Some resources in this guide are Mitchell Hamline School of Law licensed databases. These are available to students, faculty, and staff either with a network login or individual password. Many of them are also available to the public from the computers in the library, as well as through computers signed into the school's wireless network.
Bloomberg Law, Westlaw, and Lexis are subscription services that require users to have individual accounts for access.
If you need more information on this topic, please contact the reference desk:
Phone: 651-290-6424
E-mail: reference@mitchellhamline.edu
IM chat on the library's website
The West Key Number System organizes American Law into over 400 topics. These topics are divided into narrower subtopics which are identified by key numbers.
To find cases on a specific legal issue, start with the Digest (which is like an index to the cases) for the jurisdiction you are researching. Locate the Descriptive Word Index volumes (usually at the end of the digest title) and look up your issue. You will be directed to one or more topics and key numbers associated with that issue.
Look up those topics and key numbers in the main volumes of the digest title, and there you will see annotations and citations to the opinions from cases on that issue.
The case opinions written by the court are found in Reporters. Reporters maybe contain cases from a particular jurisdiction, a region of the country, or a particular topic area.