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How can I find American case law?
The Caselaw Access Project (CAP) maintained by the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab contains the largest free online collection of U.S.
case law, with over 6.5 million court opinions dating back to 1658.
The Library of Congress provides a comprehensive "Guide to Law Online" that includes direct links to the websites of federal and state courts, many of which offer free access to their published decisions.
FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters subsidiary, offers one of the most extensive free databases of U.S.
Supreme Court, federal appellate, and select state court case law decisions.
Justia, a nonprofit legal information portal, provides free access to U.S.
Supreme Court opinions, federal appellate court decisions, and state supreme and appellate court rulings.
The Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts maintains a Federal Court Finder tool that links directly to the websites of individual federal courts, where users can often access recent case law.
Google Scholar allows users to search for and read full-text versions of U.S.
state and federal court opinions, a feature often overlooked compared to the platform's academic paper search capabilities.
CourtListener, a project of the Free Law Project, aggregates case law from federal and state courts, providing a searchable database with automatic alerts for new relevant decisions.
The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation resource from the Library of Congress includes hyperlinked references to selected U.S.
Supreme Court cases that interpret the Constitution.
Many state and local public law libraries offer free access to legal research databases, including citator tools that allow users to validate the current status of court precedents.
The concept of "case law" refers to the body of prior judicial decisions that guide judges in determining how the law should be applied in future cases, also known as the common law system.
The hierarchical nature of the U.S.
court system means that lower-level court decisions may be binding or merely persuasive precedent for higher courts, depending on the jurisdictional relationship.
Comprehensive legal research often requires searching multiple databases, as the coverage and search functionalities can vary significantly between platforms like Westlaw, Lexis+, and Bloomberg Law.
The increasing availability of free online case law resources has not eliminated the need for paid legal research services, which often provide additional tools and features for validating and analyzing precedents.
The passage of the PACER fee reform legislation in 2022 has the potential to significantly improve public access to federal court records, including case law decisions, by eliminating or reducing user fees.
The Free Law Project, a nonprofit organization, advocates for greater equity and transparency in the legal system, including initiatives to open up access to court records and case law data.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transition of many courts to electronic filing and online publication of decisions, further expanding the availability of free, digital case law resources.
The Bluebook, a standardized system for legal citation, plays a crucial role in how case law is referenced and accessed, ensuring consistency across the legal profession.
The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning in legal research has the potential to revolutionize how practitioners and the public navigate and extract insights from the vast body of case law.
The lack of a centralized, comprehensive database for all U.S.
court decisions means that users must often consult multiple sources to ensure they have identified all relevant case law on a given topic.
The importance of case law in the American legal system, as a complement to statutory law, underscores the need for continued efforts to improve public access and understanding of this critical legal resource.
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