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Free Legal Research Resources on the Internet

Case Law and the Courts

Courts interpret the law, meaning that they resolve any ambiguity in statutory or regulatory language or they may determine as a threshold issue whether a statute or regulation applies to a particular factual scenario. Courts can also create law in the absence of an applicable statute. The process by which courts create law is called legal precedent, which means that courts must follow the rule set forth by previous decisions of a court of competent jurisdiction. This is known as a “common law” system.

There is a hierarchy of courts. At the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court is the highest court in the land, followed by the Courts of Appeals (also known as Circuit Courts) and then the District Courts.

Each state has its own court system. In Pennsylvania, the highest court is the Supreme Court, the intermediate appellate courts are the Superior Court and the Commonwealth Court, and the trial courts are the Courts of Common Pleas.

Conducting subject-oriented case law searches using free resources can be problematic, both because it is sometimes difficult to determine if the resource that you are searching is comprehensive but also, more importantly, because of the lack of a robust citator such as Shepard's or KeyCite. 

For More Information

Overview

You can find access to free case law on Google Scholar. 

  • To access case law on Google Scholar, first select the "case law" radio button below the main search bar. 
  • Next, select the jurisdictions that you would like to search. 
  • Google Scholar has coverage for the following jurisdictions and time periods: (a) published opinions of US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950; (b) U.S. federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923; and (3) U.S. Supreme Court cases since 1791.
  • Cases in Google Scholar lack the editorial enhancements that you get with databases such as Lexis or Westlaw.
  • Google Scholar has a rudimentary "cited by" feature. However, this tool does not let you easily ascertain how later cases treat your selected case. It also only reflects those cases that are found in the Google Scholar database. Thus, you should still use a more robust citator before relying on a case that you found on Google Scholar.

Parts of a Case Citation in Google Scholar

Clipping from google scholar

As the above illustration shows, Google Scholar provides basic information on other cases that cite to your base case, the gathering up of different versions of the same case that are found in Google Scholar, Bluebook citation information, and the ability to save cases if you have set up an account. 

Google Scholar Case Search Screen

Google Scholar screen shot

You can run a search for a known case citation or you can run a keyword search for a particular topic. As the above illustration shows, you can narrow your search results by court, change the search order to either date or relevancy, and set up alerts. 

Video Tutorial from the Library of Congress

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