Citator
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In legal research, a citator is a citation index of legal resources, the best-known of which is Shepard's Citations. Given a reference of a legal decision, a citator allows the researcher to find newer documents which cite the original document and thus to reconstruct the judicial history of cases and statutes. Using a citator in this way is colloquially referred to as "Shepardizing".
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[edit] Use in legal research
[edit] Topical research
Because cases cite related cases, citators can be used to find cases which are on topics related to a given topic. A common research strategy is to use "one good case" to find related cases.
[edit] Establishing authority
Another important application is to determine whether the conclusions of one case have been followed, overturned, or modified in later cases, especially by higher courts. This is important for legal systems in which the binding authority of a case is contingent on precedent.
Citators often include annotations indicating the history and treatment of a case in citing opinions. Shepard's notes 'history' as affirmed, modified, reversed, same case, Superseded, or vacated; and 'treatment' as criticised, distinguished, explained, j dissenting opinion, ~ consenting opinion, Limited, overruled, or questioned.
Although originally distributed only as printed and bound volumes, citators are now typically on-line services such as LexisNexis's Shepard's citations. LexisNexis publishes an instructive manual on the topic How to Shepardize.
[edit] History
Frank Shepard Company started publishing citators in New York City in 1873 and other companies provided similar services at around the same time, e.g. George Fred Williams's Massachusetts citations: a table of cases, overruled, denied, doubted, criticised, approved, and cited by the Supreme Judicial Court (Boston, 1878).
The name 'citator' appears to have been coined by the Citator Publishing Company (Detroit) in 1908 in The Citator: an annotated compilation of citations of the Kansas Supreme Court....
