Landmark Circuit Court Records Now Available

The Goodson Law Library has recently subscribed to Gale Primary Source's new database, The Making of Modern Law: Landmark Records and Briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1950-1980. The eleventh library in the Making of Modern Law series expands access to online court records and briefs with more than half a million pages of content spanning three decades.

Materials may be searched by keyword, browsed by jurisdiction, or explored in the Topic Finder. A "Term Frequency" tool allows researchers to conduct textual analysis. Coverage varies by jurisdiction, but the First through Tenth Circuits as well as the D.C. Circuit are represented (the Eleventh Circuit was formed from part of the Fifth in late 1981, one year past the database’s cutoff date). The "Circuits" browse menu shows the source libraries and approximate number of pages available for each jurisdiction. Coverage is currently strongest for the Second Circuit and D.C. Circuit, each with about 225,000 pages; the Ninth Circuit is a distant third at 115,000 pages; other circuits range from 6,000 to 50,000 pages of content.

This new database expands our community’s access to court records and briefs from the intermediate federal appellate courts. Other options for accessing print, microform, and electronic court records from federal and state courts can be found in the Goodson Law Library research guide to Court Records & Briefs. For help with navigating this new database or locating other court records, be sure to Ask a Librarian.