Research Guides: How to Find United States Legal Information: Case Law

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Nexis Uni
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Use the "Select a specific content type" drop down menu (below the search bar) to select "Cases." Then enter keywords and other information in designated fields.
HeinOnline
In the "Browse Databases by Name" box, located below the search bar, select "State Reports: A Historical Archive." Provides a digital version of Hein's State Report Checklist along with linking to the full text of historical state reports
Google Scholar
Provides full text of legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts, as well as articles from law review journals. Select the "Case Law" button to search.

Use quotation marks for phrases, Boolean operators to combine terms, and the truncation symbol (!) to get multiple endings.

Example: "representational equality" AND apportion!

Use the ATLEAST command to require that a word or words appear 'at least' so many times in a document.

Example: atleast5("one person one vote")

Click "Advanced Options" to limit by a date range, area of law, or segment (such as footnotes)

Judicial Branch
The Massachusetts court system consists of the Supreme Judicial Court, the Appeals Court, the Executive Office of the Trial Court, the seven Trial Court departments, the Massachusetts Probation Service, and the Office of Jury Commissioner.

Use quotation marks around phrases. If you don't, search terms are logically paired with the AND operator.

Example: Texas AND "voting rights"

Use a tilde ~ and a number to find words within a set number of spaces from each other:

Example: "person vote restrictions"~10

Facet on the left to limit to subject area, document type, etc.
Use the Citation Navigator and the Citation Format Guide under the CITATION tab.

For more search tips, see HeinOnline Search Guide