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Strategies for Finding Court Opinions

Reported opinions are generally easy to locate: locate the citation and retrieve the opinion from the appropriate reporter. But what about an unreported decision, often issued by trial level courts, or opinions issued very recently, possibly even yesterday? Some of these opinions may be available if you try the following resources:

Westlaw

• The DCTU database contains select unreported cases from United States District Courts and certain other federal courts from 1945 to present.
  • Note: Unreported cases included on Westlaw may be different from those included on LexisNexis.
• Recent opinions from courts are available in the database for the particular court. See the "I" icon for information about how often the database is updated.

LexisNexis

• The unreported cases on LexisNexis are not in a separate file. Case files may be selected from the main Legal tab, or by clicking down through the levels from this main tab. Or, using the "Find a Source" tab, a researcher can enter the "short name" of the file, such as GENFED; NEWER for combined federal court cases from 1945 to present, or GENFED;OLDER for those cases from 1792 through 1944.
  • Note: Unreported cases included on LexisNexis may be different from those included on Westlaw.
• Recent opinions form courts are available in the database for that particular court. See the "I" icon for information about how often the database is updated.

Bureau of National Affairs (BNA)

• BNA publications (e.g., Criminal Law Reporter, the Daily Labor Report, or United States Law Week) provide links to court decisions and other documents. These publications are excellent sources for recent court opinions which may not be available in other sources.

Paper at Pappas

• US Supreme Court
  • The Unpublished Opinions of Mr. Justice Brandies; The Supreme Court at Work, Law Annex KF213.B7 B53 1957.
  • The Unpublished Opinions of the Warren Court, Law Annex KF101.8 .U66 1985.
  • The Unpublished Opinions of the Burger Court, Law Annex KF101.8 .U62 1988.
  • The Unpublished Opinions of the Rehnquist Court, Law Annex KF101.8 .S39 1996.

The court's web site

• United States Supreme Court: Opinions, the official Court web site, includes opinions which are very recent, in official pagination (.pdf) format, often the same day the opinion is issued.
• The Federal Judiciary includes links to federal court web sites.
• State and Local Government on the Net is a well organized collection of links to state government sites, including court web pages.
• National Center for State Courts provides links to state, federal and international court web sites.
  

Search the Internet

• Use a search engine such as Google. Formulate the search including as much information as you have: the case name, docket number, judge's name, etc. Please note that it can take up to two weeks for a search engine to index and locate opinions after the opinions are available on the Internet; therefore, for very recent opinions, it is advisable to visit the court's web site and look for recent opinions.
• For recently decided, high-profile cases, it may be useful to check the web sites of major newspapers or other media organizations in the geographical area of the court or controversy. Media web sites frequently provide links to the text of recent court rulings from across the country.

Page maintained by David Bachman
Last updated: February 2009