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The information in this article applies to reports from the Shepard's® Citation Service on the LexisNexis® products and services.
In many respects, Shepard's® Citation Service reports for statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions mirror Shepard's reports for cases. The following information includes unique aspects of Shepard's reports for these materials.:
| Legislative History
Shepard’s Signal™ Citation Format Citing Decision Does Not Cite to Statute |
Subsection vs. Comprehensive Reports
Teaser Text Links Other Citing Sources Coverage |
Legislative History
The Legislative History information in a Shepard's report for a statute contains the same History information that appears at the bottom of the full text of the statute.
Pending Legislation appears at the top of the report. Click Pending Legislation to access a list of bills from the current legislative session that propose to change the statute.
If the statute, constitution, or court rule was recently amended by the legislature, Recent Legislative Changes displays a link to the legislative material that amends your section. Recent Legislative Changes only appears when there are legislative changes that have not yet been incorporated into the text of your document.
Bills and Public Laws under Pending Legislation and Recent Legislative Changes must refer to the specific statute by citation and must be clear that they are related to changes to that statute to be included in the report.
Note: Pending Legislation and Recent Legislative Changes are available on the Citing Decisions and Other Citing Sources tabs, or while viewing the full-text document under the About - Shepard's box.
If the legislation affects just a subsection of a statute, the Pending Legislation or Recent Legislative Changes information is applied to the Shepard's report for the entire statute, not just the impacted subsection.
Subsection vs. Comprehensive Reports
The Shepard's service strives to deliver a comprehensive and accurate report for statutes. A statute has a higher level of complexity than case citations as it can be cited by its sub-section, as a range of sub-sections, and other variations within a statute section hierarchy. To provide you with a way to review and navigate through a statute section and its hierarchy, a single comprehensive report was created to include all the citing references to the section, regardless of how courts cite to it.
In statutes, the Comprehensive report combines all the various citing references into one report, regardless of whether it cites to the general/parent citation (the exact match), a subsection thereof, or both. The United States Code, all state codes (excluding Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands), and the CFR have Comprehensive reports. Court rules, including FRCP, constitutions, and state administrative codes do not have Comprehensive reports. If a citing reference cites to the exact match and a subsection, it appears in both those reports, but is only once in the Comprehensive report.
Click Subsection Report by specific court citation to view a list of all the different ways courts and other documents cite to the exact match or subsections. Select the citation you are interested in to view a list of references that cite to that specific subsection. If the section you are interested in is not listed, that means Shepard's did not find any citing references. The total number on the index list screen may differ from the total on the report screen because Legislative History entries are included in the report total but not in the index report list.
Note: Some state stautes include Shepard's Signal Indicators on each subsection of a full-text statute. You can toggle the subsection sections on and off by clicking the Show Signals toggle under Shepard's® on the right side of the statute. The Shepard's Signals provide a quick view of how subsections are treated by courts and quick access to the Shepard's report for that subsection. Click the signal to Shepardize® the subsection. For states without this feature, you can still access the subsection reports through the Shepard's report.
If there is only an exact match report (no reports for subsections), there is still a Comprehensive report. On rare occasions, the number of total cites for the exact match and the comprehensive report may differ; this occurs because different processes are used to create the two reports.
Because there are no Comprehensive reports for constitutions, court rules, and state administrative codes, you need to look at all the subsection reports if you want to see all the citing references.
The Index and subsection reports may list Roman numerals as Arabic numerals and the reports do not always properly designate letters as upper or lower case.
There are no Comprehensive reports for statutory appendices.
Shepard's Signal Indicator
Shepard's reports for federal and state statutes (excluding Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands) and the CFR include signals. The signals reflect the way cases cite to the code sections, and have nothing to do with how the legislature has treated it. To find how the legislature has treated a code section, consider using History information.
You can see signals on the Shepard's report and under About while viewing the full text statute. You also have the option to display signals on subsections for most states using the Show signals button under About while viewing the full text statute. You can toggle the subsection sections on and off by clicking the Show signals toggle under Shepard's on the right side of the statute.
Note: Signals on subsections are not available for the following jurisdictions:
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Constitutions, court rules and state administrative codes (those that Shepard's recognizes) do not include signals.
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Links
Links from a Shepard's report for a statute should take you directly to the citing reference in the case.
[ Top ]Citation Format
If a statute, court rule, or constitutional provision includes a Roman numeral in the citation and you are unable to access the Shepard's report using the proper citation format, replace the Roman numeral with an Arabic numeral. For a list of proper citation formats, see Shepard's Editorial Phrases and Citation Formats.
Teaser Text
Shepard's displays the teaser text for the citing decisions in reports for statutes. The teaser text does not display for citing decisions in reports for court rules or constitutions.
While viewing a sub-section report for statutes, the teaser text reflects language citing to that sub-section.
Citing Decision Does Not Cite to Statute
If a Citing Decision does not cite to the statute, the Citing Decision may cite to the originating act or a former citation of the statute. In the print version of Shepard's, Shepard's editors sometimes matched cases to a statute when the case cited to the name of the act or to a former citation. Those matches carried over to the online version of Shepard's.
For example, the Shepard's report for D.C. Code sec. 15-703 includes a Citing Decision from 1963 that does not cite to 15-703 but instead cites to the previous version 11-1506.
Other Citing Sources Coverage
Shepard's reports for constitutions, court rules and state regulations do not have comprehensive Other Citing Sources coverage. If you do not see a secondary source that cites to the constitution, court rule, or state regulation you Shepardized, that is working as designed.[ Top ]