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Many courts now post copies of their recent opinions on the court's website, but generally, they are not designed as searchable databases of case law. They are great for locating the text of a known case, but not for finding cases on a specific topic. Google Scholar, in addition to being a great place to search for scholarly articles, has the text of many court opinions. The Google Scholar database includes the following court opinions.
Google Scholar defaults to searching all federal and state courts, but after entering your search, you can narrow your results by jurisdiction and date. |
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The Illinois State Bar Association provides its members with free access to the vLex Fastcase legal research platform. The ISBA vLex Fastcase plan includes.
FindLaw offers a database of case law from the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, as well as several state supreme courts. FindLaw's content includes:
FindLaw has two primary ways to access the collection of case law. Researchers can either (1) run a search for case summaries or (2) select a jurisdiction to browse applicable laws (scroll down to click on a jurisdiction).
Google Scholar does not include a citator like Shepard's or KeyCite that informs you if the case has been overturned. It does include a How Cited feature where you can see all of the cases that cite to the original case. This is a great tool for finding additional cases that are relevant to the issue you are researching.
The How Cited feature displays previews of the language from the citing cases. Under Cited By, the bars next to the case name tell you the depth of treatment of the citing case, but this feature does not tell you whether the discussion is positive or negative.
As a final step of your research plan, it is a good idea to update the authority you are relying on by using a commercial citator like Shepard's or KeyCite.