Substantive Criminal Law with Westlaw for Pesca CRJS 280

1. WESTLAWNEXT
Substantive Criminal Law / CRJS 280– Pesca
This work byValerie LangWaldin, J.D., M.L.S., Associate Professor HVCC is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

3. Helpful links:
• Criminal Justice Research Guide
• https://libguides.hvcc.edu/crjs
• Direct link to Westlaw
• https://libguides.hvcc.edu/az.php?a=w

4. This is what you see when you
first open WestlawNext!
The search box is designed like Google
for simplicity.
24/7 assistance

5. Legal Issue (your Westlaw question):
• Do citizens have a 4th Amendment right to privacy in their
trash left outside for pick-up or do police need a search
warrant?

8. Note that when you select
a specific court to search,
e.g., the U.S. Supreme
Court, or N.Y. Court of
Appeals – any individual
court search – you first get
the top 10 most recent
cases that court has
decided.

9. Here we are simply typing
in our legal issue in
natural language.

13. Very helpful for you for interpreting case law!

14. PRINT OUT A LIST OF CASE
CITATIONS THAT MATCH
YOUR SEARCH TERMS.

17. Now what?
From your list of
cases, your
challenge now is
to find a key case
that most closely
addresses your
legal issue.
For many of you,
sorting by “Date”
will help because
Professor Pesca
has designed
your legal issue to
lead to a recent
case.

18. Let’s say we decide this
is the case we want.

24. FLAGS???

25. No flag = good law so far - Yellow flag = caution – Red flag = no longer good
law (has been overruled, overturned)
Click on the flag for specific negative history.

26. Just because there is no flag…
• … does not mean this is the best case!
• A case like Roe v. Wade – (Supreme Court of the United
States January 22, 1973 - 410 U.S. 113)
• a very famous U.S. Supreme Court case in the 1970s,
has a yellow flag because some courts have not agreed
with certain aspects of the Court’s ruling – but this case
has been cited over 22,000 times!
• If later cases have ‘cited’ to (referred to) a case thousands
of times, even if there is some negative treatment, this
case is still good law, and very, very important!
• Bottom line: don’t be afraid of cases with yellow flags!

27. HEADNOTES….
…explained

28. 1. A court issues an opinion in a case.
2. A copy of the case is obtained by West,
where attorney-editors read the cases and pick
out the points of law or legal issues in the
case.
3. These legal issues or points of law are
summarized in a “headnote” and assigned a
topic and key number.

29. LET’S DO ANOTHER
EXAMPLE.
Case Law Searching

30. Legal Issue:
• If a K9 is used to walk by an automobile the police
suspect might have drugs in it, is that a search without a
warrant in the State of New York?

34. By selecting All New York
State Cases, we ensure
that we are getting cases
from NY trial courts,
appellate courts and most
importantly, NY’s highest
court, the
New York Court of
Appeals.

35. In general, you will search these courts most often.

36. Here we are approaching
the legal issue with natural
language searching.

38. LET’S RUN THE SEARCH
AGAIN, THIS TIME USING
SIMPLE BOOLEAN
CONNECTORS.
As we saw in our prior example, Boolean searching,
while not as easy as natural language searching, allows
you to control your search results very specifically, and
can produce more effective results!

39. Boolean
searching!
• Connectors and Expanders
Before jumping in
and deciding that
natural language is
your best bet for
retrieving search
results, remember
correct Boolean
searching
produces accurate
results that you
can compare to
your natural
language search
results.
& AND
/s In same sentence
Or OR
+s Preceding within sentence
/p In same paragraph
" " Phrase
+p Preceding within paragraph
% But not
/n Within n terms of
! Root expander
+n Preceding within n terms of
* Universal character

40. Concepts:
• Canine or dog or K9
• Auto or automobile or car or vehicle or truck
• 4th Amendment or Search and Seizure or Right to Privacy
• Search Warrant
• (k9 or dog or canine) & (auto! or car or vehicle or truck) &
("4th amendment" or "search and seizure" or "right to
privacy") & "search warrant"

45. Notice we
retrieved 19 more
cases on this topic
with Boolean
searching! This is
a perfect example
of why you should
not rely solely on
natural language
searching.

46. PRINT OUT A LIST OF CASE
CITATIONS THAT MATCH
YOUR SEARCH TERMS.

47. To print, click on the arrow
just to the right of the
envelope icon.
Your options are: Email,
Print, Download or send to
a Kindle.
Choose Print.

48. Heads up! You do NOT want to print the full
text of each case!
The instructions read, “Print out the list of
cases and citations that match your key
words and terms.”

49. Let’s print out our
case.

51. Pay attention to whether you
want to print the entire
document or just certain
pages!

52. AMERICAN LAW REPORTS
“ALR” = a legal encyclopedia!

53. American Law Reports
• American Law Reports (ALR) delivers an objective, in-
depth analysis of your specific legal issue, together with a
complete list of every case – in every jurisdiction – that
discusses it.
• With thousands of attorney-authored articles covering the
entire breadth of U.S. law, ALR saves you time by taking
you deeper on a topic, faster.
• Use ALR to:
• Quickly get up to speed in an unfamiliar area of law.
• Locate all relevant case law in one easy step.
• Determine which cases are controlling and understand why.

58. Searching for “Illinois v.
Caballes” within these
1,773 results

59. LET’S GO LIVE!