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	Ben's Guide to U.S. Government

Supreme Court Decisions (1937-1975): Search Tips

The U.S. Air Force compiled and released this historic file of Supreme Court decisions from its FLITE (“Federal Legal Information Through Electronics”) system. It includes more than 7,000 decisions from 1937-1975, from volumes 300 through 422 of U.S. Reports. It is not an official version of the Supreme Court's opinions. Since the GPO has not performed costly validation processes, we cannot guarantee the authenticity or completeness of the data.

Currently on GPO Access, the application may be searched in three ways: full text, case name, and/or case number. These options may be searched individually or in any combination. A maximum return of 40 is set as a default. If desired, a maximum of 200 results can be returned. Documents are available in ASCII text and in some cases, HTML.

Fields

Fields in the Supreme Court Decisions (1937-1975) database online via GPO Access are:

Case: case

Case Number: casenum

When searching via SWAIS (dial-in or telnet session) or a WAIS client, a field can be searched by typing the field name, followed by an equals sign (=), followed by the term or terms that are sought. Similarly, When searching via the World Wide Web, syou may type in the field name, followed by an equals sign (=), followed by the search term(s) sought or link to the ADVANCED searching pages which contain established fields. All queries that do not specify a field search the entire database.

Identification Codes

Each Supreme Court case in the database will display in the results list with the word "case" followed by the case name. For example: Case: SMITH V. SMITH

Sample Searches (3)

The following sample searches are provided as guides to general types of searches in the Supreme Court Decisions (1937-1975) database.

Note: The results of these sample searches are described as they appear on the Web interface. The display of the results may vary for users of the WAIS client and SWAIS software.

1. Search by Case Name

When searching for a specific case by name, use the "case" field. This will retrieve only that specific case. If you do not specify the field, the system will also any decisions in which that case is referenced. The case name must be enclosed in quotation marks.

Query: case= "stanley v. illinois"

Results: Case: STANLEY V. ILLINOIS

2. Search by Case Number

This search will retrieve only the specific case number you enter. Case number citations must be entered with NO spaces or punctuation. You do NOT need to enclose the citation in quotation marks. If you want to search for cases in which a specific case number is referenced you must search the full text of the database (do not use any fields) and enter the citation as: "406 U.S. 205". Be sure to enclose the citation in quotation marks and include spaces and punctuation.

Query: casenum=406US205

Results: Case: WISCONSIN V. YODER

3. Search by Subject

This search allows you to search the full database by subject terms. Any document containing the term or term(s) you searched for will appear in your results list. No fields should be used when performing a search by subject in this database.

Query: "gun control"

Results: Case: HUDDLESTON V. UNITED STATES