WRITING A LAW REVIEW ARTICLE
Creating a well-written law review article can bring you substantial rewards—from a publication Westlaw is available
credit to a law review staff position to a judicial clerkship. But the writing process can be tedious on the Web at
and time-consuming. Choosing and developing a topic that is useful and that interests you, [Link].
performing a preemption check, updating your legal research, and verifying citations and quotations
® For assistance, call
can be overwhelming. Westlaw can help you accomplish all of these tasks efficiently.
1-800-850-WEST
(1-800-850-9378). For
Choosing a Topic technical support you can also
Researching current trends in the law can help you find an issue or important recent decision that send an e-mail message to
could form the basis of a law review or journal article. Westlaw provides a variety of materials, [Link]@[Link].
including cases, statutes, legal texts and periodicals, and nonlegal news and information, all of which
can help you narrow your search for a topic for an article.
In most databases, you have the option of using either the Terms and Connectors (Boolean) search
method or the Natural Language search method. Following is a list of database names and their
identifiers that are frequently used in law review and journal research:
Case law Texts and periodicals
All Federal and State Cases ALLCASES American Jurisprudence 2d AMJUR
All Federal Cases ALLFEDS American Law Reports ALR
All State Cases ALLSTATES Journals and Law Reviews JLR
Individual State Cases* XX-CS
News and information
Statutes All News ALLNEWS
United States Code Annotated USCA Major Magazines MAGSMJ
Individual State Statutes–Annotated* XX-ST-ANN The New York Times NYT
*Where xx is a state’s two-letter postal abbreviation
Westlaw Topical Highlights and Bulletins
Researching current trends in the law can help you find an issue or important recent decision.
Westlaw Topical Highlights databases cover 25 areas of the law, from bankruptcy and copyright to
labor and employment and securities regulation. Westlaw Bulletins databases are available for the
U.S. Supreme Court and for 10 states. To view a list of these databases, access the Westlaw
Directory by clicking Directory on the toolbar at the tabbed Law School page. Click Highlights
under Legal Periodicals and Current Awareness. Then click Westlaw Highlights and Bulletins.
Search tips
■ To search for information on new legal issues or issues causing a split in opinion among the
federal circuit courts, access the U.S. Courts of Appeals Cases database (CTA) and run a Terms
and Connectors search such as issue question matter /s “first impression” novel & da(aft 2004).
■ To search for information on an issue involving a specific state, access a database such as Oregon
News (ORNEWS) and type a Natural Language search such as legalization of assisted suicide.
Conducting a Preemption Check Case Law
Before you spend considerable time and energy writing a law Headnotes
review article, make sure that you are covering new ground. West attorney-editors analyze the legal issues in every case
Use the following Westlaw databases to determine whether published in West’s National Reporter System and ®
articles on your subject have already been written. summarize each issue in a headnote. Each headnote is a
Current Index to Legal Periodicals CILP succinct expression of a legal issue in a case.
Texts and Periodicals–All Law Reviews, TP-ALL
Headnotes on Westlaw give you the following research
Texts, and Bar Journals
advantages:
Journals and Law Reviews JLR
Individual State Journals and Law Reviews* XX-JLR ■ The headnotes lay out the black letter law and apply the
law to the facts of the particular case.
*Where XX is a state’s two-letter postal abbreviation, e.g., NY-JLR ■ Each headnote is classified to the West Key Number
®
System , providing you with access to all other cases that
Search tips
discuss similar points of law.
■ To find entries in CILP on a specific subject such as
■ Each headnote covers one point of law and is classified to
immigration, restrict your search to the topic field (to):
to(immigration) at least one of the more than 100,000 West key numbers.
You can focus precisely on your issue when you combine
■ To determine what has already been written on a topic, key numbers with your search terms.
access the JLR database and run a Natural Language
■ West editors add search terms that you’re likely to use,
search such as english-only laws.
such as synonyms, terms of art, and terms characterizing
legal relationships (e.g., landlord and tenant, rather than
Developing Your Topic
appellant and appellee).
Once you’ve chosen a topic, you can begin the research
process. Some of the many sources of background Topic and Key Numbers
information available on Westlaw are described below. West topic and key numbers help you focus your research
and retrieve relevant cases. If you have an on-point case and
Legal Encyclopedias and Treatises want to find additional cases, run a search using the topic
American Law Reports and key number from the relevant headnote in an
The American Law Reports database (ALR) provides appropriate database to find other cases classified to that
extensive commentary on the law from American Law topic and key number. To format a topic and key number
Reports, with analyses of cases from all jurisdictions. Each search, access an appropriate case law database and type the
®
ALR article is a complete legal memorandum on a particular topic number, the letter k, and the key number. For example,
legal issue. to search for cases containing topic 197, Habeas Corpus, and
key number 521, Aliens, access a case law database and type
American Jurisprudence 2d the following search: 197k521
The American Jurisprudence 2d database (AMJUR) contains Note: Slip opinions and cases from topical services do not contain West topic
®
the full text of American Jurisprudence 2d (Am Jur 2d), a and key numbers.
comprehensive encyclopedia of state and federal law
containing more than 400 separate titles on a broad range of The complete topic and key number outline used by West
legal topics. attorney-editors to classify headnotes is available in the
Custom Digest service. You can use the Custom Digest to
Search tips
find topic and key numbers related to your issue and to
■ To browse the complete ALR index, type the following
retrieve cases with headnotes classified under those topic and
Terms and Connectors query, restricting your search to the
key numbers. To access the Custom Digest, choose Key
citation field (ci): ci(index)
Numbers and Digest from the More drop-down list on the
■ To browse a specific title in Am Jur 2d, search for the title toolbar.
name in the citation field (ci): ci(“wrongful discharge”)
Other treatises
The Texts and Treatises database (TEXTS) contains the full
text of many other resources relating to specific areas of the
law.
Checking Your Citations with KeyCite ®
A blue H indicates that the case or administrative
KeyCite is the powerful citation research service available decision has some history.
exclusively on Westlaw. You can use KeyCite to view the
history of a case, statute, administrative decision, or
regulation to help determine whether it is good law and to A green C indicates that the case or
C administrative decision has citing references but
retrieve citing references.
no direct history or negative citing references or
KeyCite is comprehensive, covering every case in West’s that the statute or regulation has citing references.
National Reporter System, as well as more than 1 million
unpublished cases; selected federal and state administrative Depth of treatment stars
decisions; federal statutes and regulations; state statutes from KeyCite depth of treatment stars indicate the extent to which
all 50 states and regulations from selected states; U.S. patents; a citing case, administrative decision, or brief discusses the
ALR; more than 900 law reviews; and thousands of briefs. In cited case or administrative decision.
addition, KeyCite provides citing references from numerous
texts and treatises. ★★★★ Examined—The citing case, administrative decision,
or brief contains an extended discussion of the cited
To access KeyCite at a tabbed page, type a citation in the case or administrative decision, usually more than a
KeyCite this citation text box in the left frame and click GO. printed page of text.
To access KeyCite from any page, click KeyCite on the
toolbar to display the KeyCite page. Then type a citation in ★★★ Discussed—The citing case, administrative decision,
the KeyCite this citation text box and click GO. KeyCite or brief contains a substantial discussion of the cited
history is displayed in the right frame. case or administrative decision, usually more than a
paragraph but less than a printed page.
You can also check all of the citations in your document at
TM
once using [Link] , available at [Link]. ★★ Cited—The citing case, administrative decision, or
brief contains some discussion of the cited case or
KeyCite Status Flags administrative decision, usually less than a
paragraph.
A red flag warns that the case or administrative ★ Mentioned—The citing case, administrative decision,
decision is no longer good law for at least one of or brief contains a brief reference to the cited case or
the points of law it contains or that the statute or administrative decision, usually in a string citation.
regulation has been amended by a recent session
law or rule, repealed, superseded, or held KeyCite Quotation Marks
unconstitutional or preempted in whole or in Quotation marks (❜❜) indicate that the citing case directly
part. quotes the cited case.
A yellow flag warns that the case or Monitoring Citations with KeyCite Alert
administrative decision has some negative history KeyCite Alert is a service that automatically monitors the
but hasn’t been reversed or overruled; that the status of your cases, statutes, administrative decisions, and
statute has been renumbered or transferred by a regulations and send you updates when their KeyCite results
recent session law; that an uncodified session law change, providing you with the most current KeyCite
or pending legislation affecting the statute is information for your research.
available (statutes merely referenced, i.e.,
mentioned, are not marked with a yellow flag); To access KeyCite Alert from a KeyCite result, click Monitor
that the regulation has been reinstated, corrected, with KeyCite Alert on the Links tab in the left frame. The
or confirmed; that the statute or regulation was KeyCite Alert wizard is displayed, which provides step-by-
limited on constitutional or preemption grounds step instructions for creating a KeyCite Alert entry.
or its validity was otherwise called into doubt; or
that a prior version of the statute or regulation
received negative judicial treatment.
Verifying Page Numbers and Quotations Click the right Term arrow to browse by Locate term and
Once you’ve finished researching and writing your law display the portion of the text where the term appears. Verify
review or journal article, use Westlaw to make sure you’ve that you have accurately quoted the court. To return to your
accurately quoted and cited the legal and nonlegal sources original result, click Cancel Locate in the left frame.
you are using.
Checking quotations using a case title
Star Paging If you have only the title of the case that contains a
Star Paging is a Westlaw feature that automatically displays quotation you need to check, search the title field (ti) for the
print publication page references for the text you are viewing names of parties to the case and add terms from the
online. This enables you to cite the print publication without quotation. For example, to check the above quotation from
looking up the reference. Arizona v. Hicks, access the All U.S. Supreme Court Cases
database (SCT), type ti(hicks) & insulates, and click Search.
Star Paging references are displayed in a color different from
surrounding document text and are preceded by one or more To view the full text of the case, click its title in the result list.
asterisks, which enable you to determine the publication to Then click the right Term arrow to display the portion of the
which a particular page number belongs. For example, if you text in which the quotation appears. Check that you have
retrieve Kirchmann v. Lake Elsinore Unified School District, accurately transcribed the quotation.
100 Cal. Rptr. 2d 289, 83 Cal. App. 4th 1098 (2000), page
®
references from both California Reporter (published by Checking quotations in non–case law databases
West) and California Appellate Reports (published by the If you are using non–case law or nonlegal sources such as
state of California) are displayed online. newspapers and magazines in your article, use Westlaw to
check quotations from them. For example, suppose you are
To go to a specific page from a print publication, click Tools quoting a portion of an article from the New York Times
at the bottom of the right frame and choose Go to Star Page concerning a speech by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in
from the menu that is displayed. Type the print page number which she said, “The notion that it is improper to look
in the Go to Star Page text box and click GO. For example, beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with
®
to go to page 295 in West’s California Reporter, type 295 in hard questions has a certain kinship to the view that the U.S.
the text box. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of
the date of its ratification.” To retrieve the quotation, access
Checking Quotations the New York Times database (NYT), type a query such as
Checking quotations using a citation ginsburg /p kinship /s frozen, and click Search.
To check quotations from case law that you plan to use in To view the full text of the article, click its title in the result
your article, use the Find service and the Locate feature. For list. Then click the right Term arrow to display the portion
example, suppose that you want to check the following of the text in which the quotation appears and verify the
quotation by Justice Antonin Scalia from the case Arizona v. quotation.
Hicks, 107 S. Ct. 1149 (1987): “[T]here is nothing new in
the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the The QuoteRight® automated quotation-checking service in
criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.” WestCheck®
To save time, you can check all the quotations in your article
First, use the Find service to retrieve the case. Type 107 sct
at once by using the QuoteRight service in WestCheck
1149 in the Find by citation text box at the tabbed Law
version 3.2 or later. When WestCheck extracts the citations
School page and click GO. The case is displayed in the right
from your document, it also creates a list of the quotations
frame. Then, to display the portion of the text in which the
that it finds. You can then have the QuoteRight service check
quotation appears, click Locate in Result in the left frame. In
these quotations against the full text of the source documents
the displayed text box, type insulates and then click Search.
as they appear on Westlaw.
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