Legal Research Resources

From Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries. Cases from 1939 to the present are available by citation, name, or through a Google site search. (Scroll down to the link that says Cases 1939-date). Site also includes hundreds of often-cited earlier cases. In addition, cases from 1804 to 1921 are available, and other cases may be obtained from this site with a library card from the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries.

The opinions of the Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court released since 2001 are available through this site. From the Reporter of Decisions of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Appeals Court. Cases can be searched by release date, parties, docket number, or by a search term, but cannot easily be found by citation.

The Web site of the Massachusetts Judicial Branch. This site includes the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the courts, judicial profiles and press releases. There is also a link to the Supreme Judicial Court opinion archive which has recent court opinions.

Access to all Supreme Court cases, Courts of Appeals cases beginning with 1950 and District Court cases beginning with 2004. You can search by citation, party name, or by key words or phrase. You do not need to register.

Links to federal and state court decisions. The archive of Supreme Court decisions contains all decisions since 1990 and about 300 important decisions from before that date. This archive of can be browsed by topic, by author or by party name, or can be searched by key words.

The Oyez Project is a multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since October 1955. In addition, one can search cases, or browse them by court term.

Official website, with dockets, court rules, transcripts, briefs, and oral arguments. There are links to the current year's opinions, and in addition, the opinions from 1991 may be accessed through a file that contains the entire volume of the reporter that contained that opinion.

Official website for federal judiciary, includes links to all federal courts of appeals and district courts.

Searchable database of all federal cases from the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals and state cases beginning with 1997.

Ravel Law is free with a .edu email address. it is a good source of case law for visual learners - the most important cases are larger circles with lines connecting them to smaller circles that denote similar cases.