State and federal appeals - a selected, annotated bibliography
This bibliography covers a variety of materials for conducting research on state and federal appeals, with an emphasis on electronic sources. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw are only two of the many databases now available via the Internet. Many other legal publishers, including Matthew Bender and Commerce Clearing House (CCH), have adopted this method of distributing their products.
The free resources on this list were available on June 3, 2003. However, be aware that the Internet is a constantly changing source where old sites may change, move or disappear and new sites may appear without notice.
Research starting points
General
- Tarlton research page - This site has links to Federal and Texas online resources, as well as several other resources for legal research.
Federal appeals
- Cornell Legal Information Institute (free) - An excellent starting point for many types of research. Cornell University provides a textual overview of appellate procedure with links to many online sources (mainly Federal government web sites) for cases, rules, and statutes, as well as references to recommended paper treatises on the topic. Free full-text documents include: Supreme Court Rules, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (with local rules of the 5th Circuit), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals decisions. Also provided are links to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and a sample form: Notice of Appeal from a District Court.
- American Bar Association section (free) - Provides litigators with trial tips, continuing legal education information, a listing of ABA publications, and links to practice-related web sites. The news section includes information on current litigation issues, cases, laws, and relevant legal links. The site provides a link to the ABA Appellate Practice Committee. Here you can find links to other useful web resources, information about upcoming committee events, and members can read the committee's newsletter.
- Google directory of judicial resources - Google has created a director of the most popular resources on the Internet for information about the judiciary.
State Appeals - general
State Appeals - Texas
- State of Texas judicial server (free) - Provides full-text of many documents useful in researching Texas procedure. Included are recent opinions of the Texas Supreme Court, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Texas Court of Appeals, Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure, revisions to the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, a Texas Judicial Systems Directory, etc. Originally created with the needs of Texas judges and justices in mind, the State of Texas Judicial Server is an excellent starting point for anyone researching Texas law.
- Google index of Texas legal web site - Google has created an index of the most commonly used web sites of Texas legal information. From here you can also find links to 5th Circuit legal resources.
Appellate law source materials
Rules of appellate procedure
- Texas judicial server - Most Texas court rules are available through the Texas Judicial Server. The Web page of the particular court may include a link to the full-text of proposed and final local court rules. Some of the courts' Web sites also include access to court filings and other documents at no charge. Specifically, the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure are available at http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/rules/traphome.asp.
Federal Rules
Court rules, forms and dockets (free)
- LLRX - Provides links to over 700 sources for state and federal court rules, forms, and dockets. Links may be searched or browsed.
Opinions from appellate courts - It is possible to find recent court opinions on each court's web site. Some notable examples include:
- Supreme Court of the United States publishes its opinions through its own website.
- The Circuit Courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, have searchable opinions from 1985 along with calendar and case information.
- Findlaw and the Cornell web site mentioned above have good links to opinions from the appellate courts, but the researcher is cautioned not to use a free site to search for a comprehensive listing of cases. Most free sites are severally limited because the range of dates for their case files is so short. Free sources have current cases, but not much older than the mid-90's. A comprehensive search is easily done using a fee-based service such as Westlaw or Lexis-Nexis.
- Cornell Legal Information Institute - All U.S. Courts of Appeals are available at the Cornell site at and one can search across all circuit opinions here. However, dates, coverage, and file formats vary among the courts, and it is unusual to find cases prior to 1995.
- Findlaw - Provides access to the U.S. Courts of Appeal as well as state courts. There is also a standardized search engine on Findlaw that will help locate opinions on the Federal Circuit Court websites. The 5th Circuit search engine is available at http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/courts/5th.html.
News
- Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw provide access to several newsletters, journals and newspapers with information on current issues, cases and laws in Federal and state appellate law and procedure.
- ABA Litigation section newsletter - Free news services are provided by associations such as the Litigation Sections of the American Bar Association
- My Findlaw - Keep informed about current legal news through My Findlaw, a portal for the legal community. You must create your own log in for the service. The service regularly updates the news.
Statutes
- Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw will have full-text of both Federal and Texas statutes.
- Texas Statutes and Codes, session laws and bills are available free of charge through the Texas Legislature Online webpage.
- Federal laws, including the new public laws and bills, are available through the Library of Congress' THOMAS website.
- The U.S. Code is available through the U.S. House website; however, this code should be used with caution as it is not as current as what is available through Westlaw or Lexis.
Texas legislative history
- Texas legislative reference library - Legislative histories for Texas laws are somewhat complicated and few resources, outside of some bill files, exist online. Even fee-based services will not have the reports and debates needed. Researchers should first check the Texas Legislative Reference Library's "Compiling Legislative Intent in Texas" for more information on Texas legislative histories.
Federal legislative history
- THOMAS - Most of the documents needed for comparatively recent Federal legislative histories can be found through Thomas, the official website of Congress.
- Congressional Universe (Available through Lexis and TALLONS) - Tallons provides access to Congressional Universe, another excellent tool for locating federal legislative history information. Congressional Universe searches the Congressional Information Service's set of Legislative Histories from 1970 to the present and includes direct links to the more recent publications. It also indexes, to a lesser extent, Congressional publications and unpublished hearings back to 1789. However, a researcher must use the public computer workstations in the Law Library to access this service. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw will also have full-text of many documents needed in a Federal legislative history. Caution: None of these services will have online documents for many of the older legislative histories.
General megasites for legal materials
- Cornell Legal Information Institute (free) - An excellent source for both primary and secondary legal materials. This site has two prominent access points: key word search and an alphabetical listing of topics. One page of text introduces each topic to the novice and in a frame to the right of the interview is a "Menu of Sources." This menu provides links to other sites with more authoritative information. Most of these links are to Federal or state government Web sites. For more information on what is available for appellate law and procedure from this site, please see comments above.
- Findlaw (free) - For appellate law and procedure materials, start with the "Legal Subject Index" and click through to "Litigation." The Findlaw categories for each topic include: Laws and Government Documents; Journals, Newsletters & Articles; Mailing Lists and Usenet Groups; Message Boards, etc. Among the many mailing lists are discussion groups on civil procedure, discovery and evidence.
- Hieros Gamos (free) - Purports to be the "comprehensive law and governmental portal" on the Web; however, it is not as easy to navigate as Findlaw because of its bulk. There are many entry points, but if a researcher starts with "70 Areas of Practice" the index then is broken down alphabetically into topics. By scrolling through the topics and clicking on "Litigation - Civil" or "Appellate", any number of international, federal and state resources become available.
Commercial database providers
The two best-known legal database providers have special materials for appellate law and procedure -
- Lexis-Nexis (fee-based)
- The Litigation Library includes both primary and secondary legal materials, including case law, statutes, rules and regulations, legislative histories, newsletters, form books, directories, ethical litigation issues, treatises and journals related to state and federal appellate law and procedure.
- The Texas Library includes both primary and secondary legal materials, including: case law, statutes, rules and regulations, newsletter, directories, opinions, treatises, form books (such as Matthew Bender's Texas Litigation Guide) and journals related to Texas appellate law and procedure.
- Westlaw (fee-based)
- The files listed under the Litigation topic in the Westlaw directory are similar to Lexis-Nexis and provide full-text documents for both primary and secondary legal materials including: case law, statutes, rules and regulations, legislative histories, newsletters, form books, directories, treatises and journals related to state and Federal appellate practice and procedure.
- Under the jurisdictional materials listing for Texas, the Westlaw directory has files similar to Lexis-Nexis. They also provide full-text documents for both primary and secondary legal materials including: case law, statutes, rules and regulations, newsletters, directories, opinions, treatises, form books and journals related to Texas appellate practice and procedure.
Four other database providers are trying to provide alternatives for online legal research and to complete for subscribers who might not be able to afford Lexis and Westlaw:
Law school libraries
In addition to law school Web sites, law school libraries usually provide a site that links to electronic legal materials of special interest to state practitioners as well as to the faculty and students of that particular institution. It is worthwhile to spend some time examining the Web sites of local law school libraries to see what the offerings are.
- Tarlton Law Library (free) and TALLONS (free) are two sites maintained by the Tarlton Law Library at The University of Texas School of Law. The Tarlton site includes a good deal of information on the Law Library and its collections and services, with shortcuts made to many frequently used Federal and Texas resources. Researchers can use the Tarlton Law Library Web site as a starting point to Web sources. Simply click on "Research" to find a large number of links to full-text, free legal and general materials available on the Internet.
- The TALLONS webpage is the Law Library's online catalog, which includes more than 2,000 links from the bibliographic record to the full text of materials available on the Internet. Researchers in the Law Library using a public computer terminal can take advantage of the Law Library's subscriptions to Congressional Universe (Federal legislative materials) and a number of law review indexes. LegalTrac, the Index to Legal Periodicals and Books, and the Index to Foreign Periodicals all have links from the TALLONS home page. These are fee-based services, so researchers cannot access the Law Library's subscription from a home computer.
- A unique service provided by the Law Library and available free from the TALLONS home page is access to the Tables of Contents of Law Reviews. This database, updated every weekday, consists of tables of contents from more than 750 law reviews, which are scanned into the database as soon as they are received by the Law Library. After using conventional periodical indexes like LegalTrac, research can be updated by using this archive, which bridges the gap between the time a law review is published and when it is indexed by a commercial service (which can take as long as a couple of months). The archive is searchable by keyword.
Originally prepared by Kumar Percy. Last updated May 13, 2005
