In a typical year, over 8,000 petitions are filed with the Supreme Court for review of lower court decisions. The Court denies review in the vast majority of cases, and, in recent years, has issued full opinions in fewer than 100 cases each term. The Court and the parties who argue before it produce many documents, including not only opinions, but also orders, briefs, and argument transcripts. What this amounts to is a vast paper trail of valuable and important knowledge for research.
Opinions of the Supreme Court are widely reported and readily available in printed reporters, loose-leaf services, online databases, and the Web. Listed below are the major sources of Supreme Court opinions and information on how to find opinions in these various sources, including no cost methods.
For more information about opinions, see Information about Opinions on the Supreme Court's website.
There are plenty of places to find SCOTUS opinions. Considering more recent opinions, they will typically appear on Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law within an hour after the Court announces its decisions. All decisions of the Court, including denials of certiorari and grants or denials of motions, are available online. By making use of the Advanced Search options on Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg Law, you can search for opinions by a specific judge, argued by a specific attorney or cases involving a specific party. Making use of the Advanced Search option is a quick way to locate Supreme Court opinions with defined parameters.
There are several educational, government, and commercial websites that offer judicial decisions free of charge; however, these sites do not provide the sophisticated searching available on subscription databases and may not be comprehensive. If you need to do a comprehensive search for Supreme Court cases, use Westlaw, Lexis, or Bloomberg Law. If you just want to locate the text of an opinion, any of the following are good web sites to use:
For additional sources of Supreme Court opinions free online, see our Free and Low Cost Legal Research Guide.
Opinions of the Supreme Court are reported in three printed reporters:
Also available electronically in PDF through the Library of Congress, HeinOnline (Vol. 1 - 545), the Supreme Court's website (Vol. 502 - ).
As part of the West National Reporter System, opinions in the Supreme Court Reporter are assigned Topics and Key Numbers to assist researchers in finding additional cases. Also available electronically (access PDF from individual opinions) through Westlaw.
Also available electronically through Lexis.
The "shadow docket" (or non-merits docket) is a term used to refer to emergency actions taken by the court that do not go through the full briefing and hearing process of a formal opinion. The phrase “shadow docket” was coined by University of Chicago law professor William Baude in 2015 to describe these SCOTUS decisions which “defy its normal procedural regularity;” i.e. those that are not argued and decided on the "merits docket," where the Court receives full briefings, hears oral arguments, and delivers lengthy, signed opinions.
SCOTUS has always considered emergency applications seeking immediate action from the court, such as for stays of execution or for procedural matters such as scheduling and filing extensions. In the past few years, the court has used this procedure in a wider variety of cases in which the decision establishes precedent. In recent years, the Court has used emergency orders to rule on issues including gerrymandering, pandemic rules, environmental regulation and abortion. These decisions can be controversial, as cases decided by way of the “shadow docket” lack same the public deliberation and transparency as those on the merits docket. In addition, because shadow docket orders often do not include information about how each Justice voted or why the majority came to a certain conclusion, they often lack guidance for lower courts about how to apply Supreme Court precedent moving forward.
The Supreme Court issues orders related to the grant or denial of certiorari, stays, motions in pending cases, mandamus, rehearings, permission to file amicus briefs, and attorney discipline. These orders can be found in the following places:
