Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Westlaw Searching for Cases or Statutes Defining a Legal Term:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_06_07-2009_06_13.shtml#1244498609
If you're looking for cases or statutes that define a term, rather
than all cases that mention the term in any context, search for
[1]WP(term), e.g.,
WP("DANGEROUS WEAPON")
This only works for those terms that West includes in its "Words and
Phrases" books; but that's a pretty large set of terms.
Naturally, searching for all references to the term, rather than just
for the WP() references, will give you a more complete list. But it
may be far too complete, giving you thousands of cases. WP() searching
will knock out many of the false positives, though at the risk of
omitting some of the true positives.
Maybe most of you know about this feature or already, but some
experienced lawyer and law professor friends I asked hadn't, so I
thought I'd pass it along in case many people are unfamiliar with it.
For similar tips about ATLEAST, NOT W/, and SY,DI(), see [2]here.
References
1. http://lib.law.washington.edu/ref/tips.html
2. http://volokh.com/posts/1181673980.shtml
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