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Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.
We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the "How Cited" link next to the case title. See, for example, the frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a police officer).
"As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the
United States is a common law country," said the blog. "That means
when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish
precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar
cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build,
refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. "For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or
even read these landmark opinions. We think that's a problem: laws
that you don't know about, you can't follow – or make effective
arguments to change. Starting today, we're enabling people
everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S.
federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts," said
Acharya.
Acharya said that the research tool was design to help people
who were not familiar with the structure of legal information to
access it in an understandable way.
"We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the
average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that
govern us all," he said. "To understand how an opinion has
influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related
cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search
result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to
the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual
cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in
articles from law journals."
Acharya acknowledged the work of other people who have worked to
make legal information and research available to people on a cheap
or free basis. Amongst those named is Joe Uri of BAILII, the
British And Irish Legal Information Institute. It publishes UK and
Ireland court rulings for free.
"We felt that if any judgments should be freed so that the
public can have access to them it should be this core of judgments,
which basically make up the judgment side of the common law
system," he said. "It seems natural that a member of the public
should be able to find out what that reasoning is, it shouldn't be
cloaked in secrecy."
"As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how
readable and accessible these opinions are. Court opinions don't
just describe a decision but also present the reasons that support
the decision. In doing so, they explain the intricacies of law in
the context of real-life situations," he said.