What are citators used for?
Asked by: Catherine Morissette IV | Last update: February 19, 2022Score: 4.3/5 (67 votes)
A Citator is a tool which allows you to track the history of your case and the treatment of your case by subsequent courts. Citators allow you to determine if your case is still good law and it acts as a research tool allowing you find other cases (and other secondary materials) which cited your case.
What do citators do?
Citators help you determine the status of a law, e.g., whether a case is still “good law” (that it has not been overruled by another decision), or whether a statute has been found unconstitutional. ... Citators can also help you find additional research resources that cite the source you've located.
What is the main reason to use Shepard's citators?
Shepard's citators and KeyCite help us check the validity and history of court opinions, statutes, and other legal materials. A citator indicates which legal materials have cited the case (or other legal material) you are interested in.
What is the purpose of Shepardizing?
What is "Shepardizing"? One significant purpose of Shepardizing is to verify that a case is still "good law." The overall action of Shepardizing is to use a citator to see the other cases that have cited a case and their treatment of that case.
What kind of information can be found in a citator?
What are citators? A citator is a tool that will provide you a list of everything that has ever cited your document. These are called citing references. This will generally include not only all cases and statutes that have cited your document, but also every legal secondary source, court documents, and regulations.
What are legal search engines?
7 Free legal search engines and databases 1. Fastcase: For an online law library 2. CourtListener: For legal opinions 3. Caselaw Access Project: For book-published case law 4. FindLaw: For searchable Supreme Court decisions 5.
How do you use Shepard's Citations?
Start with the oldest volume and work forward. Notice that when a case is cited for the first time in a Shepard's citator, it includes the case name and any parallel citations to the case. History citations immediately follow the parallel citations which are then followed by treatment citations.
Do lawyers still Shepardize?
Traditionally, this process required a thorough review of published volumes and supplements in search of references to a single case. However, today, most lawyers and law students prefer the ease of Shepardizing their cases automatically through online subscription-based databases, like LexisNexis or Westlaw.
How do you Shepardize a statute?
When viewing a statute, look at the Shepard's preview box at the top right portion of your screen. 2. Click Shepardize® this document.
What tool to use to see if a case has been overturned?
The major tool that is used by legal researchers to check the status of a case is called a case citator.
What does a Shepard's report list?
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. ...
What is the difference between Shepard's and KeyCite?
Shepard's Summary provides key references, editorial treatment and information on LexisNexis® headnotes from your case that match text in the report's citing cases. ... KeyCite does not organize its answer sets by jurisdiction, making it hard to identify citations from your court. Choose Shepard's and know in seconds.
How can citators help researchers?
- Determine whether a primary law source, such as a case or a statute, is still valid law.
- See the effect a citing document has on a case or a statute (positive, negative, affirm, overturn, question, etc.), and see the depth of treatment the citing resource gives to that case or statute.
What service provides online citators?
Although originally distributed only as printed and bound volumes, citators are now typically on-line services such as LexisNexis's online Shepard's Citations, Justis Publishing's provider-neutral JustCite, Westlaw's KeyCite, Bloomberg Law's BCite, and the Oxford Law Citator of Oxford University Press.
WHAT IS Shepards signal?
Shepard's Signal™
Shepard's signals on cases indicate positive, negative, and neutral treatment of that case by other courts. Shepard's signals on statutes indicate positive or negative treatment of that section by courts. The positive signal only appears on the Shepard's report of the statute.
What is Shepardize in law?
Primary tabs. To Shepardize a citation is to ascertain the subsequent treatment of a legal decision, thus putting its precedential value in a complete context. The term originates from the common historical use of Shepard's Citation Service to track the treatment of specific decisions.
What is Shepardizing a document?
This process is referred to as Shepardizing®. Shepard's® provides a comprehensive report of the cases, statutes, secondary sources, and annotations that cite your document, including more recent cases that rely on your starting case.
What does the yellow triangle mean on Lexis?
A yellow triangle indicates that there may be some negative treatment but that the case has not been overturned. The red octagon indicates that the case has been overturned on at least one point of law. A full list of all the signals and additional help in using Shepard's is available in the Lexis Advance Help Guide.
What does a yellow flag on Westlaw mean?
When reviewing a case in Westlaw Edge, you should look for a KeyCite flag at the top of the document. ... A yellow flag warns that the case has some negative history but has not been reversed or overruled. For example, the reasoning of the decision was criticized or its holding was limited to a specific set of facts.
What do the symbols on Westlaw mean?
When you pull up a statute in Westlaw, if you see a red or yellow flag, that means that there is negative treatment for that statute. A red flag indicates that the statute has been amended, repealed, superseded, or held unconstitutional in whole or in part. A yellow flag indicates other negative treatment.
When did Shepard's citations start?
creating an alphabetical list of overruled cases. citation indexes, but the idea really reached its pinnacle in print when Frank Shepard introduced his product in 1873.
What does Shepardize mean Lexis?
LexisNexis headnotes from your case are matched to text in the report's citing cases. ... Click the Shepardize: Restrict by Headnote link to Shepardize the case on your screen and automatically restrict the results to the LexisNexis headnotes you are viewing.
What does it mean to Shepardize a case on Westlaw?
The term Shepardize means the process of checking a case's prior precedents. The term comes from the citation service called Shepard's, which up until the late 1990s was the only real game in town. Then Westlaw quit using Shepard's, Shepard's went to Lexis (Westlaw's main competitor), and Westlaw launched KeyCite.
WHAT IS Shepards brief check?
The Shepard's® BriefCheck™ service automatically processes your document and validates the cited authority in it through the Lexis® service. Depending on your selected options, the Shepard's BriefCheck service does the following: Extracts all citations from your source document. Generates a cite list.