Legal Writing and Litigation- Research Step by Step: Familiarity Ranking 4

Once you are up to speed on your area of law and feel like you understand your subject matter, there are still a few secondary source resources that will expand your knowledge. These are sources you wouldn't turn to first because they require a deeper understanding of your topic to search them effectively.

We will look at American Law Reports (ALRs) and law reviews for this part of the exercise.

Westlaw

Go to Westlaw's Content tab and select Secondary Sources.

Select American Law Reports (ALR).

Go to the Index in the right hand blue box.

Select T and "Trespass".

Look for Choice of Evils in the Index to Annotations on Trespass.

Select 3 ALR 5th 521 to read.

Apply the Oregon Law filter on the left (don't forget to select "apply" after you check the Oregon box) and see that all sections that have judicial opinions or statutes on Oregon law are highlighted. 

Read the section on Animal Rights to see if you can distinguish your facts from State v. Troen.

Put this information in your research trail.

Lexis also has access to ALRs, but it does not have an index. What search terms would you use to find similar ALR annotations?

You can find law reviews in Heinonline, Westlaw, and Lexis.

Let's start with Heinonline.

Go to Boley's A-Z List, select H and select Heinonline.

Select the Law Journal Library database on Heinonline (first database in the main column).

Search the terms "choice of evils" AND "criminal trespass" AND animal

The first article, "When is Rescue Necessary" by Jenni James (7 Stan J. Animal Law & Policy (2014)), is a good place to start trying to find out more about arguments that might work for your case.

Skim this article. Notice that it is not the place to start your research, but once you are up to speed on the different arguments, it is much easier to read and understand.

The second article "Toward a Necessity Defense for Animal Activists Accused of Property Crimes" is not available on Heinonline, but it looks like a good article to read.

Go to the Boley Catalog and select the "Articles & Journals" tab. Here you can see if the journal "Criminal Law Bulletin" is available.

The catalog will say that we have access to this title through Westlaw. You can select the Westlaw Periodicals link and it will take you to the Criminal Law Bulletin on Westlaw.

Next select the advanced button to the right of the search button and under the field Title put in the title Toward a Necessity Defense for Animal Activists and under the author field put the author's last name DeCoux.

The article should appear as the top search result.

Skim the article to see if you can find an argument that might work for your client's case.

Write down your findings in your research trail.

Great job! You are now ready to start looking up some of the primary sources you found in your research. Hopefully you feel up to speed on some of your client's defenses to criminal trespass and are ready to discuss the case with your suprevising attorney.

After you've completed your summation of facts and research trail, email them to Professor Van Vactor by 1:40pm on 9/7 for credit.

In class on 9/7 we will complete several small research problems, then we will discuss different ways to further your primary research and take your one good case and find even more cases.

For more information on this, you can watch the Prepare to Practice videos for Module 2 Case Finding Tools. You can also watch the Westlaw videos on Cases to find out more about key numbers, KeyCite, and other Westlaw case finding tools and/or watch the Lexis videos about cases found on this research guide.

Want to keep your research going? Take State v. Troen (110 Or. App. 442) and see what headnotes and key numbers you want to focus on. Do you think you might be able to introduce necessity/choice of evils in as a defense?

Ever wonder where hypos come from? This one is from a case out of Alabama of two women who were arrested for feeding and trapping cats on public property. You can read more about it in these articles.