the text of the section that lists the Public Law (the act passed by Congress) that have affected that section. Typically, the history line lists the changes in chronological order, with the first listed Public Law being the act that enacted that section. For example, in Section 1590, there is the following history:

HISTORY:

  (Added Oct. 28, 2000, P.L. 106-386, Div A, § 112(a)(2), 114 Stat. 1487.)
  (As amended Dec. 23, 2008, P.L. 110-457, Title II, Subtitle C, § 222(b)(4), 122 Stat. 5069.)

Search Strategy

Using the information in this history line, you can determine when the statute was enacted. In this example, in October of 2000 by the Public Law 106-386 (the first number refers to the 106th Congress).

You can access this Public Law by using the hypertext link in the history line. For this example, the link takes you to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (Public Law 106-386). In this Public Law, you can see the original language of the section when it was enacted. Note that the original language in the Public Law corresponds to subsection (a) in the current version of this section.

The second entry in the history line refers you to the different ammendments made to the statute. The act was ammeded by Public Law 110-457 (the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008). By reviewing this public law, you see that, in 2008, Congress added subsection (b), concerning obstructing or interfering in the enforcement of Section 1590.

Find the Event that Prompted Congress to Enact a Specific Statute

Search news items from a particular point in time to see if an event prompted an act to become a statute.

Search Strategy

1. Use the “Search the News” widget on the Academic start page or the All News search under the News navigation bar. Type in the name of the original Public Law (in the above example, the “Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act”) in quotes to search for that exact language.
2. Click Go
3. (On Results Page)Sort your results from oldest to newest in order to begin with news stories that were written prior to or right after the Public Law was enacted.

Also, in the All News search, you can search for news stories about human trafficking in the year or two prior to the enactment of this legislation. Using the All News search, enter “human” in the top box and limit your search to the Headline and Lead. In the next row of boxes, change “And” to “Within 5 words of” and enter “trafficking” in the next box, again limiting your search to Headline and Lead. Specify your date range by limiting your search to a year or two before the passage of the Public Law. Finally, select your source as “US Newspapers & Wires” in order to see news stories from U.S. papers that may be related to Congress’s passage of the Public Law.

4. What were some of the arguments for and against passing these specific pieces of federal legislation?

In order to see opinion pieces or letters to the editors about the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, you can start with the search above, but, from the All News search screen, check the boxes next to “Editorials & Opinions” and “Letters & Comments” under the Article Type to limit your search to opinion-oriented news reports.

Another source of opinion or analysis is law reviews. Search by the name of the Public Law on the US Law Reviews & Journals search page under the US Legal navigation bar.

5. Have there been any significant convictions under these statutes?

To determine if there have been any significant convictions under this statute, you can start with a news search from the All News search page. Search for the Public Law by name and for the term “convic!” using the exclamation mark as a wildcard that will bring back instances of “convict”, “convicted”, “conviction”, etc., using the “And” connector and not limiting your search to a specific segment of the news story.

Another place to search for significant convictions is in the US Legal navigation bar on the Federal and State Cases page. Significant convictions, or appeals thereof, may appear as case opinions in the federal cases file. Input the name of the Public Act in the search box.

6. In terms of the state where you live, are there similar laws? Were they enacted before the federal laws or in response to them?

To determine if there are any similar statutes in your home state, search using the “State Statutes, Codes & Regulations” page. Search for “trafficking”, limiting your search to Headings. Select your home state from the drop down and select “Statutory Code” as the source. If searching just in the Headings does not provide any relevant results, try expanding your search to “Everywhere”, since terminology may vary from state to state and “trafficking” may only be noted in an editor’s note or case annotation, if the state uses slightly different terminology or subsumes trafficking within its kidnapping or abduction statutes.

In order to determine whether the statutes in your preceded or proceeded from the federal statute, you can first start by looking at the history line of your state statute to see if the state statute was enacted (or amended to include trafficking language) before or after the 2000 enactment of the federal provisions. As with the federal statutes, many of the state statutes’ history notes are hyperlinked to the state acts that enacted or amended that statute.

In order to investigate the interplay between your state’s statutes and the federal statute, you can perform a search on the All News page. Search for “Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act” and the name of your state and select “US Newspapers & Wires” as your source.

7. Have there been any significant instances of human trafficking in your state and what was the outcome?

To determine if there has been any significant instances of human trafficking in your home state, stay on the All News page and substitute “trafficking” in the search box in place of the name of the federal act and limit your search to just the Headline and Lead. You can also search your states case law to see if there have been significant criminal convictions or civil cases involving human trafficking. Access the Federal & State Cases search page from the US Legal menu. Search for “trafficking” and limit your search to the Summary or to the Legal Topics and select your state from the Jurisdiction drop-down.