Historical Supreme Court Briefs by the Thousands - Now Online at the Zief Library

The Zief Library's latest big digital acquisition is Thomson⁄Gale's U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978, part of its Making of Modern Law collection.

Researchers in the USF community can connect to U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs on campus or at home. (For remote access, you'll be asked to give your name and your USF student or staff ID number.)

Once you're connected, you'll have access to something like 350,000 documents from about 150,000 cases — many of them cases the Court declined to hear. All of the documents are available in PDF format, giving the exact image of the original. There are also multiple search features: key word searching; searching or browsing by case name; searching or browsing by author; retrieving documents by case citation.

These few examples give a sense of the treasures in Gale's U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs —

• The Motion to Advance in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
• The Transcript of the Record in Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)
• The Petitioner’s Brief in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
• The Petition in Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938)
• The Government’s Brief in Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942)

And for the post-1978 period? The Zief Library has Supreme Court records and briefs from 1951 to the present on microfiche, and for the most recent years there are a variety of options on the web and on Lexis and Westlaw. (For more information on finding Supreme Court briefs and other documents, see the Zief Library research guide Supreme Court Research: Getting Started.)