Study aid, not legal advice. caselaw is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice or engage in the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). All briefs, outlines, and citation tools on these pages are educational summaries for law students; they are not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney admitted in your jurisdiction. Bar-admission rules vary by state. For court filings or client matters, verify every authority against the official reporter and your court's local rules. Use of caselaw does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Sources & attribution
Every US case on this site is public-domain American law. We never reproduce Westlaw or Lexis content. Where a third-party project's metadata is included, attribution is on the case page footer too.
The historical backbone. ~6.9 million cases, 1658-2014, all 50 states + federal. CAP went fully open in March 2024 — no rate limits, no per-day caps, full bulk JSON download. Underlying case text is public-domain US law; Harvard's editorial scans + metadata are CC0.
Continuous coverage post-2014. SCOTUS slip opinions land within hours of release. Federal circuit opinions same-day. State appellate varies. Used for the modern half of the corpus that CAP doesn't cover.
When CourtListener lags, slip opinions come straight from supremecourt.gov. PDF, posted day-of-decision.
What we don't use
• Westlaw / Lexis — proprietary, paywalled. Their headnotes, key numbers, and editorial summaries are copyrighted; we do not reproduce them.
• Justia — case text is public domain but their HTML wrappers and summaries are theirs. We pull from CAP / CourtListener instead.
• Google Scholar — Google ToS prohibits scraping. Useful as a manual lookup, not a data source.
Briefs and study materials
Briefs, outlines, flashcards, and topic hubs are independent original work. They draw on the public-domain underlying cases but do not reproduce or remix any third-party headnote, key number, or proprietary summary. Citation format follows The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed.) — a trademark of the Harvard Law Review Association; we are not affiliated.
Disclaimer
caselaw is a study aid, not legal advice. For court filings or academic citations, always cite the official reporter (e.g., Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803)) — never this page.