Free Websites for Legal Research: Cases & Dockets

AnyLaw.com is a new free legal research database that provides public access to U.S. case law (archival, present, and newly released slip opinions) both at the state and federal level

(1950-present) High court and appellate court cases. Coverage for unreported cases may vary.Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read published opinions of US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791. In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available.

Law Library of Congress Research Guide

Opinions from 2004 through present.

AI Law Librarian blog 11/7/23

1882 to present. Browse or search by Federal Reporter citation

Only published opinions issued since January 1, 2000 and unpublished opinions issued since October 1, 2004 appear on this system.

Back to1997.

US Supreme Court decides that Georgia cannot hold the copyright to its annotated code. 4/27/20

(pre-dating regular release of Court decisions to the Internet)

all decisions from 1791.

National Archives and Records Administration, 5/50/23

From Washington University School of Law. Provides links for Supreme Court opinions from 1953-2008. Has an easy pulldown menu and check box search capability to find cases on particular topics. Useful for scholarly and empirical research on the Supreme Court

from 2000. Includes opinions, docket and oral argument archive.

RStreet.org has created a freely available, searchable database that contains the text of every Supreme Court confirmation hearing for which Senate Judiciary Committee transcripts are available (beginning in 1971 with hearings for Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist and concluding with Neil Gorsuch’s 2017 hearing).

This collection consists of blogs, academic articles, Congressional press releases, and media articles related to the nominations of John Roberts, Harriet Miers, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan for the United States Supreme Court. This content covers the years 2005, 2006, 2009, and 2010.

Addresses and phone numbers for the 88 Ohio County Clerks of Court.

Northeast Ohio Courts, links to docket searches

Accessible by creating an individual account. Access to case information costs $0.10 per page. The cost to access a single document is capped at $3.00. The cap does not apply to name searches, reports that are not case-specific, and transcripts of federal court proceedings. If your usage does not exceed $30 in a quarter, fees are waived.

PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY
APPROVAL OF CLASS SETTLEMENT

Provides public records searching and contact information for courts, and law enforcement all over the country.

Case mentioned above saying that PACER charges more in fees than it costs to operate, in violation of the statute that created it.

Dockets and Recent Trial Court Decisions for Franklin County Common Pleas Court, and the 10th District Court of Appeals.

(1950-) Supreme Court and appellate court cases. Ohio unreported coverage appears to start in 2004.

Opinions from Ohio Supreme and Appellate courts issued since 1992. Full text searchable.

Common pleas and appellate.

Court Listener includes many downloaded oral arguments from many jurisdictions on an ongoing basis.

Coverage is 2004 on. Many field searches available including party name, citation and nature of suit. Authenticated with digital signatures.

Reported decisions 1923-present, some recent unreported.

Opinions are free.

from the University of Virginia Library. Attempts to link to all federal agency decisions that are available on the internet.

Since 2000, CIA has installed and maintained an electronic full-text searchable system named CREST (the CIA Records Search Tool), at NARA II in College Park, Maryland. The CREST system is the publicly accessible repository of the subset of CIA records reviewed under the 25-year program in electronic format In January 2017, the CIA published the records of the CREST collection online.

Library of Congress

Food Industry Counsel is proud to offer the Food Recall Reporter, the only searchable food recall database that allows users to conduct a food recall search for FDA and USDA food product recalls.

The Internal Revenue Bulletin (IRB) is the authoritative instrument for announcing official rulings and procedures of the IRS and for publishing Treasury Decisions, Executive Orders, Tax Conventions, legislation, court decisions, Revenue Rulings, and other items of general interest.

FOIA Libraries are the repositories for many documents released under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), i.e., “responsive documents,” by federal agencies and their sub agencies. There are over 240 FOIA Libraries.

From the Office of Legal Counsel of the US Justice Department. Hosted at the website of Columbia Univ.

Oversight.gov is a publicly accessible, searchable website containing the latest public reports from contributing Federal Inspectors General who are members of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE).

FDA website

From the University of Washington.

where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

Library of Congress