[Infowarrior] - Resource: Finding the laws that govern us

[Richard Forno]

(I can't wait for Westlaw or LexisNexis to start screaming over this!   
--rf)

  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws-that-govern- 
us.html

Finding the laws that govern us
11/17/2009 09:05:00 AM

As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United  
States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions  
in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the  
rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time,  
these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern  
our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find  
or even read these landmark opinions. We think that's a problem: Laws  
that you don't know about, you can't follow — or make effective  
arguments to change.

Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere 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. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions  
and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your  
search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in  
the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education,  
which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for  
citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your  
results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less  
familiar with, but which have played an important role.

We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average  
citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us  
all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you  
can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related  
articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can  
follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see  
how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions  
and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the  
"How Cited" link next to the case title. See, for example, the  
frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source  
of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which  
helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a  
police officer).

As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how readable and  
accessible these opinions are. Court opinions don't just describe a  
decision but also present the reasons that support the decision. In  
doing so, they explain the intricacies of law in the context of real- 
life situations. And they often do it in language that is surprisingly  
straightforward, even for those of us outside the legal profession. In  
many cases, judges have gone quite a bit out of their way to make  
complex legal issues easy to follow. For example, in Korematsu v.  
United States, the Supreme Court justices present a fascinating and  
easy-to-follow debate on the legality of internment of natural born  
citizens based on their ancestry. And in United States v. Ramirez- 
Lopez, Judge Kozinski, in his dissent, illustrates the key issue of  
the case using an imagined good-news/bad-news dialogue between the  
defendant and his attorney.

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of  
several pioneers, who have worked on making it possible for an average  
citizen to educate herself about the laws of the land: Tom Bruce  
(Cornell LII), Jerry Dupont (LLMC), Graham Greenleaf and Andrew  
Mowbray (AustLII), Carl Malamud (Public.Resource.Org), Daniel Poulin  
(LexUM), Tim Stanley (Justia), Joe Ury (BAILII), Tim Wu (AltLaw) and  
many others. It is an honor to follow in their footsteps. We would  
also like to acknowledge the judges who have built this cathedral of  
justice brick by brick and have tried to make it accessible to the  
rest of us. We hope Google Scholar will help all of us stand on the  
shoulders of these giants.

Posted by Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer