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Items marked with a red starare especially good examples of sites of their kind.
This is a page of links related to my course, Current Legal Events. However, it can also stand alone as a general index of legal news. I welcome suggestions for improving it.
See the daily newsfeed for this course from moreover.com.
General Sources of Legal News
- 1st Headlines. Legal news headlines from 1st Headlines. Searchable.
- Court TV Online. General legal news.
- Current Events in Law. Edited by Paul S. Reed for About.com. See Reed's sub-page on News Highlights. Supports email notification.
- Excite Online Legal News. News in 60+ areas of legal practice. From Heiros Gamos legal guide and the Excite search engine. Supports email notification.
- Eye on the Courts. Noteworthy appellate decisions from around the country (other than the U.S. Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals). From the Legal Information Institute (LII) of Cornell University Law School.
- FindLaw Legal News. News in many categories, up to date, searchable. Also see its page of Today's [Legal] News Headlines, organized by area of legal practice. Supports email notification.
- Jurist. National and international legal news on the front page of this multi-faceted web site for lawyers. More news inside. Also see its Feed feature, displaying legal news relases and related announcements. Supports email notification. From Bernard J. Hibbitts.
- Law News. Daily headlines with links to stories in many different sources. From moreover.com.
- Law News Network. From Law.com (which also publishes the National Law Journal). Supports email notification (called Legal Newswire).
- Law Street Journal. General legal news. Supports email notification. Would get a red star if it were more up to date.
- Law Today. From Martindale-Hubbell. Updated once a week. Sometimes news, sometimes just a featured topic.
- Lawyers Weekly. General legal news. Many features reserved for paying subscribers, including email notification.
- Legi-Slate. Federal and state legal news and commentary. More on the legislative branch than the judicial. From the Washington Post. Searchable.
- The National Law Journal. Online version of print newspaper. Most of the useful sub-pages are inaccessible to users without a (paid) subscription to the print edition. One that is accessible to all is a summary of the week's legal news.
- National Legal News. Links to many sources of U.S. legal news. Also see the related page of links to local and regional legal news. From law.com.
- Policy.com. "The policy news and information service." Good source for news on legislation. Thorough coverage of its Issue of the Week. From the National Center for Policy Analysis.
- State and Local Law News. Current and past issues of this newsletter from the Section on State and Local Government Law of the American Bar Association.
- Trial Tracking. Summaries of interesting or important upcoming cases and notice of their trial dates. From Court TV Online.
- Web Journal of Current Legal Issues. British but still relevant to U.S. issues. Less news than comment and scholarship.
- Westgroup News and Information. Recent court decisions in nine categories. Daily and weekly reports. Free summaries of about a paragraph per case. Full-text of the opinions only for paid subscribers. From the West Group of legal publishers.
Specialized Sources of Legal News
- APB News. Focusing on criminal justice. See its sub-pages on breaking news, major cases, and justice news.
- Crime/Punishment. Edited by Bill Bickel for About.com. See Bickel's sub-pages on Crime Week Daily and Ongoing Features. Supports email notification.
- Crime and Punishment News. From MSNBC.
- CyberSleuths Crime News. Updated daily. Not limited to the U.S.
- Department of Justice Press Releases
- NACDL News/Media Index. Criminal law news. From the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).
- ACLU News. News related to civil liberties. Supports email notification. Searchable. From the American Civil Liberties Union.
- Civil Liberties. Edited by J.D. Tuccille for About.com.
- Civil Liberties: Advocacy and Resources. Edited by Clare Saliba for About.com.
- First Amendment Cases. Edited by Bill Bickel for About.com.
- Human Rights. Edited by Kevin Reid for About.com.
- IFEX Action Alert Service. News on freedom of expression cases around the world.
- First Amendment Cyber-Tribune. News and links on First Amendment issues. Updated on average once a week.
- Free! The Freedom Forum Online. For news about freedom of speech, religion, and related civil liberties.
- Andover Legal News. Mostly on technology topics. From the Andover News Network.
- GigaLaw. "Legal Information for Internet Professionals." Daily headlines on legal news (with links to stories), search engine for older stories, and email delivery service.
- Internet Crime. From APBNews.com.
- Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions. Collects cases on legal issues pertaining to the internet. Supports email notification of new cases in of its two dozen categories. From Martin H. Samson.
- Quicklinks. A very thorough weekly digest of legal news about the internet. From Richard Swetenham. Supports email notification. Another URL.
- Tech Law Center. News on legal developments affecting technology. American Lawyer Media.
- Tech Law Journal. Legal news affecting the computer industry and the internet.
- Wired News. Technology news, including legal news.
- ZDNet Law and Politics News. From ZDNet.
- Guide to the 1999-2000 Supreme Court Term. News stories on the decided cases. From the New York Times.
- Guide to the Supreme Court. From The Jurist.
- The Supreme Court. Cases from the previous term, classified by topic rather than by name. Texts of the decisions with links to relevent statutes and news articles. From the Washington Post.
- Supreme Court Decisions, 99-00 Term. Also see the Schedule of Arguments. From the Legal Information Institute (LII) of Cornell University Law School.
- Supreme Court Index. From USA Today. Links to USA Today stories, not to the texts of opinions.
- Supreme Court Rulings. From Yahoo News.
- United States Supreme Court Decisions. In reverse chronological order. From usscplus.com. Supports email notification.
- United States Supreme Court News. Browse summaries of recent and upcoming Supreme Court cases. Also supports email notification. From Willamette University College of Law.
- Supreme Court Docket and Calendar
- Calendar of the Supreme Court. From the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. Includes links to background information on upcoming cases.
- Docket of the 2000-2001 Term. Organized by month. From the Washington Post and FindLaw.
- On the Docket. The current Supreme Court term, with background information on every case. From Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
- Supreme Court Briefing. From MSNBC.
- Anarchist, Activist, and Alternative News. From Mid-Atlantic Infoshop.
- The Blue Sheet. Reporting jury verdicts in civil cases from Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
- Business Law Today. From the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association.
- Campus Crime Information Online. From Security on Campus. News on campus crime, updated daily, from Campus Security News.
- Class Action Litigation Information. News on planned and pending class action suits. Users must register, but this is free of charge. You'll probably want the pages on what's new, lawsuits in the news, or the table of contents.
- Death Penalty Information Center. Death penalty news.
- Environmental Law Net, Daily Newsfeed. News items on environmental law, updated daily. From David S. Blackmar's Environmental Law Net.
- Gangland News. News about organized crime. From Jerry Capeci.
- GayLawNet. Legal news affecting gays and lesbians.
- Gay Rights. More legal news affecting gays and lesbians. From SpeakOut.com.
- Gun Control. From SpeakOut.com.
- The Law Biz. News about the legal profession. From LawNewNetwork.com.
- Law Enforcement. Edited by Clif Brinson for About.com.
- Legal News Network. From the American Bar Association. Mostly news about the ABA, but some general legal news. Includes useful pages on what's new in federal and state legislation, though the focus is on legislation that affects the practice of law.
- Library and Information Science News. The sub-page of legal news affecting libraries. From LISNews.com.
- Overlawyered. News which reflects poorly on the state of U.S. law. From Walter Olson. Supports email notification.
- UN Wire. News about the United Nations, often including stories on international law. Supports email notification. Requires registration (no charge). From the United Nations Foundation (an independent organization not affiliated with the United Nations).
Criminal Law
Freedom of Expression and Civil Liberties
Technology and the Internet
The U.S. Supreme Court. Limited to current news. For example, when you hear that a case was decided by the Supreme Court, visit these links to read the text and/or commentary. For archives of past Supreme Court decisions, see the table below. For the court calendar, see the docket below.
Other Special Areas of Law. This section is for special areas of law. For selected individual cases or causes, click here.
Search Engines for News
- The BigHub News Search Engines. A large number of search engines for news.
- C|NET News.com. News searching plus a headline service. Especially strong in technology news.
- CNN Search. Search CNN's extensive web site.
- Electric Library. Searches across a wide range of newspapers and magazines. From Infonautics Corp.
- Fox News Search. News searching plus links to Fox News.
- Langenberg News Search Engines. A handful of news search engines on one page.
- NewsHunt. Collects many major news search engines in one place. Lets you limit your search to items appearing in certain certain industry or U.S. state news sources.
- News Index. News searching plus a headline service and online polls.
- News Search Engines. A large collection, organized by type of news source (alternative press, college papers, magazines, etc.). From FirstSearch.
- Northern Light News Search. Flexible. Covers many sources, including many worldwide legal sources.
- Pandia News Search. Headlines from many sources plus a news search engine.
- TotalNews. Supports user creation of a customized news page. Also supports a second news search engine, Paradigm News Search.
- Wired News. Supports email delivery. Also see Wired's HotBot News Channel, another news search engine.
- Yahoo! News. Top stories in many categories and regions, plus news searching.
Apart from these news search engines, remember that virtually all online newspapers offer searching of their own contents, usually including back issues. For example, see search pages for the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Search Engines for Law
- The BigHub Law Search Engines. A large of number of search engines for law and government.
- FedWorld. Search engines for federal government documents. From the U.S. Department of Commerce.
- FindLaw. Search primary law sources and law reviews. Includes LawCrawler for searching web sites, FindLaw for statutes and cases, and the University Law Review Project for law reviews. And more.
- Free Legal Forms. Search for the legal form you need. From FindForms.
- Govbot. "Database of government web sites." Search more than half a million government and military documents. From The Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval.
- GPO Access. Access to mountains of legal and governmental information through searchable databases. From the Government Printing Office. See the similar search service from the University of California.
- GPO Pathway Services. One search box to cover all federal government web sites. From the Government Printing Office.
- Infomine. "Scholarly Internet Resource Collections." From the University of California at Riverside. Government documents both searchable and browsable.
- Jurist Search. Searches online articles, course pages, home pages, and other law-related web pages created by academics.
- The Law Engine. Legal searching plus a large collection of legal links.
- LawGuru Legal Research Page. Over 340 legal search engines. Assembled by the law firm of Eslamboly & Barlavi.
- Law Research. Good collection of legal search engines, for cases, legislation, and more.
- LawRunner. Thorough, web-wide legal searching.
- LegalSearch. A large number of legal search engines, but annoyingly spread across many pages. From SearchPower.
- Lexis. Legal searching on Earlham's account. This link only works from Earlham's on-campus network. Also see the special Lexis search engine for legal news, the
general Lexis web page, and Earlham's own page of Lexis-Nexis Searching Tips.
- Legal Minds. Searchable archives of many legal mailing lists, from FindLaw.
- LOIS Law Library. Web-based rival of Lexis and WestLaw. Not free but some free demo searches.
- Meta-Index for U.S. Legal Research. A large number of search engines. Another copy.
- Political Information. "A search engine for politics, policy, and political news."
- SearvhGov. Searches all US jurisdictions. Links to federal government agencies and state government pages.
- Search-The-Law Good collection of legal search engines. Would deserve a red star but I've had access problems reaching its subpages.
- Verdict and Settlements Database. From Law Journal Extra.
Specific Legal Topics in the News
- Firearms Litigation Clearinghouse
- Gun Laws, Gun Control, and Gun Rights. From The Jurist.
- Guns Under Fire. From CNN.
- Lawsuits Against Gun Manufacturers. From the New York Times. Part of a larger special section on gun issues.
- News About Guns. From the Violence Policy Center. Has extensive sub-pages on legislation and litigation to control firearms.
- Breaking News. From the Anti-Defamation League's Stop Hate site.
- Fighting Hate Across the Nation. From the Hate Crimes Prevention Center. Stronger on legislation and advocacy than on news.
- Hate Crimes. From the University of Louisville Ekstrom Library.
- HateWatch. News updated daily. Supports email notification.
- Antitrust Policy. "An On-Line Resource Linking Economic Research, Policy, and Cases." Useful for background. Nothing specifically on the Microsoft case.
- Microsoft Antitrust. From FindLaw Legal News.
- Microsoft Antitrust Case From Wired News. Also see this related site.
- Microsoft On Trial. From BBC News. Coverage from a British perspective.
- Microsoft On Trial. From Business Week Online and Court TV Online.
- Microsoft On Trial. From PC Week.
- Microsoft Put on Trial. From TechWeb News.
- Microsoft's Day in Court. From C|NET News.
- Microsoft v. Government. From ZDNet. Supports email notification.
- Microsoft Watch and Microsoft Trial Virtual Court. Both from the San Jose Mercury News.
- State Suits Against Microsoft. From the National Association of Attorneys General.
- Target Microsoft. From CNN.
- U.S. Cracks Down on Microsoft. From the technology news site, TechWeb.
- United States v. Microsoft. From Law Journal Extra.
- Sites made by the parties. Each is one-sided, but together they are two-sided. Each is very thorough.
- Microsoft Legal Issues. From Microsoft.
- U.S. v. Microsoft. From the United States Department of Justice, Anti-Trust Division.
- Bush Transition. From SpeakOut.com.
- Election 2000. Edited by Robert Longley for About.com.
- Election 2000 News. From FindLaw.
- Election News. From Voter.com.
- Presidential Election Law. From Jurist.
- State Tobacco Information Center. On the state (as opposed to federal) tobacco cases.
- Tobacco Bulletin Board. From Gene Borio.
- Tobacco Control and Liability. From The Tobacco Control Resource Center and The Tobacco Products Liability Project at the Northeastern University School of Law.
- Tobacco Control Archives. From the University of California at San Francisco.
- Tobacco Debate. From the New York Times.
- Tobacco Industry Documents. From the Centers for Disease Control.
- Tobacco Litigation. From FindLaw Legal News.
- Tobacco-Related Web Sites. From Peter Swire.
- Tobacco Settlement Proposal. From the National Association of Attorneys General.
- Tobacco Under Attack. From CNN's AllPolitics.
- The Coalition for International Justice. An organization wholly devoted to supporting the Yugoslavia and Rwanda war crimes tribunals.
- Crimes Against Humanity. From Korea Web Weekly. One of the larger collections of links in this area.
- Genocide and War Crimes Links. A useful collection of links. From Human Rights U.S.A.
- War Crimes. Links to recent news stories. From ActivistNet.
- War Crimes. Useful collection of links, especially on relevant statutes and treaties. From Jurist page on Kosovo (Bernard J. Hibbitts).
- War Crimes. Useful collection of links. From the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.
- War Crime Stories Not Reported by Mainstream Media. The Serbian perspective. From the Serbian Unity Congress.
- War, Warfare, and War Crimes. A useful collection of links. From 1st Spot.
- Breast Implant Litigation Home Page. From David E. Bernstein.
- Campaign Finance Reform. From the New York Times.
- Chinese Espionage Story. From APB NewsCenter.
- Amadou Diallo Murder. From APB NewsCenter.
- Flag Desecration Amendment. A sub-section of the About.com page on atheism and agnosticism.
- Jack Kevorkian Web Sites. Includes both pro and con sites and some sites on his legal issues. There are many more relevant sites than those listed here, however. See this Alta Vista search or this Google search.
- Kosovo Conflict. Limited to legal issues. Very thorough. From Jurist.
- Mumia abu-Jamal. From Bill Bickel's Crime/Punishment site.
- Napster. From SpeakOut.com.
- Jon-Benet Ramsey Murder. From APB NewsCenter.
- Scientology Copyright Controversy. From CNET News.
- School Violence. From CNN.
- Sam Sheppard Case. From Cleveland Live News.
- For other topics, try a Google search on the key words. For example, try these searches on assisted suicide, Clinton disbarment, gay marriage, police brutality, slavery reparations, and the possible changes in the Supreme Court during a Bush administration.
Here I list web sites that function as gateways, indices, bibliographies, or home-pages on certain legal topics, collecting news stories and related web links in one place. I only include focused and comprehensive pages.
Gun Manufacturers' Liability
Hate Crimes
Microsoft Antitrust Case
Presidential Election 2000
Tobacco Litigation and Legislation
War Crimes
Some Individual Cases and Causes. This section is for particular cases or causes. I limit the list to those for which someone has collected news, comment, cases, or other information into a home page. For special areas of law, click here.
News Commentary and Analysis
- American Media Columnists. Browse for columnists by name. Over 600 to choose from. No searching.
- Columnist Roundup. Links to 100 major political columnists, plus links to selected recent columns. From Voter.com.
- Columnists Search Engine. Search for columnists (not topics), by name.
- The Cultural Dissident. Links to columns organized by date, with the most recent first. Despite the title of the site, most of the columnists are very mainstream.
- FindArticles. Search for individual magazine articles by keyword. Covers a very large number of magazines and journals. You can limit the search to a "subject", but the site supports no subject for law.
- MagPortal. Search for individual magazine articles by keyword, or browse by category. It does support a law category. You can search all the articles indexed at the site or limit your search to a category. Covers both print and online magazines, but offers no easy way to see the list of sources. Allows users to register (free of charge) and mark articles to be saved in the reader's account, for easy access later on.
- Opinion Pages. Supports searching by topic. The search index is updated daily. Also covers opinion from the international and alternative press, and in U.S. papers by state. It even has a separate guide to letters to editors.
- Writ. An online journal of legal commentary. From FindLaw.
Legal Document and Transcript Services
- CourtLink. Order court documents in current cases. (Not free).
- Federal News Service. For immediate transcripts of Congressional hearings and Presidential and other executive branch statements and briefings. (Not free.) Also gives schedules of upcoming events.
- KnowX. Searchable public records, including court documents. (Not free.)
- NetCourt. Transcripts of trials and expert witness testimony. (Not free.)
Legal Dictionaries
- American Standard Law Dictionary. Searchable. If you misspell the word you enter, you'll be shown a list of close words.
- Black's Law Dictionary. Not the whole book, but useful excerpts.
- Duhaime's Law Dictionary. From Lloyd Duhaime.
- Lawyers.com Glossary of Legal Terms. From Martindale-Hubbell. Based on the 1996 Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law.
- Glossary of Legal Terms. From Court TV Online.
- 'Lectric Law Lexicon. From the 'Lectric Law Library.
- Legal Dictionary. From the World Wide Legal Information Association.
- Shark Talk: Everybody's Law Dictionary. From Nolo Press.
| Federal | State | |
|---|---|---|
| Con- stitutions |
U.S. Constitution. From the Library of Congress.
U.S. Constitution. From Cornell University. U.S. Constitution. From the Perfect Union Project. |
State Constitutions. From Harbornet.
Indiana Constitution. From Indiana University. |
| Statutes |
U.S. Code. Searchable. From the House of Representatives.
U.S. Code. Searchable. From Cornell University. |
State Statutes. From Cornell Law School.
State Statutes. From "Scruffy". Indiana Code. Searchable. From the State of Indiana. |
| Cases |
U.S. Federal Courts. Searchable.
U.S. Federal Courts. From the Center for Information Law and Policy. U.S. Federal Courts. From Superior Information Services. U.S. Federal Courts. From VersusLaw. Searchable. Federal District-Court Civil Trials. From Theodore Eisenberg & Kevin M. Clermont. Supreme Court cases. Searchable. From Cornell University. Supreme Court cases. From FindLaw. USSC+. U.S. Supreme Court cases. From InfoSynthesis. Oyez Oyez Oyez. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court in RealAudio. From Northwestern University. |
State Courts. From the National Center for State Courts.
State Court Directory. From Piper Resources. State Court Locator. From the Center for Information Law and Policy. Courts.Net State Courts. From Superior Information Services. Indiana Judicial System. From the State of Indiana. Indiana Judicial Decisions. From Indiana University. |
| Regs |
Code of Federal Regulations. Searchable and browsable. From the GPO.
Federal Agencies and Commissions. From The White House. |
Indiana Administrative Code. From the State of Indiana. |
| Bills | Thomas. From the Library of Congress. | Indiana Bills. From the State of Indiana. |
Other Helpful Sites
- Documents in the News. Use this site to find the documents (judicial opinions, statutes, treaties, press releases, etc.) related to any current news story. Very useful. From the University of Michigan Documents Center.
- Editorial Cartoons. From Daryl Cagle.
- Email News Services. If you'd like to receive legal news in your mailbox. I've limited this list to the services I recommend.
- ACLU Newsfeed. Details on the major cases currently being pursued by the ACLU.
- Crime/Punishment News. From Bill Bickel's Crime/Punishment site at About.com. The best email newsletter on criminal law.
- Legal Newsnetwork. Highly customizable email delivery service, lets you select the areas of law of greatest interest to you.
- Legal Newswire. From Law News Network. The best daily newsletter for general legal news.
- LII Bulletin. The best Supreme Court decision summary service if you like long case summaries. From the Legal Information Institute (LII) of Cornell University Law School.
- Quicklinks. The best email news service on the legal issues raised by the internet.
- Willamette Law Online, Supreme Court. The best Supreme Court decision summary service if you like short case summaries. From Willamette University College of Law.
- Law-Related Chat Rooms. From Yahoo!
- Law-Related Mailing Lists. Useful for receiving information in your email box without seeking it, and for follow-up discussion.
- Law-Related Mailing Lists. From Lyonette Louis-Jacques. Searchable. Louis-Jacques also maintains a list of law-related newsgroups.
- Law-Related Mailing Lists. With an easy and uniform method for subscribing to any of them. From listTool.
- Law News. Mailing lists from Topica. Also see the categories on Law Legal Issues and Causes.
- The Newsletter Library. Requires registration (no charge). Many legal categories to choose from.
- Law-Related Web Links.
- The Big Ear. Software monitors major legal mailing lists, extracts URLs into a weekly digest.
- InSITE. A "current awareness" service from the Cornell Law Library. Supports email notification. Covers new law-related web sites, not legal news in general.
- Law Research. "Just the Lawlinks Newsletter." Email newsletter of new law-related web links.
- Map of Federal Judicial Circuits. Here's another one.
- Newspapers: Directories of online newspapers. Useful for following legal news in a given state or country.
- MediaInfo Links. Links to newspapers and other news media in every U.S. state and around the world. From Editor & Publisher.
- Metagrid. Online newspapers and magazines organized by topic and newspapers by region. Searchable. Search for "law" (then for "legal") for a good list of newspapers and journals specializing in state and regional legal news.
- News and Newspapers Online. Organized by state within the U.S. and by country for the rest of the world. From the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Jackson Library.
- NewsDirectory.com. U.S. and world newspapers and magazines by topic and by region.
- NewspaperLinks. U.S. only, organized by state. Searchable. From the Newspaper Association of America.
- U.S. Newspapers. Organized by state. From Netscape Netcenter.
- Newspapers: Specific online newspapers. Newspapers devoted to legal news are listed above under General Sources of Legal News.
- The New York Times. First-time users must register, but this is free of charge.
- The Washington Post
- Offbeat News. Not always about law.
- Can You Believe This? Strange crime stories from APBNews.com.
- Good News, Bad News, Unbelievable News. Searchable. From the Liberator On-Line. Mostly stories of interest to libertarians. Free email subscription available.
- News of the Weird. Searchable. From Chuck Shepherd. Free email subscription available.
- The Obscure Store and Reading Room. From Jim Romenesko.
- This is True. From Randy Cassingham. Only a few samples online. Free email subscription available.
- Opinion Polls.
- The Gallup Organization. Includes current and archived poll results (the "Poll Vault").
- The National Polling Company. Sign up to be among those polled by email.
- The Pew Research Center. Polls of American attitudes to selected news stories.
- The Polling Report. Includes current and archived poll results.
- Public Agenda Online. Opinion polls and policy analysis on 18 major policy questions. All the policy questions covered have legal dimensions.
- The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. Includes current and archived poll results.
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