"Legal research is not unlike looking for a needle in a haystack, and although it has been made easier in recent years by desktop computers and Lexis, a legal database that produces almost instantaneous results, it still tends to be tedious work. One begins with a theory-in Coffee and Weddington's case the idea that the current Texas abortion law was unconstitutional-and then looks for material, either in the form of important law journal articles, precedent-setting cases, or in their case, since material was sparse, prior cases of any kind, to support the theory. Coffee and Weddington spent hours combing bibliographies and indexes for clues to cases or journal articles that might be relevant. The use of the courts to attack the constitutionality of a law was a recent development. As a legal tool, it came into widespread use during the 1950s and 1960s, an era of expansionism in civil rights. Lawyers who chose to challenge laws were often required to mine new territory within the Constitution, to seek connections where none had previously existed. It was exciting and even exhilarating work, but it also required creativity and thoughtfulness and sometimes more than a little daring. Above all, of course, the results had to be persuasive. Both women believed, as did most lawyers working on abortion, that any constitutional challenge to the abortion laws would be based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection under the law. Beyond this, Coffee and Weddington had little idea whether there were other grounds for overturning the laws. They began by looking for other abortion cases, ones that might support their theories or provide new ones."