Legal Research

The Supreme Court Database

By Amy Levine

There is a great database for studying the U.S. Supreme Court called The Supreme Court Database.  You can read about how the database has come about and grown over the last 20 years. The database includes details on cases decided by the court including details about what court’s decision was reviewed, how each justice voted, and links to the opinion on Westlaw, Lexis and Findlaw.com.  I ran a sample search to see the results and used Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).  Users can search cases by topic, limiting by “court era”, by the law’s constitutionality, and by looking for individual justices.  There are many fields to use to tailor your search. There is loads of help on the site to help users with searches and using the database to its fullest capability.  Just click under the Documentation heading on the SCDB Web 101 link.  Hat tip to former Ross Blakley Law Library Reference Librarian Diane Murley for sending this information.

Full post as published by Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog on November 23, 2009 (boomark / email).