Moot Court Research Support

This research guide contains many tabs some of them contain resources to help you research, write, and argue your moot court brief. Others contain information specific to your moot competition.  When you are begining your moot court problem, use the resources on this page and then explore the resources suggested in Writing Resources and Oral Advocacy Resources.

All legal research should start with an analysis of the legal issues. Read your record to find out:

• what issues are involved;
• what legal principles you need to learn more about; and
• what major cases the lower court relied upon.

Once you have read your record:

• gather any legal materials mentioned in the record;
• read the cases, statutes, regulations, and other legal precedent and note additional citations to other materials;
• Keycite and/or Shepardize all legal material to check status and to find additional pertinent resources; and
• look for briefs of any underlying cases to see how issues were argued in the court below.

Make sure you familiarize yourself with the basic priniples of law dealt with in your problem.  Moot court problems often involve constitutional law issues.  Here are some recommended treatises on constiutional law.