Annotations
- The company that compiles the statutes often includes a sentence or two from cases that relate to that section of law.
- This snippet of information is called an annotation.
- Annotations often provide a start to a search, but they may not be all the case law there is on a topic.
- To continue your research, you will need to read the whole case and view the cases that are cited in that case.
Pulling up Specific Cases
- To pull up cases using Google Scholar, type the reporter information from the case citation into the search bar.
- Select the case law button below the search bar, and then hit enter. Click on your case.
- This opens the full case. As you read through the case, you may find the court cites to other linked cases.
- Then in the ‘How Cited’ box at the top of the page, you will be able to see a list of cases that have cited to this case.
Broad Search of Case Law
The most difficult way to search case law is by entering a term or quote and seeing what cases result. Here are some tricks for searching case law in Google Scholar that may help make that search more manageable:
- “Quotations”: Quotations around words will only bring up cases with that exact wording.
- AND: Using “AND” between words will bring up cases where both words are in the case in any order.
- AROUND(n): This search will list cases where certain words are near each other. For example:
- dog AROUND(5) bite
- This will search for cases where “dog” appears within 5 words of “bite”.
Next Steps
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