Legal Research: Pennsylvania

Shepards Pennsylvania Citations contains the standard features and works in the same way as the other Shepards state citators. It consists of a statutory component and a case component. The statutory volumes allow you to check the history and authority of codified state statutes, session laws, constitutional sections, and court rules. One thing to note is the segregation of the consolidated and unconsolidated statues into two distinct sections.

The case component allows you to shepardize appellate decisions using either the official or Atlantic Reporter citation. This set previously included a volume that incorporated the side reports, but Shepards stopped collecting information on these decisions around 1973 or 74 with the exception of the District and County Reports which can still be shepardized. Libraries that were aware of the elimination of the side reports volume may have held on to it even though its usefulness is severely limited. One cannot shepardize

Pennsylvania administrative regulations or decisions.

West Publishing has developed their own citator service called Key Cite which while only available through Westlaw provides many of the same services as Shepards.