Virtual Exhibit: The History of Case Reporting

It's not easy to cover the development of case reporting from the beginnings in England to the first West regional reporters, clearly and enjoyably, in one digital page. But "A Brief History of Anglo-American Case Reporting, 1272-1885," a virtual exhibit of the Boston College Law Library, has done it. Created by Karen Beck, Curator of Rare Books, the exhibit is both brief and clear in describing how today's case reporting came to be--from the Year Books hand written in the back of court rooms by medieval law students to the modern reporters we now use online. The story is illustrated with wonderful examples from the Boston College Law rare book collection. Take a break from your books and outlines to check it out. 

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

New Book: The Little Book of Fitness Law

The Little Book of Fitness Law is a short, but interesting read through some of the most significant cases in fitness law.

Do you want to know more about the Sports Drink Wars? Read through the chapter on Sands, Taylor & Wood Co. v. Quaker Oats Co., 34 F.3d 1340 (7th Cir. 1994).

You can find The Little Book of Fitness Law on the new book table in the Hofstra Law Library (KF 2402 .P49 K84)

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

New on HeinOnline: Early American Case Law

HeinOnline has just announced the addition of the Early American Case Law collection.  This collection provides the entire Federal Cases 30 book series (1894-1897) which contains more than 20,000 cases.  It also contains the Trinity Series, which includes American Decisions, American Reports, and American State Reports. To access the  Early American Case Law collection on HeinOnline, select "Early American Case Law" from the HeinOnline Subscribed Libraries page.  Click here to learn more about the collection.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Pronouncing Dictionary for Cases

As a law student, you may have noticed that there are many important U.S. Supreme Court cases that are  difficult to pronounce correctly. For several hundred key cases, the problem of confidently pronouncing them (in conversations with faculty, colleagues, future employers, and in court) has been solved.  The Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States, hosted by the Yale Law Library's website, is the product of a collaborative effort by Eugene Fidell, a Yale Law visiting lecturer, the Law Library, linguistics experts, and a diligent group of Yale law students. For each of the cases, which were determined to be the most susceptible of mispronunciation, the Pronouncing Dictionary provides phonetic spellings and an audio pronunciation.  You can learn more about the Pronouncing Dictionary here. 

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Free Federal Court Decisions Coming

It was announced last week that the U.S. government will soon offer free access to federal court opinions on its www.fdsys.gov site. In the long run, this could end up being extremely helpful for attorneys who can't afford access to premium research databases like Lexis and Westlaw. In the short run, just expect to find the most recent federal cases on fdsys.

Sites currently offering free access to federal cases include OpenJurist, Justia, the Public Library of Law, and FindLaw.


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Case Reporters, RIP?

A Canadian law blog has put up an interesting post cheering what it sees as the impending death of the printed case reporter, since these are often full of public information but sold by private publishers for profit. Of course, the author doesn't mention the things that private publishers often add to cases that are a major convenience (at least for American attorneys), like headnotes. And saying that "Westlaw, Canada Law Book, Carswell - are on the precipice of corporate death" is a real overstatement. But it is true that there is a trend for law firms and law schools to cancel their subscriptions to printed case reporters. For about a decade, U.S. law librarian email lists have had regular postings of entire 100+ volume sets of case reporters, as "free to a good home" because they are being discarded.


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Case Law for the United Kingdom

Looking for British or Irish cases? Bailii is the place to go. Bailii has databases for the United Kingdom as well as European case law. It is a very handy site.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

New York Historical Court Records

A number of Law Review members have been asking for help finding New York cases from the 1600's and 1700's--back when there were officials called schouts. Chances are that, in the end, most of these cases will have to be retrieved from clerks offices and archives. But we have been trying to make finding these cases a little easier. Here are a couple of the tips we have gathered so far.

-- If you are not looking for a case, but rather for a complaint or a pleading, don't hold out much hope for finding it published anywhere.

-- Supreme Court Cases, New York County. A number of the cases sought are from the New York City branch of the Supreme Court, which was founded in 1691. These cases are kept by the New York County Clerk's Office (see The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York's Duely and Constantly Kept. The only other source we have found so far that we think may have these cases is Supreme Court of Judicature of the Province of New York, 1691-1704, which is held at Axinn Library's Special Collections Department, but we have not looked for any cases in these volumes yet.

-- Kingston cases. Many of the other cases sought are from Kingston, or elsewhere in Ulster County, which means that they are probably translated Dutch cases full of words like schout. One source gatherer got lucky and found one of these cases in this book. And like the Supreme Court cases, some of these Dutch colonial cases may be in Axinn's Special Collections within volumes of New York Historical Manuscripts, Dutch, however we haven't had the chance to see whether many cases are contained in those volumes yet.

UPDATE: We have checked the books mentioned at Axinn's Special Collections, and the volumes held by Hofstra do not contain full records for the cases sought.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Free Case Law

Related to Thursday's post with guides to low cost legal research resources, there is a new article in Law Technology News that reviews free sources of case law.

And you can add one more source to those listed in the article, the New York State Reporter. Similarly, many state governments and courts offer recent opinions online for free.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat