Primary sources are the law: court decisions, legislation, and regulations that form the basis of the legal doctrine. They include the Constitution, Statutes & Rules of Procedure, Regulations, Case Law, and Local Ordinances. They are often difficult to find answers in at the beginning of a research project - conducting preliminary research in secondary sources helps.
A major component of using primary sources is "noting up" cases, which means verifying whether a case is still relevant, or "good law", or if it has been criticized or overruled. "Noting up" a case will also lead you to connected cases (for example, you note up Case A and find out that it was relied upon for Case J, and so on). See the Legal Search Process & Strategies tab to learn how to note up cases using Shepard's Citation Service.
Pennsylvania statutes are the laws enacted by the Pennsylvania legislature and signed by the Pennsylvania Governor. Regulations are issued by administrative agencies, such as the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry. Regulations are designed to implement and sometimes interpret statutes. Both statutes and regulations are binding authority. Each state also has its own collection of statutes, with varying titles, like the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, which can be found on the Pennsylvania General Assembly website. To determine the name of a particular collection of state statutes or state regulations, you can look in The Bluebook's T1.3 pages. State Regulations are available through Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute (LII).
Federal statutes are the laws enacted by the federal legislative branch, the United States Congress. Federal regulations are issued by the various federal administrative agencies, which get their authority to regulate from specific statutes. Federal statutes are collected in the United States Code (USC) and federal regulations are collected in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
The United States' legal system is a case law system, also known as common-law, which relies on precedents: rules established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Case law is the law in a collection of reported case that form the body of law in a jurisdiction.
Case law is recorded in reporters of published cases by jurisdiction.
There are three reporters representing the three levels of federal courts:
Each state have one or more state reporter, you can find them in the The Bluebook's T1.3 pages.
You can use Nexis Uni to find federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790.
To do this:
You can also use Get a Doc Assistance to find cases by citation, party names, or docket number. See the tutorials below to learn how to find cases using these methods.