Legal Solutions  Blog

An amusing customer Tweet has stuck with me:  “If I was 10, I’d spend hours ‘Nexting’ all sorts of interesting legal terms.”

With Presidents’ Day coming up, I thought I’d try “Nexting” our two presidential birthday honorees.  With the most comprehensive collection of case law and other legal sources at my fingertips, and the WestSearch engine in gear, here are some interesting results and the West Key Numbers for case law.

WestlawNext search Abraham Lincoln in jurisdictions Illinois and All Federal:

• Before becoming President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln was an attorney at the small private practice of John Todd Stuart.  “Mr.” Lincoln represented the Defendant in Peter R. Leonard v. The Administrator of John Villars, an 1860 case that remains good law.
  West Key Numbers: 
  205 Husband and Wife – 213 On Contracts
  219 Interest – 17 Coupons and installments of interest

• Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade v. Subversive Activities Control Board: a 1960’s case that made its way to the Supreme Court, leaving red KeyCite flags in its wake.
  West Key Number:
  92 Constitutional Law – 953 Delay in assertion of rights;  laches

• Walker v. Crane, 1865, includes a direct quote from President Abraham Lincoln’s 1964 call for 500,000 military servicemen—first voluntarily, then by draft to fill the remaining quota.
  West Key Numbers:
  34 Armed Forces – 15 Authority and duties
  34 Armed Forces – 34 To civilians, in general

• 16 U.S.C.A. § 217b, the Statute designating Lincoln’s birthplace as a National Historical Landmark.

• Comments on Proposed Rule from the S.E.C. is composed solely of Lincoln quotations and a very amusing concluding sentence.

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Watch for Part 2 on Tuesday Feb. 21, with results from a search of George Washington.