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Legal Research Tutorial

Module 2: Finding Case Law

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Searching Federal Cases by Keyword

You can search LexisNexis Academic database to find full text of decisions for federal cases including the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. District Courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals, as well as Supreme Court Briefs.

1. Go to the Library databases
2. Click on the letter "L" under A-Z List of All Databases
3. Scroll down and click on LexisNexis Academic L listing.
4. You will be prompted to login to the databases. For problems logging in, please see our Technical Help page.

Let us take a look at the basic search screen. At the top of the page you will see several topics on the Search tab:

• General
• News
• Legal
• Business
• People

Click Legal for case law.

In the frame on the right-hand side of the page, under Legal Searches choose Federal and State Cases. This will take you to the basic search screen for case law.

You can either search using  Terms and Connectors (AND, OR, NOT) or by Natural Language.  This can be a topic of law such as free speech, discrimination, or malpractice, or you can search for a specific case. In the second box marked Required Terms, you can enter specific words that must appear in the search results. Select Sources allows you to select a specific source. Note that by default it will Federal and State cases combined. Click the drop down arrow to select specific federal courts, the Supreme Court, specific types of cases or state cases only.

If you are looking for a specific case, you can enter the party names or the case citation.

The following types of Federal case law support UMUC course work:

• Supreme Court cases
  
• Supreme Court briefs - written statements filed before the Supreme Court argument in favor or against a certain position
  
• District Courts
  

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