Winning Research Skills - Westlaw

Chapter 2
Case Citation Research
As you evaluate the usefulness of a case for your purposes, you will need to understand the
history of that case and how it has been treated by subsequent cases. Citator services help you
with these essential tasks. You can perform citation research using print resources (e.g.,
Shepard’s Citations) or online services. KeyCite, the online citation research service available
exclusively on Westlaw, is discussed in detail in Chapter 12.
Three Reasons to Use a Citator Service
Reason #1: Because Good Law Can Go Bad
Nothing would be more damaging to your client’s interests—or your moot court brief—than
resting your arguments on bad law. The first reason to use a citator service is to avoid such a
mistake.
Though the law is conservative, it does change—sometimes more quickly than you might expect.
In the history of American jurisprudence, thousands of cases have been reversed or overruled by
subsequent adjudications. These “bad cases” remain in the law books and databases, but you
may not want to rely on them to support a legal argument.
For example, you can find the 1942 Supreme Court case of Betts v. Brady in the reporters for
U.S. Supreme Court cases. Betts holds that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to the states
and that there is no absolute right to counsel in a state criminal trial. Nothing in those reporters
says “Please note that this case has been overruled and is no longer good law.” If you stopped
your research after you read the opinion, you would believe that the Sixth Amendment did not
require a state to provide an attorney for an indigent defendant charged with a crime. However,
if you take the next step in the research process by checking the current status of Betts v. Brady,
you will learn that the case was overruled in 1963 by Gideon v. Wainwright.
Reason #2: Because an Opinion Is Subject to Interpretation
The second reason to use a citator service is to determine how a case has been treated by other
cases. Aside from the question of being good law or bad law for a particular purpose, the
holding of a case may be strengthened or weakened by the interpretation subsequently given it
by the same court or other courts. It may be, for example, that another court that subsequently
confronted a situation similar to the one in your case chose to construe the holding of your case
narrowly. Although your case remains good law, such subsequent interpretations may make it
less persuasive. The precedential value of a case greatly depends on the treatment it receives in
later opinions that cite it.
Reason #3: Because You Need More Cases
A third reason to use a citator service is because it will help you expand your research. Because
cases tend to cite the seminal or leading cases in a particular area of law, if you find a leading
case and check it in a citator, you are likely to discover other cases.
30 Winning Research Skills