The University of Alabama School of Law
The University of Alabama School of Law
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/databases that cover the Court in detail.
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, 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).
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 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 of the 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.
If you are looking for more historical context on SCOTUS cases heard from 1832 to 1978, U.S Supreme Court Records and Briefs has materials that were associated with cases from those years. It has briefs from the parties involved in the cases and amicus briefs. This database has materials from many areas of the law including civil right law, environmental law, and constitutional law. It also has materials from many “major events in American history.” These materials range from major historical events to wars involving America. The materials are available to download as PDFs.
For a deeper dive into SCOTUS, take a look at Supreme Court Insight. Supreme Court Insight has dockets, petitions to SCOTUS for writ of certiorari, briefs from the parties involved in the case, appendices, amicus briefs, per cuiam decisions, and oral argument transcripts.
Documents on this database are searchable from the court of origin state or federal. Documents are also searchable by the Justice’s relationship to the opinion or opinion type. Documents are also searchable by who the amicus brief supported. SCOTUS cases are also searchable by docket number, U.S. Reports citation, public law number, lower court case number, and accession number. Searches can also be limited to date filed or court term.
This database is laid out to make it easy to use and read. When you find a documents from a case you dived a little deeper into, the documents from the case’s docket are downloadable as PDFs. Supreme Court Insight also links back to Legislative Insight and Regulatory Insight (which the law library also subscribes to).
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