Legal case search by date?

[Hank Trent]

Maybe someone who uses legal case seach engines in modern life can help.

Are there any that include cases prior to 1864 which you can search with a date restriction, to get results only before 1864?

I'd be interested in either Kentucky criminal courts, U.S. court of appeals or the Supreme Court.

I've only been finding very recent databases, like 10 or 15 years, but it never hurts to ask. I've taken advantage of the law books on Google Books, but there are lots of English cases to wade through there and no good way to restrict it to American cases by the date of the case rather than the book publication date.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Doug Harding]

Re: Legal case search by date?

Hank

The State of Missouri is archiving the entire St. Louis County Cirsuit Court records. Much of the more interesting cases are available through Washington Univeristy's Law School at

Additional Resources

http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott/resources.html

All the Dred Scott Case documenta can be found at

http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott/

Also there is a NPS site wiht more information on the Dred Scott Case

http://www.nps.gov/jeff/historyculture/dredscottsesquicentennial.htm

Doug

[celtfiddler]

Re: Legal case search by date?

Indiana State Archives has a database of Supreme Court cases from 1817-1872

http://www.in.gov/icpr/archives/databases/

Illinois maintains a list of records in the state regional archives depositories

http://www.sos.state.il.us/departments/archives/databases.html

Unfortunately, the Kentucky Department for Archives and Libraries doesn't have such a database at the present time that I've been able to locate.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Legal case search by date?

Thanks everyone!

I also found a searchable-text-by-date database for U.S. Supreme Court rulings back to 1790, free but requiring free registration, at www.lexisone.com.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[pipthelimey]

Re: Legal case search by date?

Hank,
Don't instantly write off the English cases. A lot of English common law was accepted into arguments until there was enough accepted American case law to cover all bases.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Legal case search by date?

That's one thing I've been curious about. Why were books full of recent English case law being published in the U.S., with minor American revisions? There are some mid-19th century books like that on google books, in addition to the purely English ones published in England.

I agree that we were basically working from English case law until we either codified something different or got our own body of case law on a subject. But I would think that by the 1850s-1860s, the current cases in England would have little effect on American courts.

On a related subject, what other legal-related living history stuff goes on? I helped with some research for a military commission (civilian "court martial") once, but this is the first time I've done any serious research to portray a lawyer, and it's a lot of fun.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[vbetts]

Re: Legal case search by date?

If you can get to a university or larger public library, use Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database, choose legal research, choose federal case law or state case law. If you go to state case law, choose Kentucky. I left the search at all courts (includes high courts and appellate). Then you must choose a topic (I chose murder), and limit it to a date range (I used 1800-1863), and I got a list back of 51 cases, all from court of appeals, going back to 1810. You will get the prior history (from what court), case name, disposition, counsels' names, judge's name, who wrote the opinion, and the opinion, and sometimes more for the more current cases.

I think Lexis-Nexis is available in our county law library, but it might be accessible only to bar members. You might check around to see what's offered locally.

Vicki Betts
University of Texas at Tyler Library

[Hank Trent]

Re: Legal case search by date?

Vicki, that sounds great. It's probably available at a university near here.

I was just at the University of Kentucky Law Library doing some research the old fashioned way this week. Looking through Halsted's Laws of Evidence, 1859, got me a lot of case law on specific topics, but also gave me admiration for the people who read and collected all that data and compiled it by hand into a useful format. How did we ever live without search engines? Heck, how did we ever live without typewriters? :)

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net