Introduction

Many opinions are not published at all, especially state trial level court opinions which are generally never published. Some appellate court opinions are published, and the opinions of courts of last resort (the Mississippi Supreme Court, for example) are published the most often. The judges decide which opinions to publish. Unpublished appellate court opinions may be found on subscription databases and sometimes on the Internet.

Published opinions are usually issued in chronological order. As a result, other sources must be used to locate cases by topic. One place you DO NOT look is the library catalog. The catalog includes references to books, journals, statutory codes, court reporters, etc. that contain the law and information about the law. It does not include cases. This is because published opinions are usually issued in chronological order and released in a bound volume. To find cases, you have to use a finding tool such as a digest. Once you have the citation, you can get the opinion itself.

1. In Print

First you need to know which court decided your case - was it a federal or state court? And if it was a state court, which state? By determining which court your case was in, you can choose the appropriate digest to use. For example, if you are looking for a federal case, you need to use the Federal Practice Digest.

In this library, we have the digests for the federal courts (range 322), for several states, and the "regional" digests (Atlantic, Pacific, Northwestern), which pull together decisions of several states’ courts (in alphabetical order following the Federal Practice Digest, ranges 322-324). The Mississippi Digest is along the front wall, to the left of the library entrance when looking out of the library. If you are not sure which digest to use, look at pages iv and v at the beginning of any hardbound volume. The courts that are covered by the digest are listed there with their abbreviations as used in the digest.

The Federal Practice Digest (range 322) contains citations to all federal cases, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Two additional digests index U.S. Supreme Court opinions exclusively: West's Supreme Court Digest and the Lawyers' Edition Supreme Court Digest (range 322, preceding the Federal Practice Digest).

Some digests, such as the Federal Practice Digest, have separate series that cover different periods. Generally, you should use the latest series. However, if you are interested in finding older cases, check the inside cover to see if the period you are interested in is included.

Once you have found the correct digest to use, look for the volumes containing the Table of Cases and Defendant/Plaintiff Table (so stated on the volumes’ spines). These volumes should be located at the end of the set. If you know the plaintiff’s name, look up the plaintiff’s name in the Table of Cases volume. You will then see a list of all the cases that included a plaintiff with that name. (If one of the parties is very common, such as the U.S., and the other has a very unusual name, you might want to look under the more unusual name.) Scan the list until you find the case you want. If you know only the defendant’s name, do this same this process using the Defendant Table volume.

The case information will be in this order: case name, court, citation information, then a hyphen followed by references to topics and key numbers. At this point, however, all you really need is the citation information.

Example: Ayers v. Fordice,

Write down the citation information, which for this case is ????. A case citation includes the names of the parties, the abbreviation of the reporter, volume number of the reporter, the initial page number where the case can be found, and the court and year in which the opinion was decided. (The year will not be included in the table of cases, but it will be provided in the case.) This is how a complete case citation might look:

Example:	Weaver v. Mason,	228	So. 2d	591	(Miss, 1969).
	case name	volume #	reporter	page #	court, year

Some cases will have more than one citation. For instance, there are three reporters for the U.S. Supreme Court, so if you are looking for a Supreme Court case you will see at least three citations. Thus, a citation to Tennessee v. Garner might look like this:

Example:

Tennessee v. Garner,

105

S. Ct.

1694,

472

US

1018,

87

L. Ed.2d

1

(1985).

Abbreviations for reporters are located in the front of each hardbound digest volume. All the reporters in this library are on the library’s main floor, along the back wall in roughly alphabetical order, with the federal reporters following the state reporters. The reporter title (Federal Reporter), series number (2d) if any, and volume number are printed on the spine of each volume.
The reporters most often used in this library are:

Supreme Court Reporters
As stated earlier, there are three reporters for the U.S. Supreme Court: United States Reports, West’s Supreme Court Reporter, and United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer’s Edition. Each reporter first publishes cases in pamphlets called "advance sheets." Later, bound volumes are issued.

United States Reports is the official reporter, so called because it is prepared by Supreme Court employees, and West’s Supreme Court Reporter and United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer’s Edition are produced by commercial publishers. United States Reports contains the official text of the opinions with no editorial enhancements. Unfortunately, the publication schedule is often many months behind the release of opinions. Since Supreme Court opinions are vital to the practice of law, the two commercial editions, West’s Supreme Court Reporter and United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer’s Edition, are published much more quickly. In addition to the opinions, the commercial publications also contain editorial enhancements that make research easier. Cases published in the Supreme Court Reporter include headnotes that break down the decision and tie into West’s "key number" system, allowing greater subject access and improving researchers’ ability to update case law. United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer’s Edition includes summaries of the lawyer’s briefs. Lawyer’s Edition also provides links to other publications published by this publisher.

2. On the Internet

U.S. Supreme Court opinions are now on the Internet, hosted by several different sites. Most other courts have at least the last few years’ opinions on the web as well, but the coverage and search capabilities vary depending on the court. Researching case law is convenient and can be very quick, but there are a few drawbacks: the free sites do not include annotations and each site has different search capabilities. Many sites, though, do allow you to search for cases using party names.

The Ole Miss Law Library has a web site called "Legal Resources" that is designed to help researchers locate legal information on the Internet. On the web site’s opening page, select the appropriate link- "U.S. Supreme Court" if you are looking for Supreme Court cases, "Federal Courts" if you are looking for non-U.S. Supreme Court cases, "Mississippi" if you are looking for Mississippi cases, or "State Links" if you are looking for state court cases from states other than Mississippi. On these pages we have links to the most popular sites that contain court information.

If you have any other questions, please ask at the Reference Desk for assistance.