Legal Research Plus

Over on the Open Case Law Google group, law professor Patrick Wiseman writes:

” . . . [M]y interest in free caselaw is mostly for teaching purposes.  I’m putting together an all online US constitutional law course, using US Supreme Court decisions from the repository (and occasionally elsewhere for missing or more recent cases).  I thought perhaps this group might find what I’m doing with the cases of some interest, and so send you an example:

http://ul451.gsu.edu/courts.gov/c/editedUS/392/392.US.83.416.html

The case, which will take a moment or two to load fully as there’s some script stuff going on, is Flast v. Cohen, about the standing of taxpayers to challenge alleged congressional violation of the Establishment Clause.  Select an elision, [...], and see the elided text; note too that most US Supreme Court decisions cited within the decision are linked (either to an edited version of the case if I have one or to the original if not).  The styling will look familiar, as I have not (yet) restyled the cases much to give them my ‘brand’.”

Please do take a look (and wait the moment it takes for the page to load).  And note, too, how great a paragraph-based citation system, rather than vendor-specific page-based system, would work.