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 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, use an advance legislative service. Consult the Massachusetts Statutory Research guide if your jurisdiction is Massachusetts.

Keep in mind that:

  • 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 and Appendix 1 of the ALWD Citation Manual
  • Shepard's on LexisNexis may also be used to update statutes.
  • Keycite is used to update statutes on Westlaw


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:

  • Shepard's in print or on LexisNexis.
    • Shepard's is shelved immediately after the case reporter series which it updates
    • Shepard's for federal case law is shelved in Pappas Upper Indexes, inside the horseshoe
  • Keycite on Westlaw

Digests of case law can also be updated. In addition to pocket parts, take a look at the advance sheets for the West reporter for the appropriate jurisdiction. Newer case law is digested and organized by topic & key number in these advance sheets.

To locate newer case law that interprets a statute, use the case annotations in the advance legislative service 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.

First * Previous

Page maintained by: Raquel Ortiz
Last updated: April 2007