Helping millennials find US Supreme Court cases online

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to provide non‐law librarians with two strategies for quickly helping millennials with online US Supreme Court research. The first strategy is to locate law‐librarian authored online research guides on the topic. The second strategy is to jump straight into one of the many free online databases that contain US Supreme Court opinions.

Design/methodology/approach

The article demonstrates the abundance of academic law‐librarian authored legal research guides available on the internet and explains how to evaluate them. Additionally, the article provides examples of many free online databases that allow searching, browsing and retrieval of full‐text US Supreme Court opinions.

Findings

Millennials looking for US Supreme Court opinions expect to be provided with digital research resources. Online legal research guides can help librarians find the latest online databases with full‐text US Supreme Court opinions. Widespread internet access to the entire run of US Supreme Court opinions is a very recent phenomenon. But today, several new web sites have made the entire run of US Supreme Court opinions available for free, vastly improving librarians' ability to meet millennials' expectations of immediate access to full‐text resources online.

Originality/value

This article provides librarians with two strategies for quickly helping millennials with online US Supreme Court research.

Citation

Kelly Fischer, C. (2008), "Helping millennials find US Supreme Court cases online", Reference Services Review, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 245-251. https://doi.org/10.1108/00907320810895332