What's New with Court Records & Briefs

Our research guide to Court Records and Briefs has just been updated with some new resources. What's changed over the last year?

• Increased access to oral argument recordings: Effective April 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit joined the majority of federal appellate courts in providing audio recordings of oral arguments on its website. As Law360 noted in December, this change leaves the 10th Circuit as the lone holdout of federal appellate courts which do not provide some free access to audio.
  In addition, the research guide now includes a link to the Free Law Project's Court Listener Oral Argument Audio, which allows users to search more than 20,000 federal and state oral argument recordings by case name, keyword, docket number, and/or judge.
  
• A new source for U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs: A link to the ProQuest Supreme Court Insight database was added to the section on compiled U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs. Although the database is not yet complete, it should include records and briefs dating back to 1975 by the end of the calendar year.
  
• An old favorite for locating historical trial pamphlets and books: While the guide has long included catalog search instructions for locating publications containing accounts of historical trials, we've just added a classic bibliography source which can help identify the existence of these materials: The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900 (Thomas M. McDade ed. 1961). This thorough bibliography contains entries for historical murder trial accounts, with an index allowing users to look up defendant names, trial locations, and even the occasional cause of death (such as "Poisoning cases"). While many of the pamphlets and books themselves have been digitized, this valuable finding aid has not.

We're always happy to help researchers locate court documents, whether current or historical. Begin your searches at the Court Records and Briefs research guide; if you don't find what you’re looking for, be sure to Ask a Librarian.