Agency Decisions

Regulations are not the only form of law created by administrative agencies. There is another type of administrative law. The written decisions of an administrative law judge or agency's judicial panel also are laws. Agencies are somewhat unique in that they may act in a "quasi-judicial" capacity and issue decisions like courts. These decisions are published in reporters (like judicial opinions are), resolve disputes between parties (the way judicial opinions do), and are invested with the force of law. Therefore, the administrative decision is another type of source that you might rely upon as legal authority.

Now that we've covered the three basic sources of primary law, let's look at some secondary sources. But before doing so, we'll review the primary sources and preview the remainder of the Gathering the Tools part with a brief exercise.

Secondary Source Materials

Generally speaking, secondary source materials provide an overview of an area of law, explain what the law is currently, and perhaps where it is heading, and provide you with a roadmap to sources of primary authority. One subcategory of secondary source materials, which we'll call finding tools, provides little or no discussion of the law, but does tell you where to find primary and secondary authority. Two commonly-used finding tools for legal research are digests and citators . We'll examine these sources later in the lesson. There also are finding tools you will have encountered previously that also are useful in researching the law. These includesubject indexes and Library catalogs. We won't discuss those here. The other subcategory includes secondary source materials that discuss, explain and help you find the law. There are commonly-used types of secondary sources in this subcategory: legal encyclopedias, treatises, journal articles, and annotations . Let's start with these.

Legal Encyclopedias

Legal encyclopedias are similar to other encyclopedias. They are organized by major legal topics, and further divided into specific sections, each dealing with a discrete legal issue. As with other secondary sources, these materials discuss, restate, interpret, explain, and refer to the actual law. The discussion is provided in the main text, with references to primary authority found in the (often lengthy) footnotes. Secondary sources frequently present commentary in this way, with an explanation of the law in the body of the page and notes or citations to the sources below.

Legal encyclopedias come in two flavors--general and specific. The two general encyclopedias are Corpus Juris Secundum and American Jurisprudence 2d. Specific encyclopedias exist for most states and certain substantive areas of law.

Treatises

The next type of secondary source is the treatise. It's a book or set of books about some area of the law, usually written by a recognized expert. Treatises address a legal topic in a broad and summary fashion. As with legal encyclopedias, you'll find discussion in the body of the text and references in the footnotes. Treatises are published in print and sometimes are available in online databases. In print, treatises are updated by pocket parts, supplementary pamphlets, or by a later edition.

There are different types of treatises. Hornbooks are a form of treatise written with the needs of students in mind, so they tend to be more basic. Looseleafs are treatises kept in notebooks for ease of updating. Legal encyclopedias can be thought of as broad, lengthy treatises.