Legal Research

Why Would You Use Treatises for Your Legal Research?

By Leslie A. Pardo

Why reinvent the wheel?

Treatises are vital legal research tools, even though courts are not obligated to follow them. These resources benefit your research in a variety of ways:

• Treatises provide in-depth commentary and scholarly analysis of areas of law
• Treatises provide a starting point for your research. If you are unfamiliar with a topic, treatises can quickly reveal major concepts, commonly used terms, and procedures used by practitioners in that area. They will also help you focus your research, as you discover which issues are most significant.
• Treatises reference significant citations. These materials help you to find citations to important case law and statutory authority, as well as citations for journals and law review articles.
• Treatises are sometimes persuasive authority. Some treatises are so widely respected that they can be cited as persuasive authority in arguments to the court.

Examples of well known treatises: (all cited numerous times in court decisions)

Arizona Practice Series
Lindey on Entertainment, Publishing and the Arts
Collier on Bankruptcy
Appleman on Insurance
Couch on Insurance
Newberg on Class Actions
Anderson on the Uniform Commercial Code
Corbin on Contracts
Fletcher Cyclopedia of the Law of Corporations
McCormick on Evidence
Moore’s Federal Practice
Wright and Miller Federal Practice and Procedure
Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law
Chisum on Patents
Nimmer on Copyright
McQuillin, The Law of Municipal Corporations
Powell On Real Property
Prosser & Keeton on Torts
Dobbs on Torts

The Law Library has all the above mentioned treatises in our collection.  If you need help finding any of the titles, please stop by the Access Services desk or the Reference Office for assistance.

Full post as published by Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog on March 22, 2010 (boomark / email).