CJS 282 Haywood (Hamilton): Finding Court Cases

Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni is the best place to find cases and information about cases.

To search for the history of your case:

• Click on "Cases" in the middle of the page.
• Then click on "State Cases" and then type in the name of the state and select the box that appears with the state name.
• Then type in the name of your case.

To find information about your case:

• Click on "Cases" in the middle of the page.
• Then click on "Federal Cases" and type the name of your case in the box.

To find other cases about the subject of your case:

• Click on "Cases" in the middle of the screen.
• Then choose either "Federal Cases" or "State Cases" depending on what type of cases you would like to review. If you choose "State Cases", you will need to indicate the state you wish to search as indicated above.
• Type the subject of your case in the box.

Supreme Court Yearbook 

• The Supreme Court Yearbook has provided valuable in-depth coverage and analysis of every decision from the nation's highest court since the 1989-1990 term. Nineteen years of coverage are now accessible in a powerful, fully searchable online edition that lets users explore expert and timely Supreme Court coverage swiftly and comprehensively.
• Have to use "v." (no quotation marks)
• Can browse by year or topic.
• Can search for case by name.
• Can search by topic.
• Click "Cite Now!" on the left to get the citation in APA style.

Supreme Court Docket Search

• The Supreme Court’s docket system contains information about cases, both pending and decided, that have been filed at the Court. The docket provided here contains complete information regarding the status of cases filed since the beginning of the 2001 Term.

Caselaw Access Project (CAP)
For more than six years a team at Harvard University Law School’s Library Innovation Lab has been busy working on the Caselaw Access Project (CAP), an initiative to digitize a collection of 360 years worth of United States court cases dating from 1658 to 2018. The published CAP corpus comprises 6.4 million unique cases and over 40 million pages of U.S. federal, state, and territorial case law documents from the Law School library.

• Scroll down the page a bit to this section:

• Click on the box that says "Search" to search for your case and for the topic of your case. When you search by your case name, you will see other cases that reference your case.
• A "Trends" search shows you the use of terms over time.
  • Search by the topic of your case to see how many cases use that term over a period of time. The default time frame is 1800-2018, but you can adjust that to whatever time frame you would like.
  • To compare two terms, separate them by a comma in the search box.

Supreme Court Database
This database will give you the specifics about your case, such as, Docket Number, Citations, Decision Type, Lower Court Details, and Vote Details.
Go to the Analysis tab and search by your case name in the box in the right-hand column.

A citation to a court case consists of an abbreviation indicating a particular court reported plus number indicating the volume and page number:

94 S Ct. 1009     Volume 94 of Supreme Court Reporter, page 1009

113 N.E.2d 321  Volume 113 of Northeastern Reporter 2d series, page 321

Legal Research: How to Find and Understand the Law in Hamilton Library KF240 .E35 2015

Legal Research in a Nutshell in King Library KF240 .O367 2018 (you can request this item to be sent to Hamilton so you can pick it up there)