Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Courts and opinions

One of my firm's librarians received this question the other day: do all courts post opinions or cases on their web sites? Specifically, the circuit courts and the biggest Texas courts. A quick survey later and we found:
  • Texas Appeals Courts have several years of opinions on the site
  • US District Courts in Texas usually offer opinions only via Pacer
  • The Southern District (Texas) has an exception - it posts documents for Enron related trials and some other huge trials
  • County Courts in Texas usually require you to order copies through the court and usually make it difficult to determine this from their web sites
  • The US Supreme Court has opinions on its site. These are also available at other locations, such as FindLaw and Cornell Law School
  • The Circuit Courts all offer copies of opinions on their sites. Most have a link to the most recent decisions as well.

No comments: