Need Legal Information? There's A Cite For That

November 17, 2009 2:34 p.m. EST

Mountain View, CA (AHN) - Google, the world's most popular search engine, opened a whole new world of search possibilities on Tuesday when it made available full texts of legal opinions from federal and state courts.

Performed through the engine's "Google Scholar" section, searches can be of a specific case or by topic. Rulings can be accessed from federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts.

"We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all," Google engineer Anurag Acharya said on the company's website.

Each case includes links to specific cases cited in the ruling. Clicking on the "How Cited" link for Roe v. Wade, for example, brings up quotes from dozens of other cases in which the landmark abortion case is referenced.

A law degree won't be required to understand the cases.

"As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how readable and accessible these opinions are," Acharya said. Judges "have gone quite a bit out of their way to make complex legal issues easy to follow," including in one case that that employs an imagined good-news/bad-news dialogue between a defendant and his attorney.

Google Scholar also can search a wide range of scholarly writing, including peer-reviewed papers, theses and abstracts.