Guiding lawyers along the information superhighway.
A Monthly Newsletter For Legal Professionals Utilizing the Internet
A Guide To Courts On The Internet
____________________
By Robert J. Ambrogi
____________________
The Internet is not a substitute for the law library -- at least not yet.
But as more courts make their decisions available online, the Internet is
becoming an easy and inexpensive way to keep up with current legal developments
or quickly obtain important decisions.
What follows, then, is a guide to finding cases on the Internet.
U.S. Supreme Court
In 1990, a consortium of legal and educational groups formed Project Hermes,
an experiment in electronically disseminating opinions of the U.S. Supreme
Court. In 1992, the court declared the experiment a success, and, the following
year, it officially began disseminating its opinions electronically.
For lawyers with access to the World Wide Web, the best place for finding
the court's opinions is the Web site of the Legal Information Institute at
Cornell Law School, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/supct.table.html.
Here can be found all Supreme Court decisions from 1990 to the present.
Decisions can be searched by key words or by topic. They also are indexed by
party name, date and docket number. You can read the decisions online or
download them in either WordPerfect or ASCII format.
The simplest way to get Supreme Court decisions is by electronic mail. If
you have any form of e-mail -- whether on a commercial services such as
Compuserve or America Online or through an Internet-access provider -- you can
subscribe to a service that will automatically send you syllabi of court
decisions the day they are issued -- at no cost. These are official syllabi
prepared by the court's reporter of decisions. If you wish to obtain the full
text of a decision, you e-mail back a request and the decision is e-mailed back
to you -- again, at no cost.
To subscribe to this e-mail service, send an e-mail message to:
listserv@fatty.law.cornell.edu. Your message should read: "subscribe
liibulletin name, address, telephone number" (substituting your name,
address and phone). To obtain a Supreme Court decision by e-mail, send a message
to this address: liideliver@fatty.law.cornell.edu. You must request the case by
docket number, so your message should read: "request 93-1883." A
single e- mail can request several decisions by listing the docket numbers on
separate lines. (Syllabi include the docket numbers.)
Law Group Network
The Law Group Network http://www.llr.com, offers the most
comprehensive selection of federal and state courts in a single Internet site.
It includes cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, all federal appeals courts, 40
state courts and the District of Columbia.
Another site that maintains all the federal appeals courts in a single site
is Law Journal EXTRA!, http://www.ljx.com.
U.S. Circuit Courts
Each of the federal appeals courts has its own site on the Web.
- 1st U.S. Circuit, from Emory School of Law. http://www.law.emory.edu/1circuit.
- 2nd U.S. Circuit, from the Touro Law Center at Pace University School of
Law, http://www.law.pace.edu/legal/us-legal/judiciary/second-circuit.html.
- 3rd U.S. Circuit, since 1994, through Villanova University School of Law.
http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Ct/ca03.html.
- 4th U.S. Circuit, since Jan. 1, 1995, from the Hugh F. MacMillan Law
Library of Emory School of Law. http://www.law.emory.edu/4circuit.
- 5th U.S. Circuit, since 1992, from Tarlton Law Library of the University
of Texas. http://www.law.utexas.edu/us5th/us5th.html.
- 6th U.S. Circuit, since January 1995, from Emory School of Law. http://www.law.emory.edu/6circuit
http://www.law.emory.edu/6circuit.
- 7th U.S. Circuit, from Emory. http://www.law.emory.edu/7circuit.
- 9th U.S. Circuit, from June 1995, from Villanova. http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-
Ct/ca09.html.
- 10th U.S. Circuit, since August 1995, from Emory. http://www.law.emory.edu/10circuit.
- 11th U.S. Circuit, since November 1994, through Emory.
http://www.law.emory.edu/11circuit/index.html.
U.S. District And Bankruptcy Courts
With a couple of exceptions, opinions of U.S. district and bankruptcy
courts are not available via the Internet. The federal judiciary's PACER
system (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) allows anyone with a
computer and modem to dial in to a district or bankruptcy court computer and
obtain case information and court dockets. Most courts charge an access fee
of 75 cents a minute. A complete list of PACER telephone numbers for U.S.
district and bankruptcy courts can be found on the Internet at: http://www.uscourts.gov.
Opinions of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
Mississippi since October 1994 are being published on the Web by the
University of Mississippi School of Law Library, in cooperation with the
court. They can be found at: http://sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/~llibcoll/ndms.
In Massachusetts, all published decisions of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court from
Jan. 1, 1995, to the present are available from "The Massachusetts
Bankruptcy Page," http://prospex.com/craig-macauley/bankruptcy.html. This
site, courtesy of the Boston law firm Craig & Macauley, contains a
searchable database of the decisions.
The American Bankruptcy Institute also maintains an extensive library of
bankruptcy court decisions at its Web site, http://www.abiworld.org. Unfortunately, they are indexed only by name and date, there is no search
engine, and there is no clear guide to the scope of the cases archived there.
State Courts
- Alabama Supreme Court and Courts of Civil and Criminal Appeals,
telnet://alalinc.net.
- Alaska Supreme Court, from 1991. http://www.touchngo.com/sp/sp.html.
- Alaska Court of Appeals, http://www.touchngo.com/ap/ap.html.
- Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two (a 30-day archive),
http://www.state.az.us/appeals.
- Arkansas Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, 1996,
http://www.state.ar.us/supremecourt.
- California Supreme Court and Court of Appeals:
http://www.ljx.com/public/daily/calcourt.html.
- Florida Supreme Court, http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~lawinfo/flsupct.
- Florida Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, recent decisions,
http://www.ljx.com/public/daily/flacourt.html.
- Idaho Supreme Court, http://www.state.id.us/judicial/scopins.html.
- Idaho court of appeals, http://www.state.id.us/judicial/caopins.html.
- Indiana Supreme Court and Court of Appeals,
http://www.law.indiana.edu/law/incourts/incourts.html.
- Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court,
http://www.lweekly.com/wm/lw/page/lw/opin.
- Another Massachusetts site, http://www.socialaw.com.
- Michigan Court of Appeals, recent decisions,
http://www.ljx.com/public/daily/mccourt.html.
- Minnesota Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, http://www.courts.state.mn.us.
- Mississippi Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, http://www.mslawyer.com/mssc
- New Hampshire Supreme Court, slip opinions since December 1995,
http://www.state.nh.us/courts/supreme.htm.
- New York Court of Appeals, from January 1993,
http://www.law.cornell.edu/ny/ctap/overview.html.
- New York Court of Appeals, synopses of decisions by e-mail. To subscribe,
send a message to: listserv@lii.law.cornell.edu. The message should read: "subscribe
liibulletin-ny <Your Name>."
- New York lower court decisions. Various recent decisions are available
through Law Journal EXTRA!, http://www.ljx.com.
- North Carolina Supreme Court, http://www.nando.net/insider/supreme/supco.html.
- North Carolina Supreme Court, another site,
gopher://sunsite.unc.edu:70/7waissrc:/ref.d/.
- North Carolina Court of Appeals,
http://www.nando.net/insider/appeals/appeals.html.
- Ohio Supreme Court, http://winslo.ohio.gov/stgvjud.html.
- Ohio Court of Appeals, 8th district, http://winslo.ohio.gov/stgvjud.html.
- Oregon Supreme Court, http://www.willamette.edu/~ccrowell/osct/osct.htm.
- Oklahoma Supreme court and Court of Appeals, recent decisions,
http://www.uoknor.edu/okgov.
- Tennessee Appellate Courts, opinions beginning late 1995,
http://www.tsc.state.tn.us/intertst.htm.
- Vermont Supreme Court, gopher://dol.state.vt.us/.
- Virginia Supreme Court, recent opinions only,
http://www.vacle.org/opinions/caselist.htm.
- Washington Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, opinions since March 1,
1996, http://www.wa.gov/courts.
- Wisconsin Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, http://www.wisbar.org.
- Wyoming Supreme Court, selected decisions, http://www.state.wy.us.
Coming Soon
Three Internet sites promise that court opinions are "coming soon."
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