As reported here and on Slaw, Google Scholar now allows free searches of a broad range of US case law. There's an interesting debate unfolding on the blogosphere about whether Google's entrance into the legal publishing field is a game changer or not.
To my mind, there's alot to like about Google's surprise move. The coverage of US cases is surprisingly deep given that they're just getting started -- you can search US state cases since 1950, US federal cases since the 1920s, and US Supreme Court cases since 1791. The search screens are in keeping with Google's uncluttered look, it's lightning fast, and the hyperlinking between related documents is approaching what we see in Westlaw Canada, Lexis QL, and CanLII. For each case, a how cited link takes you to how the case has been quoted or discussed in other cases and in articles from law journals.
The linking together of cases and journal articles shows great promise. Google Scholar's search returns legal articles from several online repositories, such as HeinOnline, JSTOR, and Google Books.
Unfortunately, you may hit a "pay wall" when trying to view the full text of some articles. You'll be asked to pay or subscribe to see the full text. The good news for Courthouse library users -- in our resource library and regional library locations, the library subscribes to HeinOnline. So if you're using Google Scholar from a library computer, the search will recognize you as a HeinOnline subscriber and seamlessly take you to the PDF of the article straight from the pages of the law journal.
This additional window into HeinOnline's database of 32,000+ law journal volumes is welcome. I'm a big fan of HeinOnline. Its content coverage continues to expand, it has lots of stuff that isn't on the other major platforms, and it features PDFs that look like copies of the printed page. But it isn't fast. And it doesn't have hyperlinks between documents. With Google Scholar serving as a search layer over top of Hein's content -- that's a promising combination.
