BRIEFINGS: UPPER LEVEL WRITING PAPER: PREEMPTION & RESOURCES

Dean Lisa Smith-ButlerFebruary 13, 2017

GETTING STARTED Where do I begin? What do I do first? Questions, questions, questions…

A THESIS STATEMENT What is the purpose of your paper? What are you trying to prove? Frame it as you would an issue: “whether the homicide by child

abuse statue in South Carolina should extend the age from 11 to 18?”

OR AS THE SIMPSONS SAY…

INITIAL RESEARCH Is there enough information? Too narrow? Is there too much information? Too broad? If I wanted to find…, where would I look?

AUTHORITATIVE & REPUTABLE

The Library Catalog Discovery & Databases Law Reviews in WestLawNext, Lexis Advance or HeinOnline Indexes (ILP & LegalTrac) J-Stor SSRN & BePress LibGuides Google Scholar?

PREEMPTION CHECKING What is it? Why do you do it? How do you do it?

OUTLINE The Road Map Where do you plan to go? How do you plan to get there?

SAMPLE OUTLINE Thesis:  Whether the death penalty should be available as a sentencing option for juveniles regardless of

Roper v. Simmons?   Introduction               History & Purpose of Juvenile Court               Exchange Procedural Protections for Lesser Responsibility               Juveniles Brains are Different               How Juveniles & Adults Differ Developmentally Gault               The constitutionalization of the Juvenile Court Changing Perspectives in the 1980s – 2000s               Punishing Juveniles as Adults and Treating them as adults Roper v. Simons               What does it mean?               Where do we go from here? Conclusion               Was Roper right?  If so, why?  If not, why?

ROUGH DRAFT A rough draft is rough but it should be complete enough so that

your reader knows where you are headed and what you are trying to say.

Keep track of your footnotes. They are hard to untangle. Write, read, edit, re-write. Polish. Use transitional sentences to connect headings and paragraphs.

FOOTNOTES OR ENDNOTES Find out which your professor prefers: footnotes or endnotes. You need to be able to support what you saying, i.e. footnote! If you are referring to another writer’s ideas or quoting the writer,

footnote! Footnoting is important for attribution & avoiding plagiarism charges.

Citation format is the Bluebook. Remember that you reader may want to read the cited material so make it easy for him or her to locate it with your citations.

COMPONENTS OF A TYPICAL PAPER Cover Sheet Table of Contents Introduction Background Analysis Conclusion Footnotes/Endnotes Bibliography

FINAL DRAFT Read & re-read. Edit & Polish. Use spell check but also check the spelling yourself!

THE END! Thanks for coming! Questions? Stop by the Reference Desk @ Room 120 in the

library, call the Desk at 843.377.4020, or email the Desk @ reference@charlestonlaw.edu .