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Areas Where Written Laws Apply
- What are laws?
- Substantive v. procedural laws
- Sample substantive and procedural laws
- Statute of limitations example
- Summons example
- Easement example
- Negligence example
Resources for Federal and State Statutes, Codes, and Rules
- Two levels of law
- Laws and more laws
- US Constitution
- Sources for the US Constitution
- Sources for federal statutes and codes
- Regulations: Administrative law
- Sources for federal regulations
- State constitutions
- Sources for state constitutions
- State statutes
- Sources for state statutes and codes
Proper Use and Citing of Statutes, Codes, and Rules
- Basic citation style
- Citation rules
- US Code citation rule
- Postal Service example
- Federal Rules of Civil Procedure citation rule
- Summons example
- State citation rule
- Easement example
Transcript
Hi. It\’s me, Matt, again with course four, lesson two, statutes, codes, and rules.
In this lesson, we\’ll cover areas where written laws apply, resources for federal and state statutes, and proper use and citing of statutes.
Statutes, codes, and rules are laws that a society recognizes as governing or guiding behavior. They are defined in writing by a government body like congress or a legislature.
There are two main types of laws, substantive and procedural.
Substantive laws govern our rights and the things we can and cannot do. They tell us how to behave and go to the merits of a case. Procedural laws are the rules for enforcing and applying substantive laws and for making litigation standardized.
Neither is more important than the other, but it hurts your case if you go to court on a motion to dismiss where you need to argue procedure and attempt to argue substance.
Laws defining negligence, debt collection, bankruptcy, and immigration are substantive. A statute of limitations, rules about filing and formatting briefs are procedural.
Let\’s look at some examples of laws and how they might apply in certain situations.
A plaintiff misses the due date for filing his complaint. The defendant moves to dismiss because the statute of limitations for filing has passed. The statute of limitations is a procedural rule because it doesn\’t go to the merits of a case, and it sets out a rule for filing documents. In short, it makes the litigation process easier for the courts.
A defendant files a motion to dismiss for lack of process because a plaintiff leaves out the address of his own attorney.
What makes the law procedural? It doesn\’t go to the merits of the case. It\’s a rule for the proper way to serve a summons, and it makes litigation efficient.
Procedural laws can frustrate pro se litigants. That\’s understandable. Who cares whether some attorney\’s address is on a document when you\’ve got broken legs from being run over by a truck? But if you ignore procedure, you can be out of the case long before you get to its merits. Pay attention to the kind of documents the other side is filing and the laws they rely on.
Now we get to the meat of the matter, a substantive rule. A plaintiff files suit against a defendant for trespassing on a parcel of his land. The defendant answers claiming that an easement gives him the right of way to the parcel. The statute is substantive because it goes to the merit of the case. It tells people how to behave in everyday life. Specifically, it addresses the question of whether the defendant has a right to cross a particular parcel of land.
In another scenario, a plaintiff sues for negligence after the defendant throws a lit cigarette into a trash can, setting the fire that destroyed plaintiff\’s barn.
The negligence statute goes to the merit of the case. The entire lawsuit is about whether the defendant was negligent, and if so, whether plaintiff has a right to sue.
This section will focus on state and federal laws. Federal laws include the US constitution, federal codes, statutes, and federal regulations.
State laws include constitutions, codes, statutes, and rules, each of which serve its own purpose.
Many different names are used for laws, including statutes, codes, rules, regulations, and even constitutions.
Sometimes the names are used interchangeably, like statutes and codes. They and regulations are the same types of documents and tend to serve the same functions.
Constitutions are the principal rules or tenants of a government. No law can conflict with the US constitution.
The best sources for the US constitution are governmental, including the library of congress, the national archives, and the US congress.
Federal statutes, as codified in the United States code and the United States code annotated, are created by congress through a formal process of lawmaking.
State laws are often derived from the United States code and customized to the needs of a particular state.
The US code is available from a myriad of sources, including the house of representatives, US government publishing office, and Cornell law school.
In the federal system, administrative agencies make laws or rules to enforce their orders and decisions.
Those laws are organized or codified into the code of federal regulations. Agencies include the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the Federal Communication Commission\’s, FCC, and others.
Like other federal laws, administrative rules and regulations can be found on university law sites like University of Virginia Library, University of Washington\’s Gallagher Law Library, and federal government sites like the Federal Register and the US Government Publishing Office.
As with the US constitution, state constitutions are the basis for state laws. There is a constitution for each state, but the US constitution rules. No state law or constitution can conflict with the US constitution.
State constitutions tend to change more often than US constitution because of the flexibility states have to amend them.
Cornell Law School, the Maryland State\’s Constitution Project, and the Jerome Hall Law Library at Indiana University are good sites to find state constitutions.
State laws stem from state legislatures. Like federal laws, state laws might refer to statutes, codes, and rules synonymously.
Oftentimes, rules, such as the rules of civil procedure or the rules of evidence, are a part of the larger state codes or statutes.
Good sources for state laws include two commercial sites, Justia and Fine Law, and university sites like Cornell.
One of the most tedious jobs of a legal writer is to keep up with sources and pointing the judge and other parties to where you found information.
This is called citing sources.
Online resources have made that job much easier. University law libraries, like Cornell and Georgetown, provide citation guides that help you properly cite legal resources. Some even have pictures.
This chart looks intimidating, but it\’s not, really. Each statute, law, code, rule, and regulation is cited differently. But when you get right down to it, it\’s all simply a code, as you can see from the numbers on the right.
There\’s even a standard way of writing state statutes even though there are many different names for them. Let\’s look at ways to add laws to your legal documents.
This is how to cite US code. When you need to add US code to your document, you\’ll want the title of the code, the abbreviation, USC section symbol, a space, section number, and year of the code. The result should look like the citation on the right.
In the snapshot on the left, a section of the postal code is circled in yellow. That is the section in the example of use on the right. In the example, the circled part is quoted in part of a larger argument. After that, a citation is included to pinpoint exactly where the quote came from.
This is how to cite the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The rule is slightly different from the rule for US codes.
Like the previous example, in this sample, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding a summons is quoted and cited to support a legal argument. Since the example uses a quote, the citation must show exactly where the words are located in the statute. So the citation isn\’t just quoting the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure four, it\’s quoting Federal Rules of Civil Procedure four a one d.
Let\’s look at a state statute now. There are some similarities and differences in citation style from federal cases.
But again, it\’s all a formula, just plug in information where necessary.
In this Tennessee statute regarding easements, there are no quotes and the example appears to refer to the entire statute. In this case, simply plug in the numbers from the face of the statute.
It\’s not necessary to use subsections or subparts. In fact, there are none. In the future, be prepared to use them properly where necessary.
Let\’s summarize. In areas where written laws apply, we defined laws and looked at examples of ways to apply them. In resources for federal and state statutes, we discussed the myriad of federal and state statutes, codes, rules, regulations and constitutions, and resources for finding them. In the last section, proper use and citing of statutes, codes, and rules, we used examples to show the proper ways to include laws in legal documents.
Next up, lesson three, appellate opinions, case law.