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Law 627: Legal Research: American Law Reports

American Law Reports (ALR)

American Law Reports Volumes

American Law Reports (ALR) began life as a selective case reporter to compete with West's National Reporter System. They lost that battle, and have stopped printing cases. What remains from the original publication are the Annotations. An ALR Annotation contains an essay about a narrow area of law, and will tell you how different jurisdictions have dealt with that issue through many citations to court decisions from those jurisdictions. 


If you can find an ALR Annotation on your topic, then you will be well on your way.

Finding

A complete Index to American Law Reports is available on Westlaw Edge

Accessing

American Law Reports on Westlaw Edge

American Law Reports on Lexis+ (search only, no table of contents)

Updating

Print ALRs have a variety of updating formats, but for the most part rely one pocket parts.


WARNING: Has your ALR Annotation been Supplemented OR Superceded?
 

Supplemented means there is a more recent annotation that has additional information so you need to look at both of them.
 

Superceded means that this annotation should no longer be used as there is a more recent annotation that has completely revised the topic.