Arkansas Legal Research

This text has been written for legal researchers of various levels of experience and training. For those just learning the intricacies of legal research, it explains the basic processes and introduces those students to the most important sources of Arkansas law. For those students, it also briefly discusses analogous materials in federal law, so that they can better see the parallels between state and federal research.

Experienced researchers will also benefit from having a text that brings together both print and online sources of Arkansas law and that will help them determine which of those sources are better suited to accomplishing a particular research task.

Because it is intended as a field manual to be carried into the library (or open on the desk beside the computer keyboard), the text omits the sample pages usually reproduced in national texts, assuming instead that the researcher will browse or examine the actual sources. The opening chapter walks users through the legal research process. The second chapter introduces readers to the eclectic mix of secondary materials that provide users with the concepts, vocabulary, and overview needed when researching unfamiliar areas of the law, and that also may provide significant time-saving benefits by steering researchers to primary materials on point. Each of the remaining chapters focuses on particular sources of law, beginning with the ultimate source of state law, the Arkansas Constitution, and continuing through cases, statutes, legislation, administrative rules, and rules of court. Unlike many books on legal research, which treat updating and citation in chapters of their own (and therefore in a more abstract and general fashion), this text integrates those processes into each chapter.

This book is part of the Legal Research Series, edited by Suzanne E. Rowe, Director of Legal Research and Writing, University of Oregon School of Law.