North Carolina Legal Research: Primary Resources

This lesson on North Carolina primary legal research materials will provide an introduction on how to locate North Carolina legal materials including North Carolina constitutional provisions, statutes, case law, regulations, and municipal provisions. In addition to discussing how to locate these materials in print, we will also discuss how to locate them in the major databases and free and low cost databases.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the lesson, the student will be able to:

1. Explain the structure of the State of North Carolina's court system.
2. List resources available to locate North Carolina case law.
3. Distinguish between annotated and unannotated codes.
4. Explain the difference between statutes and regulations.
5. Create a strategy for research using primary resources using low cost resources.