Hi Friends,
Thanks Google! Google has put FREE US case law online in Google Scholar 🙂 The US Federal case law database includes US Supreme Court opinions since 1 US 1 (pre – 1776), Federal Appeals opinions since 1 F 2d 1 (1924+), and many Federal District Court opinions from F Supp. Opinions from all 50 states are included since 1950. Internal page numbers are included, and cases are hyperlinked to other cases within each case. When observing a particular case, you can quickly see how the observed case has been cited (with the quote from the observed case) with links to the cases using the particular quote, in addition to a list of all cases citing the observed case.
Here are a few screen shots, but check it out yourself, and you may never return to this blog post 🙂
The Google Scholar Advanced Search allows you to search a particular state.
Example case Bush v Gore
Example of the “How Cited” tab for Bush v Gore
Some alternative locations for the Bush v Gore case.
Google’s database of free case law has just been released (Rick Klau (@rklau) tweeted it last night as it went live :), and I am sure there will be additional features in the search functionality and data. It is fantastic that Google has put this case law online for free. Google can even use their hundreds of lawyers to test it out 🙂
Peace,
Tim