Overview of Judicial Hierarchy
Federal Court Opinions
Finding Federal Court Opinions at Quinney
State Court Opinions
Finding State Court Opinions at Quinney
Overview of Judicial Hierarchy
The United States inherited the common law tradition from the United Kingdom. Unlike many other countries that rely only on codified laws written by legislative bodies, the United States has a body of law that is created by judges and stands coequal with statutory law.
The Judicial Process
Trial Level
Under the common law system parties appear before a judge. Each litigant has the opportunity present his or her side of the controversy to the court and the judge presides over the case. At the trial level (which is the lowest level of the judical hierarchy) a jury generally decides the outcome of the case, although a judge will sometimes will issue the verdict.
Court of Appeals
If the losing party decides to appeal the verdict, the case goes to a court of appeals. At this intermediate level, a group of judges generally sitting in a panel of three or more consider the written arguments (or briefs) of each litigant as well as their oral arguments. The panel of judges will then decide the outcome of the case and issue a written opinion. This opinion outlines the legal and factual issues in controversy as well as the reasoning behind judges' decision.
Court of Last Resort
If the losing party decides to appeal this intermediate appellate verdict, the party can petition the court of last resort, usually called the supreme court, to hear the case. If the court of last resort grants the motion to hear the appeal, the parties again submit written arguments and participate in oral argument before the justices. At the highest level of the judicial hierarchy the justices usually sit in a full panel (ex: all nine United States Supreme Court justices) and issue a written opinion detailing the outcome of the controversy and the reasoning behind their decision.
Stare Decisis
While judges are able to issue opinions and create common law, they are not given free reign to decide cases in an arbitrary manner. Judges must follow the principle of stare decisis. That is, the judges must decide cases in accordance with the principles of law established in earlier decisions. While there are some exceptions where a settled area of common law can be judicially redefined, courts generally adhere very strictly to established precedent.
Binding Precedent
Part of the idea of stare decisis or precedent is that the decisions of a court which is at a higher level in the judicial hierarchy must be followed by the lower courts in that system. The decisions from the higher courts are binding or mandatory precedent.
For example: In the Federal Court system United States Supreme Court and Federal Courts of Appeals decisions are binding on United States District Courts -- which are the trial level. Supreme Court decisions are binding on all of the Courts of Appeal as well.
Click Here for illustration of binding precedent in the Federal Court system
Reporters
The written opinions of courts are printed in books called Reporters. Each main division of the federal hierarchy has it's wn reporter set. Most states have separate state reporter sets for appellate and for high court (supreme court) decisions. In addition, there are Regional Reporters which have state intermediate appellate and high court (supreme court) decisions from a group of states roughly categorized by geographical area.
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Federal Court Opinions
United States District Courts
The lowest level in the Federal Court Hierarchy is the trial level and these courts are called the United States District Courts. Each state has at least one Federal District court and some of the more populous states have up to four courts.
For example: Texas has Northern District, Southern District, Eastern District and Western District federal courts.
To see a listing of the Federal District Courts for each state click here. (hit the back arrow to return)
Publication of United States District Court Opinions
U.S District Court opinions are published in the reporter set called the Federal Supplement. The citation abbreviation is F. Supp (or F.Supp 2d depending on the series) and this is the citation format you'll see when using electronic databases. It is worth noting that not all opinions at the federal trial level are published. Generally only those opinions that discuss a new or novel legal issue, an issue that would be of interest to the public or opinions that change existing law are published.
To read more about the United States District courts click here (use the back arrow to return)
Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals
The intermediate appellate level of the federal heirarchy are the United States Courts of Appeals and are commonly referred to as the Circuit Courts. There are 11 numbered circuits as well as a circuit for the District of Columbia.
For example: Utah is located in the 10th Circuit and California is in the 9th.
To see a map of the Circuit Courts of Appeal click here (use the back arrow to return)
Publication of United States Courts of Appeals Opinions
Federal Circuit Court opinions are published in the Federal Reporter set. The citation abbreviation is F. (and depending on the series may be F.2d or F.3d) This is the citation format that you will see when using electronic databases.
To read more about the U.S. Courts of Appeals click here (use the back arrow to return)
Unpublished Court of Appeals Decisions
As strange as it might sound, there is now a reporter set that publishes Unpublished Circuit Court of Appeals decisions. It is call the Federal Appendix and is published by West. As mentioned in the Federal District Court section above, of the thousands of cases courts hear every year they will choose only to publish opinions that will have a significant impact on the state of the law or will be of interest to the public in general. This has the practical aspect of speeding the flow of litigation through the courts by avoiding time spent on writing duplicative opinions.
For the most part court rules do not allow attorneys to cite to unpublished opinions. The reasoning behind these rules is that when a judge knows that an opinion is designated as "not for publication" she won't spend as much time discussing her rationale for deciding the case in the manner in which she did, therefore the "unpublished" opinion should not carry as much weight as to the state of the law as a more fully explained opinion.
So, why would anyone want to access unpublished opinions you ask? Well, there has been a movement in some legal circles to allow attorneys to cite to unpublished opinions. As a result, more and more courts are allowing unpublished opinions to be cited as persuasive (but not mandatory) authority.
United States Supreme Court
The court of last resort in the federal hierarchy is the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can choose whether to hear appeals from any of the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals or individual State Supreme Courts.
To go to the United States Supreme Court website click here. Notice how each covers the October 1996 term, but each has a different volume number.(Use the back arrow to return.)
Publication of United States Supreme Court Opinions
U.S. Supreme Court opinions are published in three different reporter sets. The official government issued reporter is called the United States Reports and the citation abbreviation is U.S. In addition to this official publication there are two privately published reporter sets that contain U.S. Supreme Court opinions. West publishes the Supreme Court Reporter which is abbreviated S. Ct. and Lexis publishes the Supreme Court Reporter Lawyer's Edition which is abbreviated L.Ed.
To see an image of each of the three Supreme Court reporters click here (use the back arrow to return).
Parallel Citations
The result of having three reporter sets for United States Supreme Court Opinions is that you will often see a citation to each of the reporters for a given case. For example the case that decided the 2000 presidential election will look like this:
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 121 S. Ct. 525, 148 L. Ed. 2d 388 (2000)
The title of the case is Bush v. Gore and it is officially published in volume 531 of the United States Reports and can be found on page 98. The same case will also be found in volume 121 of the Supreme Court Reporter at page 525 as well as in the Supreme Court Reporter Lawyer's Edition 2nd Series at page 388. You can find the Bush v. Gore case in any one of these three places.
Editorial Enhancements
All three reporters contain the same Supreme Court opinions, but the Supreme Court Reporter and the Lawyer's Edition have the advantage of coming out faster as well as the addition of editorial enhancements. The enhancements break down an opinion by the various topics covered and then tag the case to allow easy access to a particular topic discussed within the text of the opinion.
Additional Information on Federal Courts
To see a chart of the Structure of the Federal Court System click here. (Hit the back arrow to return)
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Finding Federal Court Opinions at Quinney
Print Resources
As you enter the Quinney Law Library, Federal Case Law is found on the rear left hand side of the library. The shelving units are labeled with the names of the Reporter sets that they contain and the Reporter sets are arranged in descending order from the those containing United States Supreme Court Decisions [U.S., S.Ct. L.Ed], Circuit Courts of Appeals decisions [F., F.2d, F.3d & Fed. Appx] and finally those containing United States District Court decisions[F.Supp., F.Supp.2d].
To see a map of the Quinney Library click here. (Look to the left of the tree in the middle of the diagram).
Electronic Resources
Reliable sources of federal case law are a bit harder to find for free on the Internet, you'd want to carefully evaluate the authority and source of any webpage offering case law before relying on it.
The Research page from the Quinney Law Library's homepage has several links for free sources of federal case law databases. In addition, LexisNexis has cases from the United States Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal and the United States District Courts on their Academic Universe database. To access Academic Universe however, you must be on a computer which is connected to University of Utah network or have the University as your proxy server if you are off campus.
Click here to go directly to Quinney's Federal Case Law links. [You can also access these links by going to www.law.utah.edu/library and clicking on Research from the initial rollover menu and then clicking on Case Law]
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State Court Opinions
Just like states are able to create their own statutory law, they can also create their own common law and just as with state statutes, the rules of law created by individual state courts have a binding effect only within the borders of that state. With that being said however, a court in one state may choose to cite the case law from another state for persuasive purposes. Case law from states in the same geographic area as your state will usually be considered more persuasive.
Structure of State Courts
The basic structure of state courts is very much like the federal court structure -- a trial level court, intermediate court of appeals and a court of last resort or supreme court. There are a few exceptions to this general structure however. Some smaller states don't have enough litigation to warrant an intermediate appellate court. In these states appeals from the trial level go directly to that state's supreme court.
To see an illustration of the Utah Court Structure click here. For an illustration of a court structure with out an intermediate court of appeal, click here to see the Wyoming Court Structure
State Trial Courts
As a general rule, state trial court decisions are not published. So when you read a case in the newspaper and try to find a published opinion you won't have much luck. At the trial level your best option is to contact the clerk of the court for the jurisdiction you are researching and see about getting copies of the pleadings that were filed in the case.
State Appellate Courts
Most states have reporter sets dedicated to the case law from just that state. For example in Washington state, opinions of the Washington Court of Appeals are published in the Washington Appellate Reports (citation abbreviation Wash. App.) and Washington Supreme Court opinions are published in the Washington Reports (citation abbreviation Wash.).
More commonly however, a researcher would look for state appellate case law in a comprehensive National Reporter Set often called Regional Reporters. This set (published by West) contains courts of appeals and supreme court (or court of last resort) decisions from all 50 states. The set is broken down into Regions and states that are in close geographic proximity are grouped together. For example, Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma & Utah state cases are located in the Pacific Reporter (citation abbreviation P. , P2d., or P3d. depending on the series).
To see a map of the West Regional Reporter system click here
A Note about Utah
Utah no longer has its own state reporter. After 1974, the state of Utah stopped publishing the Utah Reports. To find Utah case law, a researcher must look in the Pacific Reporter.
Parallel Citations
The result of having state reporters and Regional reporters is that a state court opinon is published in two places. Often you will see a citation that looks like this:
Williams v. Pasma, 202 Mont. 66, 656 P.2d 212 (1982)
Williams v. Pasma is the title of the case. In the Montana Reports the Williams case is located in volume 202 and starts on page 66. In the regional reporter, the Williams case is located in volume 656 of the Pacific Reporter 2nd Series and starts on page 212. It's called a parallel citation because it references where the exact same case can be found in two different places.
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Finding State Court Opinions at Quinney
Print Resources
As you enter the Quinney Law Library State Case Law is found on the rear right hand side of the library. The Library has the complete collection of Regional Reporters. These shelving units are labeled with the names of each of the Regions (ie. Altantic, Southwestern, Pacific etc.) The Regional Reporter sets are arranged in alphabetical order.
To see a map of the Quinney Library click here. (Look to the right of the tree in the middle of the diagram).
Electronic Resources
Just as with Federal case law, reliable sources of state case law are quite difficult to find for free on the Internet. Again, you'd want to look carefully at the authority and source of any webpage offering case law before relying on it. On a more positive note though, more and more states are starting to post the opinions of their appellate courts on their official government webpages. The downside is that the date range tends to be shallow. Most only go back a few years.
The Research page from the Quinney Law Library's homepage has several links for free sources of state case law databases. In addition, LexisNexis has cases from all fifty states on their Academic Universe database. To access Academic Universe however, you must be on a computer which is connected to University of Utah network or have the University as your proxy server if you are off campus.
Click here to go directly to Quinney's State Case Law links. You'll need to scroll down the heading State. [You can also access these links by going to www.law.utah.edu/library and clicking on Research from the initial rollover menu and then clicking on Case Law and then scrolling down the heading State]
Utah Case Law
Print Resources
Utah case law is found in the Pacific Reporter which is grouped with the other Regional Reporters. More recent Utah case law can be found in the Utah Advance Reports. One set of the Utah Advance Reports is located in the Reference Office and another is shelved at the very end of the island containing the Utah State Code.
To see a map of the Quinney Library click here. (Look directly to the right of the tree in the middle of the diagram).
Electronic Resources
The Research page from the Quinney Law Library's homepage has a couple of links for free sources of Utah case law. (Note: If a link has the word Citrix next to it, you need to be on a University of Utah computer to access the database.) In addition, LexisNexis has case law from Utah on their Academic Universe database. Again, to access Academic Universe you must be on a computer which is connected to University of Utah network or have the University as your proxy server if you are off campus.
Click here to go directly to Quinney's Utah Case Law link. [You can also access this link by going to www.law.utah.edu/library and clicking on Research from the initial rollover menu and then clicking on Utah Law and Other Links]
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