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Buena Vista University

EDCO 280 History of American Education

This guide is designed to assist students with the assignment in which they describe and analyze a court case that sets the legal framework for some aspect of education in the U.S.

Finding a Supreme Court case

The BVU Library has a database of legal information that is available for students.  It includes the text of the original court opinions and lists of law articles that comment on the law and the opinion reached.

In the screen shot above is an example of a search from HeinOnline.

The oval shows the search entered.  This is the shorter, more informal name for the case.

HeinOnline covers many different collections of information (criminology, Supreme Court cases, Women in Law, and many others).  Searches entered will search across all those collections so search results may be large.  If you know only Supreme Court decisions are needed, you can limit the collections searched in two ways--the box in the upper right (rectangle) lets you select the collection before you search.  The options in the left column (also a rectangle) allow the user to limit the search results to the collection needed. 

The pentagon in the right column will link to law review articles that discuss this case and to other cases that are related to this case.

The arrow points to the full official title of the case, along with the legal citation.  Click the title of the case to bring up the full-text of the court decision to your screen.  Notice there is a PDF, download, email, and bookmark icons in the right column. These options will appear above the page of text in the upcoming screen as well.

The "X" marks the Oyez button.  Oyez is another website that provides the audio and some commentary on the case when it was originally argued.  This option is only available for cases heard since the 1950's.

Finding a Supreme Court Case on the Web

Government information (including most court cases) are readily available on the web.

Supreme Court of the U.S.

FindLaw's Supreme Court Cases

Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII)

Justia

SCOTUS Blog - best place to look for new decisions