Law Resources: What is Case Law?

(This pages dicusses case law in general. To search for cases, see Finding Federal Cases or Finding Connecticut Cases.)

What is case law?

Case law consists of the written opinions (or decisions) of courts as they resolve litigation. Opinions explain the reasoning behind the resolution, including citations to relevant statutes and other cases (precedents).

When you're looking for a court case, what you're really looking for is the court's opinion for that case. Case, opinion, and decision are often used interchangeably.

Why are there so many cases with the same name?

There are several possible explanations:

Every time an event occurs in the life of a court case, a new document is generated. There are ways to figure out which one of the multiple results you want, beginning with knowing the citation, or at least the year and court, of the case.

When you search for a case by name in Westlaw or another database, you are searching the entire name field of all the cases in the database. If the parties have common names, or if one of the parties is the United States, you may see several cases in addition to the one you want.

You might be finding both state and federal cases. In the U.S., there are separate parallel court systems on the state and federal level. This table shows the current structure of the federal and Connecticut court systems beginning with the lowest level, the trial level, where most cases begin:

Federal		State
United States District Court		Superior Court
United States Court of Appeals		Appellate Court
United States Supreme Court		Connecticut Supreme Court

FYI: In the federal court system, Connecticut is in the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court of Connecticut, 2nd Circuit for the U.S. Court of Appeals (along with New York and Vermont), and the United States Supreme Court.

In addition, there are also special federal courts like bankruptcy courts, U.S. Tax Court, and U.S. Court of International Claims.

So when you search, it's best to know more about your case than just the name. Please see Getting Started for some ideas on how to get more information.

What are all these numbers and letters after the case name?

Because the courts are government agencies, the federal and state governments publish the opinions. The books in which opinions are published are called reporters. Because the government is slow to get the bound volumes out, commercial reporters like Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct.), Lawyer's Edition (L.Ed.), and U.S. Law Week (USLW) evolved. They were published more quickly than the official reporters and had extra features like summaries for their customers.

Now that decisions can be published online as soon as the courts hand them down, there is less call for the print reporters and more emphasis on the electronic equivalents like Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw, put out by the publishers of Lawyer's Edition and Supreme Court Reporter, respectively. The U.S. Supreme Court and many other courts also have their own websites where opinions are posted.

So, cases are often published in several places simultaneously and each source has its own abbreviation and numbering system. U.S. Supreme Court cases, for example, are published in U.S. Reports (abbreviated U.S.), Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct), Lawyer's Edition (L.Ed), U.S. Law Week (USLW), and the electronic resources Lexis-Nexis and WestLaw. Any or all of these parallel citations may be listed after the case name. (See an example of parallel citations for a Supreme Court case.)

A similar phenomenon happens at the state level. Connecticut cases are published in West's Atlantic Reporter (A.), Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis, as well as the official Connecticut Reports (Conn.), Connecticut Appellate Reports (Conn. App.), and Connecticut Supplement (Conn. Supp.)

Abbreviations for reporters (U.S., F. 3d, F. Supp., Conn., etc.) may be found in several places, a few of which are listed below:

Black's Law Dictionary	Ref KF 156 .B53 2000
The Blue Book : A Uniform System of Citation	Ref KF 245 .B58
Cornell's Introduction to Basic Citation	http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/

The important thing to remember is that no matter where the opinion is published the text of the court's decision is always the same. What differs is the amount of extra text, such as headnotes or summaries, the commercial publishers provide for their customers.

I found the case, but where can I find more details about the events leading up to it and what the opinion means?

Cases/opinions/decisions do not provide much of the factual background of the events leading up to the case except as it directly affects the finding of the court. For background information, you're better off looking for newspaper and magazine articles. These sources will also help you decipher the meaning and importance of the case. You might also try some reference sources for more information and analysis.

Why can't I find my case?!

Don't be too proud to check for the basics: typos, misspelling, and being in the wrong database happen to all of us at least once. Often more than once. So doublecheck that you are in the law section of Westlaw and that you've entered the names or other information correctly.

If you still can't find what you're looking for, it's possible there wasn't a written, published opinion. Criminal trials, for example, usually result in a verdict, not a writtne opinion, unless they go to appeal. Try searching newspapers or magazines for verdicts or other outcomes like settlements.

Susan Clerc
Reference Librarian

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