Chapter 1:

Question 1.2: 1-2. QUESTION WITH SAMPLE ANSWER: Schools of Jurisprudential Thought. After World War II, an international tribunal of judges convened at Nuremberg, Germany and convicted several Nazis of "crimes against humanity." Assuming that these convicted war criminals had not disobeyed any law of their country and had merely been following their government's orders, what law had they violated? Explain. ? For a sample answer to Question 1-2, go to Appendix F at the end of this text.

ADMINISTRATIVE RULES Rules and regulations have eliminated their own reporters in favor of West's adopted by federal administrative agencies are ini- National Reporter System. The National Reporter tially published in the Federal Register, a daily pub- System divides the states into the following geo- lication of the U.S. government. Later, they are graphic areas: Atlantic (A. or A.2d), North Eastern (N.E. incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations or N.E.2d), North Western (N.W. or N.W.2d), Pacific (P., (C.F.R.). Like the U.S.C., the C.F.R. is divided into P.2d, or P.3d), South Eastern (S.E. or S.E.2d), South Western fifty titles. Rules within each title are assigned sec- (S.W., S.W.2d, or S.W.3d), and Southern (So., So.2d, or tion numbers. A full citation to the C.F.R. includes So.3d). (The 2d and 3d in the preceding abbreviations title and section numbers. For example, a reference refer to Second Series and Third Series, respectively.) The to "17 C.F.R. Section 230.504" means that the rule states included in each of these regional divisions are can be found in Section 230.504 of Title 17. indicated on the facing page in Exhibit 1-4, which illustrates West's National Reporter System. Finding Case Law Case Citations. After appellate decisions have Before discussing the case reporting system, we need been published, they are normally referred to (cited) to look briefly at the court system (which will be dis- by the name of the case; the volume, name, and cussed in detail in Chapter 2). There are two types of courts in the United States, federal courts and state page number of the state's official reporter (if dif- courts. Both the federal and the state court systems ferent from West's National Reporter System); the consist of several levels, or tiers, of courts. Trial courts, volume, name, and page number of the National in which evidence is presented and testimony given, Reporter; and the volume, name, and page num- are on the bottom tier (which also includes lower ber of any other selected reporter. (Citing a reporter courts that handle specialized issues). Decisions by volume number, name, and page number, in from a trial court can be appealed to a higher court, that order, is common to all citations; often, as in which commonly is an intermediate court of appeals, this book, the year the decision was issued will be or an appellate court. Decisions from these interme- included in parentheses, just after the citations to diate courts of appeals may be appealed to an even reporters.) When more than one reporter is cited higher court, such as a state supreme court or the citation. for the same case, each reference is called a parallel United States Supreme Court. Note that some states have adopted a "public domain citation system" that uses a somewhat STATE COURT DECISIONS Most state trial court deci- different format for the citation. For example, sions are not published in books (except in New York in Wisconsin, a Wisconsin Supreme Court deci- and a few other states, which publish selected trial sion might be designated "2010 WI 40," meaning court opinions). Decisions from state trial courts are that the case was decided in the year 2010 by the typically filed in the office of the clerk of the court, Wisconsin Supreme Court and was the fortieth deci- where the decisions are available for public inspec- sion issued by that court during that year. Parallel tion. Written decisions of the appellate, or review- citations to the Wisconsin Reports and West's North ing, courts, however, are published and distributed Western Reporter are still included after the public (both in print and via the Internet). As you will note, domain citation. most of the state court cases presented in this book Consider the following case citation: State v. are from state appellate courts. The reported appel- Favoccia, 119 Conn.App. 1, 986 A.2d 1081 (2010). late decisions are published in volumes called reports We see that the opinion in this case can be found or reporters, which are numbered consecutively. in Volume 119 of the official Connecticut Appellate State appellate court decisions are found in the state Reports, on page 1. The parallel citation is to Volume reporters of that particular state. Official reports are 986 of the Atlantic Reporter, Second Series, page 1,081. published by the state, whereas unofficial reports are In presenting appellate opinions in this text (start- privately published. ing in Chapter 2), in addition to the reporter, we give the name of the court hearing the case and Regional Reporters. State court opinions appear in regional units of the National Reporter System, the year of the court's decision. Sample citations to published by West Group. Most lawyers and librar state court decisions are explained in Exhibit 1-5 on pages 18-20. ies have the West reporters because they report cases more quickly and are distributed more widely than FEDERAL COURT DECISIONS Federal district (trial) the state-published reporters. In fact, many states court decisions are published unofficially in West's1-2A. Question with Sample Answer At the time of the Nuremberg trials, "crimes against humanity* were new international crimes. The laws crim- inalized such acts as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population. These international laws derived their legitimacy from "natural law." Natural law, which is the oldest and one of the most significant schools of jurisprudence, holds that governments and legal systems should reflect the moral and ethical ideals that are inher- ent in human nature. Because natural law is universal and discoverable by reason, it's adherents believe that all other law is derived from natural law. Natural law therefore supersedes laws created by humans (national, or "posi- tive," law), and in a conflict between the two, national of positive law loses its legitimacy. The Nuremberg defen- dants asserted that they had been acting in accordance with German law. The judges dismissed these claims, rea- soning that the defendants' acts were commonly regarded as crimes and that the accused must have known that the acts would be considered criminal. The judges clearly believed the tenets of natural law and expected that the defendants, too, should have been able to realize that their acts ran afoul of it. The fact that the "positivist law" of Germany at the time required them to commit these acts is irrelevant. Under natural law theory, the interna- tional court was justified in finding the defendants guilty of crimes against humanity