Federal Rules

For full-text access to either the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or Federal Rules of Evidence, you can go to the following sites:

• The U. S. Courts website has a section on Federal Rulemaking that provides links to the Rules in Effect for the titles listed above. The documents are in full-text pdf format and are current as of December 1, 2005. This site also provides links to proposed rules amendments, pending rules amendments, meetings and hearings, local court rules, the rulemaking process, and pending legislation.

• The Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell University provides the text of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (effective December 1, 2005), the Federal Rules of Evidence (effective December 1, 2003), and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (effective December 1, 2005). Keyword searching using Boolean operators (and/or) is available. You can move through the documents by section, page by page, or by occurrence of the keyword search terms.

• GPO Access provides access to federal rules through the United States Code, Title 28, Appendix. The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence (as amended to January 2, 2001) are provided in text-based format and arranged by sections. There is no searching capability so you must scroll through the documents.

• The US-RULES database on Westlaw contains the the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence, and additional rules current through amendments received to October 12, 2005. Coverage includes the version of court rules as they appear in the U.S.C.A. and appendices.