Legal Writing and Litigation- Research Step by Step: Familiarity Ranking 3

Now that you know more about the subject of criminal trespass and the defense of choice of evils, you can start looking at secondary sources that will lead you to a greater understanding of your topic, answer additional questions, and give you more primary resources that will help you with your research.

A legal treatise on your subject area or in your jurisdiction is likely to be a good place to start. To find a list of resources you must first find a research guide. This guide will tell you about resources on that subject area including secondary sources and treatises, statutes, regulations, and major cases.

Go to your favorite search engine (i.e. Google) and type in criminal law legal research guide

You should see a list of guides on this subject area. Avoid .com or .org domain extension guides for now and look for guides written at law schools that have a .edu domain extension.

Select the Georgetown Criminal Law and Justice Research Guide.

Select the tab on the left for Secondary Sources.

Under Text and Treatises you'll see a list of criminal law and procedure books. There is a key for these books that lets you know where to find them and if they are a preeminent treatise on the subject area.

Select Wharton's Criminal Law- it should log you into your Westlaw account and take you to the treatise.

Write down in your research trail the link to the research guide in case you need to return to find other treatises later in your research.

Go to the Wharton's Criminal Law Treatise you found above on Westlaw.

Look at Part III Defenses.

Now that you are more acquainted with this subject area, what defense will you choose to read more about?

Open Chapter 15 on Necessity and Duress. Choice of evils is covered in §15:3 Necessity: Modern Statutes.

Read through this section. Do you think your client will be able to claim this defense?

Write down at least one case you would want to further explore.