A “Plurality Opinion” is what we have when a majority of the justices on an appellate court agree on who should win the case, but there is no majority on why that party should win.

Federal Rules Decisions (F.R.D.) is a collection of federal court opinions not designated for publication that involve the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (since 1939) and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (since 1946).

The syllabus is an official summary of the case and even though it is prepared by an employee of the court, it is not to be considered part of the case.

The American Digest System was developed to help attorneys check the status of cases to determine its value as precedent so that attorneys would not be as likely to cite a case to a judge that had been overruled by a more recent case.

A writ of certiorari is a written order of an appellate court with discretionary jurisdiction (usually the highest court) stating that it chooses to review a lower court decision and the writ directs the lower court to produce its records for review.

The final decision that a trial court enters into its records is the Judgment or Final Decree.

The U.S.C. is fully annotated.

The unofficial reporter for the United States Supreme Court originally published by Lawyer’s Co-Op, and containing in depth annotations for each case is the

The United States Supreme Court Digest corresponds to which publishing company’s reporter?

Legal researchers usually need to refer to _________, a version of the Constitution containing case summaries of how the courts have interpreted the Constitution.