Free Case Law A Power Point Presentation

By Dittakavi Rao

Google Scholar - Introduction

• Documents of Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) specialized database includes: “articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other websites.”

• Provides free full-text case law from federal and state courts.

• Started in November 2009.• Cases taken from court websites and other sources such

as Cornell (www.law.cornell.edu), Justia (www.justia.com) and public.resource.org.

Google Scholar – Coverage

• Coverage of case law includes:– U.S. Supreme Court cases from 1791– Federal Appellate (Circuit & District), Tax &

Bankruptcy Court cases from 1923– State Appellate and Supreme Court cases from

1950

Google Scholar - Search

• General query box– Click radio button “Legal opinions and journals”

• Advanced Scholar Search– Provides several options

• Jurisdiction (You have to select only ONE from the following)– All legal opinions and journals– Federal cases (you cannot select individual court)– Individual state(s) (you cannot select individual court)

http://scholar.google.com

Google Scholar – Advanced Scholar Search

• Advanced Scholar Search is different than the advanced search feature of general Google.

• Offers similar Boolean search features in the ‘Find articles’ section: all of the words; exact phrase; at least one of the words; without the words; anywhere in the article/in the title of the article

• Also provides options for ‘author’; ‘publication’; ‘date’ and ‘collections.’ Two options are in the collections: In all subject areas or specific subject.

You cannot select all three options. However, you may select multiple states.

Google Scholar – Segment Search

• Citation – Does not recognize punctuation. Follow Blue Book

citation format. e.g. “391 a 2d 1020”• Case name

– Use Advanced Scholar Search and use ‘exact phrase option and select ‘in the title of the article’ option. E.g. “Azzarello v Black Bros” (Do not use ‘versus’ or v with period (v.) between the names.

Google Scholar – Segment Search

• Judge– Use exact phrase – put the name in quotes from the

general query box. e.g. “judge Flaherty”– You can also restrict the results by selecting a

jurisdiction and time (since year) specification. e.g. since 1998

• Topic search– By default Google adds AND connector in between the

words that amounts to more results. Use quotes if you know the words are in sequence. e.g “grandparents visitation rights”.

Citation in quotes brings 449 results, without quote

brings 15,600 results.

When you select ‘Pennsylvania cases’ brings 114 results

To select state jurisdictions, click on ‘Advanced Scholar

Search’ option next to ‘Search’ button

Name in quotes brings 307 results and

without quotes brings 460

results

Number of results vary upon

selection of a year under “anytime”

menu (1991-2010)

Only 21 results came (since 2008) where Azzarello mentioned. Azzarello case did not

appear since the case published in 1978.

Google Scholar – Results Page

• Results are shown in order of relevance• Next to each result you will see ‘ How cited’ link• Bottom of the search result you may see links

such as ‘Cited by’, ‘Related articles’, ‘All versions’, ‘BL Direct’ depending on the result.

• ‘BL Direct’ link provides documents from British Library for purchase. ‘All versions’ link provides the same document from different participating sources.

MENU OPTIONS FROM THE RESULTS PAGE

• Legal Opinions and journals– Articles and patents

• Articles excluding patents

– Legal opinions and journals• Federal Cases• Pennsylvania

– Advanced search

• Anytime– Drop menu brings the list of the years (since 1991 – 2010 OR anytime options)

• Include citations– ‘Include citations’ option provides only citation information not full text . ‘at least summaries’ option removes

the citations that are not hyperlinked nor contains full text in the results list.

• Create email alert– You can create an alert for your research. It sends new results to your email account. There is no option of

selecting a daily/weekly/monthly alerts rather it sends whenever new results available.

• How cited (next to name of the case, Azzarello v Blck Bros)– Provides list of the cases and articles, in which the Azzarello case was mentioned, providing

context by including the exact location within quotes.

• Cited by 493 (bottom of the result)– Provides list of the cases and articles where the case Azzarello is mentioned (no exact

location)

• Related articles (bottom of the result)– Provides similar cases and articles

You can search within the results

This is the results list of ‘Related articles’ link.

Google Scholar – Reading a Case

• From the results list click on any case to read.• Provides official and commercial cites.• Page numbers in the text and margins are

references to the page numbers in the reporter (star paging.)

• Full-text access to the cases cited within the case.

• Click on footnote numbers, takes you to the footnote text.

Reference to Pennsylvania State Reports page number

Reference to Pennsylvania State Reports page number

Cases with hyperlinks are available in full text since they are in Google’s database.

Without quotes Google adds in between words AND connector.

Search within quotes brought 588 results. After selecting ‘Pennsylvania’

the same search brought 5 cases. Remember you may select year also

from ‘anytime’ option.

Subject Search

Selection of ‘Pennsylvania’ resulted only five cases.

Remember you can restrict the search to ‘Pennsylvania’ and

also in a specific ‘Year’