OpenJurist

OpenJurist is a new collaborative initiative to provide a

resource for access to the case law of the United States. Our organization believes that because the laws of the land are in the public domain, they should be accessible by the public without restriction and especially without charge. Our collection includes approximately 647,000 opinions and other transactions from the United States Supreme Court, beginning with the first session in 1790; and Lower Federal Courts, as published in the Federal Reporter beginning in 1880.

Users may browse or search the United States Code, 647,000 opinions from the United States Supreme Court, and opinions from the lower federal courts, particularly the United States Court of Appeals, as published in the First, Second, and Third series of the Federal Reporter.

Users may also become Facebook Fans of OpenJurist, vote in daily pole, subscribe via RSS feed, and experiment with the new OpenJurist browser Add-on. Check it out!

New On LLRX - Google Scholar For Legal Materials

We already blogged about the Google Scholar newest edition - the ability to search for legal decisions and related legal materials, such are legal periodicals. LLRX.com added a review of the Google Scholar: A New Way to Search for Cases and Related Legal Publications, by Courtney Minick and David Tsai. Check it out!

Google Scholar Offers Case Law

It has been talked about, written about on listservs, blogged about, and twittered since the word got out. Google Scholar now offers full text search of legal opinions and journals. Users can perform Google Advanced Search allowing full text searching with optional limits by federal and state jurisdictions intending to provide access to the governing laws of the country. Most opinions display pagination, which is very nice. Google also included a tab "How Cited" that displays subsequent judicial decisions citing the original opinion. Not quite Shepard's, but it can be found very helpful. Judicial opinions are full of citations to other cases and Google hyperlinked all of those that are available at Google, just for our convenience. Happy Searching!

CASEMAKERDigest

CASEMAKERDigest is a product of Casemaker. It is advertised as a tool that helps to stay current. It provides a first look at the most recent decisions published by the court. It currently covers federal courts only but it is expected to eventually cover all 50 states.

All important cases are summarized in one convenient location for a use within days of their publication.

Participants can sign up for a 30 day free trial during which the creators ask the participants to share their feedback and suggestions. After the trial runs out, the subscription is available for $39.95 a year.

You can also read about it at Robert Ambrogi's LawSites.

Free Case Law From U.S. Supreme Court?

Via Robert Ambrogi's Law Sites, let's look at the history of U.S. Supreme Court Case reporting. As mentioned on Ambrogi's blog in a post titled Free Case Law - and a history lesson, many websites offering free case law date it back to 1754, which is even before the existence of the actual U.S. Supreme Court itself.

Ambrogi writes,

Law.com this week published my article, Get Your Free Case Law on the Web. No sooner did it appear than I received an e-mail from a reader questioning how several of the sites discussed in the article could claim to have U.S. Supreme Court cases from before there was a Supreme Court. In fact, they claimed to have Supreme Court cases dating back to 1754 -- even before the American Revolution.

And the answer is ... courtesy of Wikipedia.

None of the decisions appearing in the first volume and most of the second volume of United States Reports are actually decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania courts, dating from the colonial period and the first decade after Independence. Alexander Dallas, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania lawyer and journalist, had been in the business of reporting these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling his case reports in a bound volume, which he called “Reports of cases ruled and adjudged in the courts of Pennsylvania, before and since the Revolution”. This would come to be known as the first volume of "Dallas Reports."

Take a look at the entire post; worth while reading.