How to Prepare Your Note, Cert. or Seminar Paper:
Updating Your Research

Statutes & Codes

The United States Code (U.S.C.) [Pappas Upper] is updated in book format by supplements (or pocket parts, in the case of the United States Code Annotated or United States Code Service, both Pappas Upper), and public laws, which are published as slip laws and in the Statutes at Large [Pappas Upper]. For more information about these resources, refer to the Federal Statutory Research guide.

To update state statutes in book format, use an advance legislative service. Consult the Massachusetts Statutory Research guide if your jurisdiction is Massachusetts. Most state codes have an advance legislative service which publishes the session laws in chronological order. The titles of every state's advance legislative service and statutory code are listed in Table 1 of the Bluebook.

The most efficient way to update statutes is online:

  • Legislative Alerts on LexisNexis provide information on recently passed legislation that affects your statute. Shepard's may be used to find recent cases interpreting a statute.
  • Keycite is used to update statutes on Westlaw. Don't forget to look for cases Last 60 Days to find recent cases interpreting your statute.

Regulations

At both the federal and state level, new regulations and amendments are first published chronologically in a register, and are later integrated into a subject arrangement in an administrative code.

Examples of registers include:

Update the federal administrative code, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), using the List of CFR Sections Affected (LSA) [Pappas Upper] and the CFR parts affected within the Federal Register [Pappas Upper]. For detailed help using these sources see: Updating Federal Regulations

Case Law

To update cases, use:

To locate newer case law that interprets a statute, use the case annotations in the annotated code for the relevant jurisdiction.

Updating guides

Finally, if you are having trouble updating primary materials, please consult a reference librarian by making an appointment or stopping by the reference desk in the Pappas Law Library Reading Room.

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Page maintained by: Raquel Ortiz
Last updated: September 2009