Free Legal Research Resources - United States

This guide contains selected, free, online United States federal and state legal research materials.

Many lawyers have access to paid databases. Yet, combining paid and free resources, can help them to avoid potentially expensive searches. According to a 2020 Legal Technology Survey Report, nearly 60% of lawyers “say they regularly use free online resources to conduct legal research.”

For researchers without access to paid databases, the following resources may be essential. Legal research is often more effective when using a local law library. To learn more about law libraries throughout the United States, visit:

Federal Law & Gov't Docs

Range of Materials

GovInfo provides public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.

LII provides open access to legal materials. Resources include: annotated version of the constitution, federal statutes, Supreme Court decisions, CFR, and more.

The Constitution

Statutes and Legislative Materials

Statutes and legislative materials are becoming available freely online, with increasing frequency. Free resources can be a great starting place for statutory research. However, always make sure you confirm your findings in an authoritative version of the law.

This site contains government documents and information, including: an annotated constitution, legislation, committee reports, congressional records, and treaty documents. Congress.gov is an excellent source for information on in-progress bills.

This website offers a wealth of federal government information. It includes links to the websites of departments, and agencies and branches of government. This can be useful for finding statutory and legislative materials.

The Office of the Law Revision Counsel offers the most recent version of the U.S. Code. The website allows users to search the code. The website also provides access to session laws.

The Library of Congress' American Memory collection includes Congressional Records up to 1875. It can be searched or browsed.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court website includes full text of certain materials, including many opinions. It also suggests resources for finding briefs.

The American Bar Association provides full text of briefs from many U.S. Supreme Court cases. This includes cases that have not yet been heard.

This blog covers Supreme Court cases. It compiles the documents for most major Supreme Court cases including petitions and amicus briefs.

This website contains primary and secondary materials related to the U.S. Supreme Court. Of particular note, Oyez.com offers audio recordings of selected oral arguments.

Case Law and Court Documents

Federal case law and court documents are often available freely online, particularly recently decided cases. Check the website of the deciding court for digital copies of their cases. In addition, the following resources provide free case law.

The Caselaw Access Project provides access to U.S. law, digitized from the Harvard Law Library collection. U.S. court decisions are freely available online, in a consistent format.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts collects links to the federal court websites. Digital copies of recent opinions are available there.

Court listener is an alert tool for the U.S. judicial system that is updated daily. It includes all precedential opinions from the Supreme Court and Circuit Courts. Non-precedential opinions are also included, except from the D.C. Circuit. This site also offers a citator.

The RECAP archive contains free access to federal district and bankruptcy court documents from PACER. While not all documents on PACER will be available here, it is a good starting place.

Case Validation

Case involves ensuring that cases have not been overruled or negatively impacted by later caselaw. Case searching and retrieval through free databases is increasingly achievable. However, paid services are still most often used to validate cases. Tools that facilitate this case validation process are called citators. The best way to access free citators is through state and local public law libraries. To find a state or local law library visit:

Executive Documents

The White House website contains presidential documents, including executive orders, presidential memoranda, and proclamations.

This site provided by the National Archives contains presidential compilations starting with Former President Reagan.

This website collects data, documents and media related to the American Presidency. The collection includes inaugural addresses, executive orders and proclamations, and more. The project is hosted by the University of California Santa Barbara.

This site provided by the National Archives contains an online version of an out-of-print publication. The Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders ran from April 13, 1945 to January 20, 1989.

State Law

State Statutes and Regulations

Many states and localities publish some or all of their legislative materials on their website. Consider starting with the website of the state or locality in question. Remember, materials on official government websites, may not be the “official copy.” The National Conference of State Legislators provides a list of State Legislative Websites.

The sources below provide alternatives for hard-to-find state materials.

Here, the Sunlight Foundation provides access to state legislative information including pending legislation and votes.

State Case Law and Court Documents

Courts are increasingly making their materials freely available online, frequently via the court website. This is particularly true for state Supreme Courts. When looking for state case law, consider starting with the website of the deciding court. The National Center for State Courts provides a list of state court websites.

The Caselaw Access Project provides access to U.S. law, digitized from the Harvard Law Library collection. U.S. court decisions are freely available online, in a consistent format.

Treaties

U.S. Treaties

Several government-sponsored websites provide the full-text of U.S. treaties on the web. Refer to the list below for date ranges for each sources.

Treaty documents are available for all treaties submitted to the Senate since the 94th Congress. Treaties submitted prior to the 94th Congress are included if they were pending in 1975.

Foreign & International Law

For free resources on foreign and international law, see our foreign and international law guide:

Secondary Sources

Journal Search & Legal Opinions - Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers access to many legal documents including patents, legal opinions and journals. Use the search box below and select the appropriate options from the dropdown menu at the top left of your screen.

Journals

While many journals are only available through paid databases, high-quality, open access journals are increasingly common. The following sources collect freely available journal articles.

SSRN offers a large collection of working papers, both pre- and post-publication. These papers cover a range of academic subjects. The Legal Scholarship Network specifically collects law related papers.

This database collects open access journals on all topics. The legal sub-category contains 139 journals.

Many JSTOR articles are only available to individuals at institutions with a JSTOR subscription. However, some are openly accessible for free. JSTOR partnered with leading presses to add open access ebooks to their collection. Thousands of titles are now available with more new titles continually added. Publishers include University of California Press, Cornell University Press, NYU Press, and University of Michigan Press.