This page provides information on our treatise. If
you want to learn more about another aspect of Garland's Digest, then click on
one of the links shown in the navigation bar below on the picture on your left.
Treatise information
Overview
For the last two years, we have been reviewing
all cases we have read in the last ten years and organizing all significant
points of law into a treatise. At present the treatise does not include a
section on the Family and Medical Leave Act, but the FMLA section should be
online by the summer of 2008.
Update: September 5, 2007
In order to introduce our subscribers
to our Treatise, we are asking our subscribers to send us their research
questions and we will tell them whether the Treatise currently has a case on
point -- and if so, how we navigated through the Treatise Index to find the
case. Not only does this help our subscribers, but it gives us a chance to take
actual research questions and evaluate the usefulness of this first version of
the Treatise (and the Treatise Index). So subscribe and send us your questions.
Treatise is not narrative
All treatises are written in narrative form. For
example, if the author is addressing pretext, he or she will write a few
paragraphs on pretext with footnotes to cases supporting each particular point.
The reader then looks to the footnotes and hopes there is a case from his or her
circuit. If so, then the reader finds the case and determines whether the author
has correctly cited the case. In writing our treatise, we chose a
different path. The treatise is broken down into very narrow points of law
and for each point of law, we hope to eventually have a quote from each circuit
addressing that point of law.
So for example, let's assume you want to research
whether the failure of the employer to follow company policy is evidence of
pretext. You would go to our Treatise Index and look under "pretext." There you
would find the following page link:
4.743.40 Failure to follow company rules or
policies.
Click
here
to see a sample of that page of the treatise in a new
window. Close that window to return here.
Continuation of "Treatise is not
narrative" discussion
On this one page of the treatise, you hopefully
found a case from your circuit with a citation directly on point. If
not, you at least found cases from several other circuits. It took
us two years to review cases from the last ten years and select
various points of law. We now are going back and filling in gaps.
But once again, not every circuit has addressed every issue.
Treatise index is open to the public
Our treatise index is open for your perusal. However,
if you click on a link to a page of the treatise, you will not be allowed access
because only subscribers have username/password combinations to access the
treatise. If you wish to examine the treatise index, we suggest you start with
"Pretext." To do so, click here
and you will arrive at the "P" listings of the treatise index. Once on that
page, scroll down to "Pretext."