Google Puts Supreme Court Opinions Online

in Google, Law | November 17th, 2009 2 Comments

A quick fyi: Start­ing today, you can find online legal opin­ions from the Supreme Court, as well as fed­er­al and state courts, thanks to Google Schol­ar. When you vis­it Google Schol­ar, click on the “Legal opin­ions and jour­nals” radio but­ton, and then begin your query. If you type “sep­a­rate but equal,” Schol­ar with present you with famous Supreme Court Cas­es such as Plessy v. Fer­gu­son and Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion. You get the gist. You can read more about this online legal data­base over at Google’s blog.

UPDATE/NOTE FROM READER: “This has already been done for the US Supreme Court, and very well, at oyez.org.  Oyez is easy to use, has lots of addi­tion­al con­tent, includ­ing sum­maries and audio of oral argu­ments, and is ad-free and Cre­ative Com­mons licensed for its orig­i­nal con­tent.  Plus, you can search by court term, Jus­tice, and the name of the legal coun­sel.” An alter­na­tive source to look at…


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Comments (2)
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  • Laura Wimberley says:
    November 17, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    This has already been done for the US Supreme Court, and very well, at oyez.org. Oyez is easy to use, has lots of addi­tion­al con­tent, includ­ing sum­maries and audio of oral argu­ments, and is ad-free and Cre­ative Com­mons licensed for its orig­i­nal con­tent. Plus, you can search by court term, Jus­tice, and the name of the legal coun­sel.

    So I’m not sure what’s so great about Google search­ing pub­lic domain con­tent and adding adver­tise­ments to it. Maybe this is use­ful because most peo­ple go to Google first, but it’s not new.

    Reply
  • J. Quinn Public says:
    November 17, 2009 at 7:38 pm

    Wim­bere­ly, you’re cor­rect: after all, Oyez has SCOTUS opin­ions plus seach­able legal opin­ions and jour­nals, and fed­er­al court opin­ions, and state court opin­ions.

    Oh wait, does it?

    Avert­ing your eye­balls from ads is a small price to pay for avoid­ing the wexis/nestlaw extor­tion.

    Reply
  • Reputation Lost says:
    June 5, 2011 at 11:02 am

    While I applaud open gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives, there is a down­side to pro­vid­ing court opin­ions through Google Search; the unex­pect­ed loss of per­son­al pri­va­cy and poten­tial seri­ous dam­age to the rep­u­ta­tion and employ­ment prospects of an indi­vid­ual seek­ing redress in the courts.

    It appears that you do not need to us Google Schol­ar to find court opin­ions through Google. Google your name the same way as a poten­tial employ­er typ­i­cal­ly does these days. If you’ve been named in a court opin­ion, chances it will be at or near the top of the results. 

    File an appeal to denial of unem­ploy­ment or work­ers com­pen­sa­tion ben­e­fits by an admin­is­tra­tive body and you might as well for­get about ever get­ting job with an orga­ni­za­tion that finds the court opin­ion regard­ing it. Any nasty state­ments from your past or present employ­er are there. Even if you win the appeal, the con­tent an opin­ion may present you in a bad light. Worse yet, if some­one else shar­ing your name is iden­ti­fied in a court opin­ion you can suf­fer harm from opin­ions on cas­es that have noth­ing at all to do with you per­son­al­ly. The major­i­ty of employ­ers will pass on an oth­er­wise excit­ing job can­di­date sim­ply because they  filed a com­plaint in the past, even if the con­tent of the opin­ion shows you in a pos­i­tive or neu­tral light.

    Indi­vid­ual names must be redact­ed or anonymized in court opin­ions avail­able out­side of the offi­cial court records to pro­tect the inno­cent for irrepara­ble harm to their rep­u­ta­tions and liveli­hoods. 

    Reply

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