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Cool Websites (Instead of Database) of the Month

by Justin Huston on 2021-10-11T10:23:12-05:00 | 0 Comments

Cool Websites (Instead of Database) of the Month: 

 

SupremeCourt.gov

It’s October again, which means the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is starting its annual term. A great way to follow SCOTUS business is the Court’s official website, SupremeCourt.gov. The site has various drop-down menus with links to click on items such as SCOTUS opinions, Court filings and rules, oral arguments, case documents, news media, and information about the Court. But, if this information isn’t enough to satisfy your curiosity about SCOTUS, then the resources below are additional websites that cover the Court in detail. 

 

Oyez

Oyez (pronounced OH-yay) is the website of the Oyez Project, a web archive managed by the Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia, and the Chicago-Kent College of Law. The Oyez Project’s goal is to make SCOTUS materials broadly available to the public. The Oyez website is the most complete source for the Court’s audio recordings from the time when recording devices were installed in the Court in October, 1955. Oyez has transcripts that are synchronized to the audio of oral arguments from the Court, as well. These audio files are also searchable. Oyez also has case summaries in plain English in addition to full versions of opinions through Justia.com. The archive also has information on all the justices that have served on the Court.

 

You can find cases by Court term, going back to Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793). You can also use the Oyez website to find cases arranged by legal issue involved, such as civil rights, criminal procedure, and due process. If you click on a particular case, you will see appellant and appellee information, which lower court the case originated from, facts of the case, questions in the case, and the conclusion (also a graphic of how the court voted). 

Back in August and September, we published blog posts about HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library and United States Code & Session Laws databases. If you’ve already explored HeinOnline, you may have noticed that HeinOnline has links to Oyez in certain parts of the database. For example, opinions in the U.S. Reports section of the U.S. Supreme Court Library in HeinOnline have links to those cases on the Oyez website.  

 

SCOTUSblog

SCOTUSblog is one of the leading blogs covering the Supreme Court’s operations and major developments. Think of it like the New York Times, but with SCOTUS-specific content. SCOTUS bloggers write posts about the cases that the Court decides to hear, from appeal to final decision, usually posting before a case is argued, after argument, and, again, after final decision. Note that SCOTUSblog organizes cases by terms (October term 2021) of Court, making the website easy to use.  

SCOTUSblog also has a section monitoring the progress of petitions for certiorari. This feature may be useful if you want to know what cases the bloggers think the justices might accept for hearing in a future term. In the petitions section, SCOTUSblog categorizes petitions as: those relisted for the next conference, petitions SCOTUSblog is watching for the next conference, featured petitions, and calls for the views of the solicitor general.


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