To shepardize a case is to verify its current authority and pinpoint how every subsequent judicial decision has treated it. This process moves beyond a simple citation count to reveal whether a case remains good law, has been distinguished, or has been explicitly overturned. Properly executed, the shepardizing process provides a map of a case's judicial journey, offering essential context for any persuasive legal argument.
Understanding the Purpose and Necessity of Shepardizing
The foundation of effective legal research rests on the principle of citing valid, controlling authority. A case that appears perfectly aligned with your facts can be fatally weakened if a higher court has since limited its scope or if a subsequent decision has eroded its holding. Shepardizing serves as the quality control check, ensuring the reliability of your citations and protecting you from the professional embarrassment of relying on bad law. It transforms a static citation into a dynamic record of judicial conversation.
Leveraging KeyCite and Westlaw for Automated Shepardization
In the modern legal environment, the most efficient method for most practitioners involves utilizing a legal research platform like Westlaw or a similar subscription service. These systems automate the heavy lifting, generating a visual citator report that illustrates a case's treatment history at a glance. The interface typically flags a case with red signals for negative treatment, such as overruling or criticism, and green signals for positive treatment, like affirmations or following reasoning. This immediate visual feedback allows researchers to quickly filter through hundreds of citations to identify the most critical authorities.
Interpreting the Citator Report Effectively
Understanding how to read the output is just as important as running the search. A citator report is not merely a list; it is a narrative of judicial engagement. You must distinguish between subsequent citing references that distinguish the original case and those that reaffirm its core principles. KeyCite and similar tools use proprietary algorithms to analyze the context of each citation, tagging them with specific negative or positive signals. A researcher must look past the quantity of citations to assess the quality and nature of the discourse surrounding the precedent.
The Manual Shepardizing Process for Print and Historical Context
While technology dominates, the fundamental ability to manually shepardize remains a critical skill, particularly when historical cases or jurisdictions lack comprehensive digital coverage. This traditional approach involves physically consulting a Shepard's Citator, a volume that indexes cases by the citations they receive. By looking up the headnote of your case of interest, you are directed to a list of all subsequent citations that mention it, organized by the type of jurisdiction and reporter.
Navigating the Annotated Shepard's
- Locate the volume corresponding to the reporter series of your case.
- Find the main entry for the case under the correct name or the key number assigned to its headnote.
- Scan the subsequent citations, paying close attention to the jurisdiction (e.g., S. Ct. for Supreme Court) and the year.
- Read the context of the citing reference; the Shepard's page will include a snippet of the text from the citing opinion to indicate its purpose.
Integrating Shepardization into Your Legal Workflow
Effective shepardizing is not a one-time task but an integral component of the research lifecycle. It should occur during the initial document drafting phase, before submitting any brief, and again prior to any filing to capture the most recent judicial activity. By treating citator checks as a standard procedural step, legal professionals ensure that their arguments are built on a foundation of current and respected precedent, thereby maximizing their persuasiveness and minimizing the risk of adverse authority.
