Legal Research: U.S. Supreme Court

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L.Ed. and L.Ed.2d

• Online version (Search by citation L.Ed. or L.Ed.2d)
• Online version (Search by keyword & date)
• Reference KF .A2
  • United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition (1790-1955)
  • United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition, Second Series (1956+)

U.S. -- United States Reports -- the official publication of Supreme Court decisions

• U.S. Documents Ju 6.8: (1754+)
• or retrieve the version from L.Ed.2d online by Shepardizing the U.S. citation.

S.Ct. -- Supreme Court Reporter is only available in the UCF Library via the Westlaw database; ask at the Research Assistance Desk.

Need to cross-reference a citation from S.Ct. or U.S. to locate the case in L. Ed. 2d?

Use the Parallel Reference Tables in volume 4 of
Shepard's United States Citations
Reference KF 101.2 .S54

or retrieve the version from L.Ed.2d online by Shepardizing the S.Ct. citation.

Argument Transcripts (October 2000+) -- "The Court's current Courtroom reporter, Alderson Reporting Company, provides transcripts of oral arguments that are posted on this Web site on the same day an argument is heard by the Court. Same-day transcripts are considered official but subject to final review."

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Case Summaries, Oral Arguments & Multimedia -- "a multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955."

Government Briefs (Office of the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice) (1982+) "seeks to provide convenient access to all briefs (other than responses in IFP cases) filed by the Solicitor General."

U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court Decisions

• Online version (1754-2004) (Library of Congress courtesy of William S. Hein & Co.)
• Online version (1754+)
• Online version (1937-1975)

Supreme Court Nominations

• Supreme Court Nominations, 1968+ (Law Library of Congress)
• Supreme Court Nominations Research Guide (Georgetown Law Library)

The Supreme Court Database provides data about decisions from 1946 to the present

1. identification variables (e.g., citations and docket numbers);
2. background variables (e.g., how the Court took jurisdiction, origin and source of the case, the reason the Court agreed to decide it);
3. chronological variables (e.g., the date of decision, term of Court, natural court);
4. substantive variables (e.g., legal provisions, issues, direction of decision);
5. outcome variables (e.g., disposition of the case, winning party, formal alteration of precedent, declaration of unconstitutionality); and
6. voting and opinion variables (e.g., how the individual justices voted, their opinions and interagreements).

FedWorld / FLITE U.S. Supreme Court Decisions (1937-1975) "contains 7,407 Decisions from volumes 300 through 422 of U.S. Reports... available as ASCII text files that can be read on your browser's screen or saved to your hard drive and accessed using most word processor programs."

Supreme Court Collection (Legal Information Institute) -- an open-access online database of U.S. Supreme Court cases, with fairly complete coverage of all cases from 1990+ and the Historic Decisions collection with "over 600 of the Court's most important decisions from the founding of the court to the present."

U.S. Supreme Court Opinions (FindLaw) -- searchable database of the Supreme Court decisions since 1893