FEDERAL COURT RESEARCH
The House Law Library site
(law.house.gov/6.htm) is an adequate resource for locating recent federal appellate
court cases for free in a pinch.
- However, for traditional case based legal research, no Web resources can compete
with the more traditional commercial computer assisted research services.
TIPS FOR LOCATING FEDERAL APPELLATE CASES:
- Need information on the circuit where the case was decided.
- With informationon the circuit, can search cases by
month or run a basic word search.
- Try to search most discrete term--e.g., name of party. However, topical
searches will work to some extent
SAMPLE SEARCH
- Example--Search for recent hydroelectric cases out of FERC
- Can assume that most FERC cases are decided by DC Circuit, so select that library
- Search "hydroelectric" or FERC
- Increase number of hits if searching a popular term like FERC
