Pathfinder
Research Starting Points
Supreme Court Decisions
1. For an overview with brief information on many of the decisions, use quick reference sources such as almanacs and encyclopedias. Try searching under "Supreme Court Decisions" as well as the individual decisions.
2. In Newman Library Collection:
Great American Court Cases by Mark Mikula and L. Mpho Mabunda. Detroit: Gale, 1999.
REF KF 385 .A4 G68 1999 volumes 1-4
Great American Trials: From Salem Witchcraft to Rodney King ed. by Edward W. Knappman.
Detroit: Gale, 1994.
Ref KF 220 G74 1994
May It Please the Court: The Most Significant Oral Arguments Made Before the Supreme Court since 1955. ed. by Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton. New York: New Press, 1993.
KF 4748 .M39 1993
May It Please the Court: the First Amendment. ed. by Peter Irons. New York: New Press, 1997.
KF 4770 .M35 1997
Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States ed. by K. Hall. England: Oxford U.Press, 1992.
REF KF 8742 .A35 O93 1992
Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions. ed. by Kermit Hall. New York: Oxford U Press, 1999.
REF KF 4548 .O97 1999.
Roe v. Wade: Abortion and the Supreme Court by Deborah S. Romaine. San Diego: Lucent, 1998.
KF 228 .R59 R66 1998
The Rosenberg Espionage Case by Francis Moss. San Diego: Lucent, 2000.
KF 224 .C355 T74 2001
Sensational Trials of the 20th Century by Betsy Harvey Kraft. New York: Scholastic, 1998.
KF 220 .K73 1998
Seven Famous Trials in History by Robin McKown. New York: Vanguard Press, 1963.*-*
KA 651 .M3
The Trial of Gangster Al Capone: a Headline Court Case by Karen L. Trespacz. NJ: Enslow, 2001.
KF 224 .C355 T74 2001
3. Other titles to look for, BPL: [Look in the same library classification category, ie, KF 220.]
Cases in Constitutional Law by Robert Cushman. 8th ed., Prentice Hall, 1994.
Courtroom Drama. 3 vols. Gale 1997.
Guide to the U. S. Supreme Court, 3rd ed. 2 vols. Congressional Quarterly.
Great Trials in American History: Civil War to Present 1985.
NL TL CA664G
Historic U.S. Court Cases, 1690-1990:An Encyclopedia.
Ref KF 385 A4 J64 1992
4. World Wide Web sources:
Supreme Court of the United States, home page
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/
Supreme Court Decisions
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/
Legal Information Institute , Cornell Law School
Supreme Court Collection http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/
This site by the Cornell Law School features a collection of nearly all Supreme Court opinions issued since May of 1990, as well as a current schedule, a gallery of justices, and a glossary.
Decisions, 1937-1975
www.fedworld.gov/supcourt/index.htm
www.fedworld.gov/supcourt/fsearch.htm
Fedworld / FLITE U.S. Supreme Court decision Full text search
FindLaw.com
http://www.findlaw.com/
FindLaw is the highest-trafficked legal web site, providing the most comprehensive set of legal resources on the Internet for legal professionals, businesses, students and individuals. These resources include Web search utilities, cases and codes, legal news, an online career center, and community-oriented tools, such as a secure document management utility, mailing lists, message boards and free e-mail.
Supreme Court decisions since 1893
www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html
FindLaw's searchable database of (U.S. Supreme Court Decisions: U.S. Reports 150-, 1893-). Browsable by year and US Reports volume number and searchable by citation, case title and full text. This is a free service that will remain free.
Guide to Law Online
http://www.loc.gov/law/guide/
The Guide to Law Online, prepared by the U.S. Law Library of Congress Public Services Division, is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online. It includes selected links to useful and reliable sites for legal information.
The Oyez Project: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia Database
http://www.oyez.org/podcast/
Listen / view oral arguments of cases
http://www.oyez.org
Encyclopedia of U.S. Supreme Court history. Search the list of Supreme Court justices and their biographies, look for specific court cases, take the Virtual Tour of the Supreme Court building .
On the Docket, Supreme Court News, Upcoming cases
http://docket.medill.northwestern.edu/
Famous Trials
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm
Read all about the Scopes Trial, the My Lai court martial, the Rosenbergs,
Leopold and Loeb. "20th Century" is a misnomer, because you can also read here about the Salem Witchcraft trials, the Andrew Johnson impeachment and the Amistad Trials of 1839-40. Constructed by a law professor, this site is scrupulous in its presentation of background material (biographies of major participants, texts of relevant laws, etc.) and documentary sources (partial trial transcripts, decisions, appellate decisions, etc.) EXCELLENT RESOURCE
Legal Terminology-dictionary
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/dictionary.htm
JURIST's browsable dictionary of basic U.S. legal terminology focuses on legal procedure. For more specific queries, search the Law.com dictionary: See also videos in legal news: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/monitor/
5. Try out various subject headings and key words: Trials - United States; Supreme Court; Justice Department;
Law
• WWW Virtual Library-Law: Links to on-line resources, maintained at Indiana University
• Thomas: U.S. Congress' legislative information
• Cornell Legal Information Institute: Access to on-line U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1990, and many earlier historic decisions.
• Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy: includes the Federal Court Locator (linking to the home pages for the Federal Judiciary on the Internet), the State Court Locator (linking to the home pages for State Judiciaries on the Internet), and the FLITE Database Archive, with historic U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1937 to 1975.
• Oyez: A Supreme Court WWW Resource: Information about major constitutional cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, including audio recordings of the Court's proceedings.
• American Civil Liberties Union: Extensive resources on recent cases on a wide variety of topics, including reproductive freedom, immigration rights, affirmative action, and freedom of expression
• LawGuru.com: More than 160 law-related search tools on the Internet.
• FindLaw: Comprehensive links to Internet Legal Resources
Thanks to http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/452_w1.html, California State University, Long Beach. 5/5/08.
WEB SITES
THE SUPREME COURT
www.pbs.org/supremecourt
The History of the Supreme Court
www.historyofsupremecourt.org/home.htm
Justia: U.S. Supreme Court Center
supreme.justia.com
Landmark Supreme Court Cases
www.landmarkcases.org
Legal Information Institute (Cornell University)
www.law.cornell.edu/supct/index.html
Supreme Court of the United States
www.supremecourtus.gov/index.html