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*Law

An aid to finding law at OSU Libraries and online, this Guide covers both case law, and statutory and regulatory law

Case Law

The Supreme Court

USCOURTS

United States Courts Opinions on govinfo: United States Courts Opinions (USCOURTS) collection is a project between the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC) to provide public access to opinions from selected United States appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts. The content of this collection dates back to April 2004, though searchable electronic holdings for some courts may be incomplete for this earlier time period. Once an opinion is located, all associated opinions within the same case can be accessed from the opinion Content Details page. Opinions from 118 courts are now available, and GPO will continue to add opinions as they are provided to GPO by the courts.Explore the opinions at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/USCOURTS.

Circuit Courts (U.S. Courts of Appeals)

Oregon Courts

Oregon Case LawState of Oregon Law Library Digital Collection "contains unofficial copies of Oregon Supreme Court (SC) and Court of Appeals (COA) Briefs and Opinions. Briefs coverage begins approximately May 2007, continuing to the present.  (COA Briefs start with 212orapp488; SC Briefs start with 342or1). The long-term goal is to include Briefs back to the mid 1980's. Opinions coverage is 1998 to present."

Other State Courts

  • State courts can be located by going to the Browse Cases and Codes page on FindLaw, clicking on the state and finding the link for Courts.

Federal Regulations

Federal Register (FR) on FDsys
The Government Printing Office's database provides access to the full text of the Federal Register from 1994 to the present.

Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)

OMB Circulars from the White House website

Environmental Laws and Regulations
From the EPA Web server, a searchable index of environment-related information from the Federal Register.

Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)
Browsable by part number. Files available in html or pdf format.

OSHA Law and Regulations
Regulations, laws and standards from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Dept. of Labor.

Federal Agencies and Commissions

Federal Judicial Center -- The education and research agency for the federal courts. Created by Congress in 1967 to promote improvements in judicial administration in the courts of the United States. Contains results of Center research on federal court operations and procedures and court history, selected educational materials produced for judges and court employees, class action notices, and biographies of federal judges since 1789.

United States Sentencing Commission -- Agency that establishes sentencing policies and practices for the federal courts. Includes federal sentencing guidelines, reports to Congress, statistics, press releases, and other publications.

Google and Law

As of 11/17/2009, according to the Official Google Blog, people will be able "to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal  and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in."

Read more about this new Google service on the Google Blog, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws-that-govern-us.html.

Legislation and Statutory Law

FDSys: U.S. Code, Bills and Public Laws Provides access to the full text of Congressional Bills from the 103rd Congress forward, Public Laws of the 104th forward, the U.S Code since 1994, as well as several other databases. 

Congress.gov  Includes full text of legislation from the 101st Congress onward, lists of "hot" bills by topic, number and short or popular title, the Congressional Record, Committee information, and more.

The U.S. Code (From the Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives) This server provides full text searching of the Code.

The U.S. Code Hypertext version of the Code from the Legal Information Institute.

State Legislatures, State Laws and State Regulations Links to legislative resources on the Internet for all 50 states. From the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, DC.

Law Directories

Federal Web Locator
from the Center for Information Law and Policy

Europa
European Union Homepage - includes the Parliament, the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors and other bodies of the European Union (EU).

Legal Information Institute
from Cornell Law School

FindLaw
Directory of legal information on the Internet, including cases, law schools, firms, association, information by subject, and much more.

Directory of Legal Academia
A directory of law professors and law librarians in American law schools. From the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University.

Law by Subject

Environmental Law

Copyright Law

The Copyright and Fair Use site at Stanford University provides links to copyright law sources.

International Law

GLIN (Global Legal Information Network: http://www.glin.gov/search.action  is a public database of official texts of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other complementary legal sources contributed by governmental agencies and international organizations. These GLIN members contribute the full texts of their published documents to the database in their original languages. Each document is accompanied by a summary in English and, in many cases in additional languages, plus subject terms selected from the multilingual index to GLIN. All summaries are available to the public, and public access to full texts is also available for most jurisdictions.

More Law Websites

Legal Dictionary at Law.com

Public Library of Law (free law resources online-Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, all 50 states, statutes, codes, regulations, etc.)

FDsys (Federal Register, CFR, US Code, Public and Private Laws)

Law Library of Congress