Part One – Annotated Bibliography
You will be locating sources, reading them, and writing an Annotated Bibliography. Here is an example of a full-credit annotated source. You may use this example annotation and table to organize your citations and summaries. Each of the 5 sources you use in your Annotated Bibliography should resemble the example annotation.
Locate 5 credible unique sources such as scholarly peer-reviewed academic, law or science journals, professional organization website blogs, news articles, etc. related to the issue you identified in Week 2 that you would like to address and create an annotated bibliography. The sources cannot be sources included in the course learning materials, with the following exceptions: optional or suggested materials, teacher recommendations made throughout discussions or readings provided as a starting point–if any–on the Issue Bank page may be used. For this exercise, do NOT include case law. Although your sources must be unique for this assignment, you may use the sources you find and any sources provided in the course learning materials for your course projects.
Creating an annotated bibliography is a good way to organize potential sources for your course project. Writing an annotated bibliography helps you summarize the sources you have found, evaluate the quality of these sources, and determine the importance of each source for your final project. Your bibliography should include the proper APA reference followed by a short paragraph summarizing the main points of the article. You should include a general overview of the article content, the main ideas presented, and why this article is relevant to your project (see below or an example). Make sure you are locating quality sources. Suggestions of databases/websites to search for scientific articles can be found on your course resource page.
Part Two – Federal Law Research
To complete this portion of the assignment (the federal and state law portion of this assignment), use this template provided and include the following information:
The name of the statute or regulation
The legal citation
A brief description of the relevant section of the law that applies to your issue. If you are unsure if a federal law applies, note the law and briefly state why you think it may be relevant or why you are unsure.
The table lists the only federal statutes that you should consider for your own Course Project issue. Do not add any more federal laws! Looking for other federal statutes that apply will take a very long time and not be productive for you.
Note: A completed table is not necessarily a full table! If the law does not apply, then leave the rest of the row blank or simply write N/A.
The second section of the table is for the state you are investigating for your course project. You should only research laws that are relevant to your issue.
Here is an example template of a full-credit annotated legal resource table for the example issue of “Service Dogs in Training” in the chosen state of California. Since this issue focuses on California, the table includes state statutes in that state related to the issue. If one of the states you covered for Week 2 Assignment 1: State Status Exercise is the state for your Course Project issue, you may copy/paste that information into the state portion of your table. Your state will have different laws than the ones listed here (unless you are researching California).
Identify the primary federal laws addressed in your research that might apply to the issue you are investigating. Although you are focusing on the state level, a state statute might reference the federal law, so you would want to include the information. The template table has the federal laws you should consider, recognizing that not every law available or even discussed in the module is included. The goal is simply to help you keep in mind the federal-state relationship for some of the oversight. If the federal law does not apply, simply indicate the general focus of the law and why it is not relevant to your issue. It is understood that a law federal statute may not directly apply to your topic. You are not required to include pending federal legislation.
Include any existing (enacted) animal-related laws in your chosen state that you think might apply directly and narrowly relate to your issue and a very brief explanation as to why you think it might be important. For example, all states have anti-animal cruelty laws, but you would not need to include the law unless there is something stated that specifically addresses your issue. Many states have laws making the false representation of an animal as a service animal a crime, but again, unless germane to your issue you would not want to include this information in your table. To help narrow your scope, when you are searching for a law in your chosen state that might relate, include the qualifying term, such as “Therapy animal welfare” rather than simply “animal,” or “Therapy Dog Training” rather than “dog training.” You may miss some laws, but your role as advocate is to provide background information on the issue and explain why an existing law (presuming there is one) may not be adequate. You are providing some preliminary insights to inspire a legislator to further investigate. You are not required to provide nuanced legal arguments, which is why you should not research case laws for this assignment. You will be researching background on the concern, not how the law is applied. Minimally, your table should include the state’s definition for a service animal, even if you already found this information for your assignment#1 in Week 2. Yes–you may cut/paste from your prior assignment if this is the case!
