Case digests are Pike & Fischer's exclusive summaries of the holdings, or actions taken, in FCC orders and court decisions. While all court decisions in the Broadcast Regulation cases database have digests, only the more significant FCC orders in the database have digests, including all FCC orders that adopt or revise the agency's rules. Digests simplify research by allowing the researcher to review quickly all of the FCC and court decisions that address a particular topic, such as a particular FCC rule, a section of a federal statute, or a general point of Broadcast law. The digests are numbered according to the statute or rule they address. Digests concerning FCC rules have the same number as the rule; for example, digests concerning Section 73.25 of the FCC's rules are numbered 73.25. Digests concerning sections of a statute have a prefix indicating the statute followed by a number indicating the statute section number. For example, digests concerning Section 10 of the Communications Act are numbered CA.10, and digests interpreting Section 551 of the Administrative Procedure Act are numbered APA.551. Click on the Browse the table of digest classification numbers link to see the entire list of digest topics and numbers.
This feature allows you to browse through a list of digest topics and restrict your search to specific topics. Click on a general topic (a specific statute, or the FCC's rules, or general law topics) to see an expanded list of specific digest topics. Click on the box next to the topic(s) you wish to search, and click ADD TO MY SEARCH. The digest topic(s) you chose will now appear in the Digest classification number field in the Search Case Digests search form. Your search results will then be restricted to those topics. If you know the digest number you wish to search, you can bypass the table of contents feature and enter that number in the Digest classification number field on the search form, as described below.
Use this field to narrow your search to cases with particular words or party names in the case title. You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. If a phrase contains a noise word, your search will skip over that word when searching for it. Use connector, wildcard and stemming tools to fine-tune your results.
| Examples: | Bell Telephone Company | |
| satellite or radio | ||
| regulatory fees | ||
| wireless and auction |
Use this field to narrow your search to digests including a word or phrase within any part of the document, including case title, text, footnotes or appendices. You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. If a phrase contains a noise word, your search will skip over that word when searching for it. Use connector, wildcard and stemming tools to fine-tune your results.
| Examples: | directional antenna | |
| internet | ||
| radiofrequency or RF | ||
| interference and coordination |
back to topUse this field to restrict your search to digests with a certain digest classification number by typing in the desired number or numbers in the box. Or, click on the Browse the table of digest classification numbers link to choose the digest topics and numbers you wish to search.
All cases with digests have a Pike & Fischer citation. Use this field to search the digests of a particular case when you know the case's Pike & Fischer citation.
| Examples: | 26 CR 1417 | |
| 77 RR 2d 32 |
This field allows you to search for a case by its date or to restrict your search results to a certain date range. Most FCC orders have both an "Adopted" date and a "Released" date listed under their caption. This field searches the "Released" date.
Your search may consist of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them.
| Examples: | apple and pear | « Both words must be present | |
| apple or pear | « Either word can be present | ||
| apple w/5 pear | « Apple must occur within 5 words of pear | ||
| apple not w/5 pear | « Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear | ||
| apple and not pear | « Only apple must be present |
If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).
Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches. » More about connectors
A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word.
| Examples: | appl* | « would match apple, application, etc. | |
| *cipl* | « would match principle, participle, etc. | ||
| appl? | « would match apply and apple but not apples. | ||
| apple not w/5 pear | « Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear | ||
| ap*ed | « would match applied, approved, etc |
Note that use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word may slow search performance.
You may use the ~ character to extend or stem your search to cover grammatical variations on a word.
| Examples: | test~ | « would also find testing | |
| apply~ | « would also find applying, applies, and apply |
» More search tips