Lawyers.Online
No. 3, May 1995
Finding Court Decisions On The Internet
By Robert J. Ambrogi
The Internet is not the place to perform extensive legal research -- at least not yet. But as more courts make their decisions available online, the Internet is becoming an easy and inexpensive way to keep up with current legal developments or quickly obtain important decisions.
As a medium for research, the Internet fails for two reasons. First and foremost, it lacks sufficient data to allow for thorough research. Court decisions available on the Net usually date back only two or three years. Research requiring anything but the most recent law must turn elsewhere.
Second, cases on the Internet are not always well indexed. While some court decisions on the Internet can be searched by key words and even by subject, others require you to know the name or docket number of the case you are looking for.
The usefulness of the Net is bound to grow, as more and more courts put more and more of their decisions online. In all likelihood, it is only a matter of time before the Internet will be a reliable means of performing legal research.
In the meantime, cases on the Internet have value nonetheless. It was not long ago, for instance, that the only way a lawyer could keep current with the U.S. Supreme Court was to take out a pricey subscription to U.S. Law Week and wait for it to arrive in the mail several days after the court had acted. Thanks to the Internet, you can now have syllabi of the court's decisions delivered to you the day they are issued, automatically, via electronic mail. If a particular case is of interest to you, you can then have the entire decision sent to you by e-mail.
What follows, then, is a guide to finding cases on the Internet.
U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1990, a consortium of legal and educational groups formed Project Hermes, an experiment in electronically disseminating opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1992, the court declared the experiment a success, and, the following year, it officially began disseminating its opinions electronically.
Supreme Court decisions are now available via the Internet in a variety of locations and formats. For lawyers with access to the World Wide Web, the best place for finding the court's opinions is the Web page of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. (The Internet address is: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/supct.table.html.) Here can be found all Supreme Court decisions from 1990 to present. Decisions can be searched by key words or by topic. They also are indexed by party name, date and docket number. You can download the decisions in either of two formats, WordPerfect or ASCII text.
The simplest way to get Supreme Court decisions is by electronic mail. If you have any form of e-mail -- whether on a commercial services such as Compuserve or America Online or through some more specialized provider -- you can subscribe to a service that will automatically send you syllabi of court decisions the day they are issued -- at no cost. These are official syllabi prepared by the court's reporter of decisions. If you wish to obtain the full text of a decision, you e-mail back a request and the decision is e-mailed back to you -- again, at no cost.
To subscribe to this e-mail service, send an e-mail message to: listserv@fatty.law.cornell.edu. Your message should read: "subscribe liibulletin name, address, telephone number" (substituting your name, address and phone). To obtain a Supreme Court decision by e-mail, send a message to this address: liideliver@fatty.law.cornell.edu. You must request the case by docket number, so your message should read: "request 93-1883." A single e-mail can request several decisions by listing the docket numbers on separate lines. (Syllabi include the docket numbers.)
Many people do not have access to the World Wide Web, but do belong to on-line services that allow limited Internet access through "File Transfer Protocol" (FTP). FTP allows you to log-in to a remote computer and download files. If you are able to use FTP, you can access Supreme Court decisions at this address: ftp.cwru.edu.
U.S. Circuit Courts
Only two U.S. circuit courts have their opinions directly available, at no cost, on the World Wide Web. Decisions of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for 1994 and 1995 are available on the Web through Villanova University School of Law. Decisions can be searched by key words, party names or docket numbers. Decisions are available in WordPerfect, Word or ASCII formats. The Internet address is: http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Ct/ca03.html.
Decisions of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court since November 1994 are on the Web courtesy of Emory University School of Law. The decisions can be searched by key word, party name, date or docket number. The address is: http://www.law.emory.edu/11circuit/index.html. The decisions are also available at: http://www.mindspring.com/~wmundy/opinions.html.
For a fee, decisions of all the circuit courts since November 1994 are available on the Web through Law Journal Extra, the online service of the National Law Journal. If you access the Law Journal Extra Web page through your own Web browser, the fee is a flat $15 a month. If you access the page through the LJExtra service, you pay $10 a month plus $10 an hour.
An alternative way to access circuit court opinions electronically is through the Appellate Bulletin Board System (ABBS). If you have a computer with a modem, you can dial into any of the circuit courts and obtain slip opinions, case dockets, local court rules, press releases, and other information. As of April 1, the 1st, 4th, 8th and 10th Circuits began charging an access fee of 75 cents a minute. All other circuits are presently free, although most will begin charging access fees sometime this year.
ABBS numbers are:
$ 1st Circuit (opinions and dockets) (617) 223-4640-2.
$ 2nd Circuit (opinions) (212) 385-6003, voice (212) 791-0103.
$ 2nd Circuit (dockets) (212) 385-6004, voice (212) 791-8910.
$ 3rd Circuit (opinions and dockets) (215) 597-1871, voice (215) 597-2995.
$ 4th Circuit (opinions and dockets) (804) 771-2028.
$ 5th Circuit (opinions) (504) 589-6850-2, voice (504) 589-6514.
$ 6th Circuit (opinions and dockets) (513) 684-2842, voice (513) 684-2953.
$ 7th Circuit (opinions and dockets) (312) 408-5176, voice (312) 435-5850.
$ 8th Circuit (opinions) (314) 539-3576.
$ 9th Circuit (opinions) (415) 744-9020, voice (415) 744-9800.
$ 9th Circuit (dockets) (415) 744-9001, voice (415) 744-9800.
$ 10th Circuit (opinions and dockets) (303) 844-5682.
$ D.C. Circuit (opinions) (202) 273-0269, voice (202) 273-0315.
$ D.C. Circuit (opinions) (202) 219-9589, voice (202) 273-0315.
$ Federal Circuit (opinions) (202) 786-6584, voice (202) 633-6550.
$ Federal Circuit (opinions) (202) 633-9608, voice (202) 633-6550.
For those circuits that charge an access fee, you must first call and register, (800) 676-6856. When you dial into those that are free, you will be asked for a password or identification; respond by typing "bbs."
U.S. District And Bankruptcy Courts
So far, no U.S. district or bankruptcy court opinions are available via the Internet. The federal judiciary's PACER system (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) allows anyone with a computer and modem to dial in to a district or bankruptcy court computer and obtain case information and court dockets. Although this service had been free, most courts started this year charging an access fee of 75 cents a minute. To use the service, you must first register by calling (800) 676-6856.
A complete list of the PACER telephone numbers for every U.S. district and bankruptcy court can be found on the U.S. courts' home page on the Web. Its Internet address is: http://www.uscourts.gov.
State Courts
Decisions of three state courts are available at no cost on the World Wide Web, and a handful of other states' decisions are available on the Web through Law Journal Extra for a fee. Several other states' decisions are expected to appear on the Web soon.
Decisions of the New York Court of Appeals from January 1993 to the present are available on the Web at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/ny/ctap/overview.html. The decisions can be searched by key word and are indexed by topic, date and parties.
Decisions of the Alaska Supreme Court and Alaska Court of Appeals (criminal appeals only) are now being posted on the Web. Only decisions after Feb. 10, 1995, are available. The address for the Supreme Court: http://www.touchngo.com/sp/sp.html. For Court of Appeals' opinions, the address is: http://www.touchngo.com/ap/ap.html.
North Carolina opinions are available via Gopher, which in Internet lingo is not an animal but a way of organizing and finding information. The address is: gopher://sunsite.unc.edu:70/7waissrc:/ref.d/.
Indiana courts have a home page on the Web, but no opinions, only a notice promising that the opinions are "coming soon." The address is: http://www.law.indiana.edu/law/incourts.html.
Law Journal Extra, which, as discussed above, charges an access fee, offers a comprehensive collection of recent New York cases, including not only the Court of Appeals, but also the Appellate Division, Court of Claims, Supreme Court, Surrogate's Court, Family Court, Civil Court and Criminal Court.
LJExtra also has recent supreme and appeals court opinions from California, Florida, Illinois and Virginia and supreme court opinions from Ohio and Michigan. All of these can be found at LJExtra's home page, but you will need an account and a password to get in. The home page is: http://www.ljextra.com. For account information, call (800) 90EXTRA.
Robert J. Ambrogi is a lawyer and arbitrator and the former editor of Lawyers Weekly USA and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. He can be reached via e-mail at lawline@ix.netcom.com or by phone at (508) 546-7898.