Google Law School

Google Law School? Not quite, but Google has now made it much easier to search legal opinions from United States federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts.

“As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country,” says Google Distinguished Engineer Anurag Acharya. “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.”

You can search for specific cases (like Mass MoCA v. Büchel), or topics, like the Visual Artists Rights Act.  This should make it much easier for artists (and lawyers alike) to search for legal information without having to wonder about the validity of informaion on other websites. Other great resources and legal search engines (listed on Clancco.com on the lower right hand side) are the Cornell Legal Information Institute and AltLaw.

You can access this information on the Google Scholar.