Spotlight
New: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978
We are pleased to introduce our latest major digital library addition, Thomson Gale's U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978. Over 350,000 briefs and records from over 150,000 cases are available in this fast, comprehensive and invaluable research tool.
Contents
Containing nearly 11 million pages of records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978, this digital library is an essential research source for American legal history. The contents of Supreme Court Records and Briefs provides legal researchers, students and historians with essential primary source material on the major topics in American history and the U.S. judicial system.
This collection covers the final years of the court's fourth chief justice, John Marshall, through the first 10 years of the court's 15th justice, Warren Earl Burger. All cases, major or minor, cert granted or denied, are included in the digital library.
Famous cases and topics are at your fingertips. From the briefs and transcripts in Plessy v. Ferguson to the famous "Brandeis Brief" in Muller v. Oregon to the many briefs in Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona, Roe v. Wade, U.S. v. Nixon, and all other groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Every page is a scanned, hi-res image from the original document, complete with clerk stamps. No need to go to our microfilm collection for a citechecker-friendly citation. Full citations for each document are provided, including citations, years, docket numbers and related case documents.
Each page may be resized for easy reading, and rotated when necessary (for example, when an included map or image was presented landscape). Individual pages may be printed via your browser or as a PDF, and 50 pages at a time may be printed as PDFs.
Supreme Court Records and Briefs is quickly and powerfully search. Basic search allows for quick searches by full text, case names, authors (including counsel and organizations), or keywords (combined author and case name searches).
The advanced search provides the ability to combine search types (author and full-text query, for example), limit by date, docket number, document type (amicus brief, appellant's appendix, etc.), and whether the case was heard or not. Advanced search also has a "search by unique identifier" function, allowing search by U.S. Reports, Supreme Court Reporter or Lawyers' Edition citation. Browsing by author or case name is also supported.
One of the most useful search tools is the ability to pull all case documents for any given document. For example, if your search for New York Times cases involving the Pentagon pulls up this page from one brief, simply click on the All Case Documents link to pull all briefs and records from the famous New York Times v. U.S. cases.
There are a wide variety of types and numbers of documents that any single case file may contain. Some cases consist of a few documents - one or two pages in length - others may include dozens of documents, especially the ones actually heard by the court.
The types of records contained include:
- Appellant's Briefs
- Appellee's Briefs
- Appendices
- Applications for Review
- Applications for Writ
- Briefs for the U.S.
- Briefs in Opposition
- Briefs of Real Party
- Intervener's Briefs
- Joint Appendices
- Jurisdictional Statements
- Letter Briefs
- Opposition for Review
- Oral Transcripts
- Petitions
- Petitions for Rehearing
- Petitioner's Briefs
- Petitions for Writ of Certiorari
- Relator's Briefs
- Supplements to Petition
A link to U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs may always be found on our Databases & Indexes page. As always, be sure to contact a reference librarian for questions regarding this digital library or with any of our print or online offerings.
