HIST 270: Latina/o History

Legal sources vary in their availability to student researchers. Court decisions (especially from federal and appeals courts) are often available while court transcripts, briefs, etc. may only be available in more specialized circumstances. If you are trying to find information about a particular case, we strongly advise speaking with a librarian.

Most of Oberlin's digital access to court decisions comes through NexisUni. 

If you have a citation for a case, copy/paste the citation into the Nexis Uni's Legal Module. If you don't get any relevant results, try simplifying the citation to focus only on the two parties to the case. If you simplify, double check that any results you find are from the correct court and date. 

NexisUni provides access to decisions from the following California cases:

• California Supreme Court opinions from 1850
• Appeals Court opinions from 1905
• Superior Court opinions from 1934

For information from cases that never made it to Appeals Court level, you may need search local court records directly. Often, visiting the court in person is reuqired. Find contact information for California courts, organized by county, from courtreference.com. 

Decisions

NexisUni provides full text access to decisions from the following U.S. Courts relevant to this class:  

• United States Supreme Court - 1760-present
• United States 9th Circuit District Court Cases - 1912-present 
• United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals - 1853-present
• United States 10th Circuit District Court Cases - 1912-present 
• United States 10th Circuit Court of Appeals - 1863-present

The boundaries of the U.S. federal circuit courts have changed over time. The Federal Judicial Center offers an interactive map showing the boundaries of each circuit in any given year. 

Oral Argument, Records, Briefs

Oyez provides audio and transcript of oral arguments from the U.S. Supreme Court beginning in 1955. Oral argument transcript prior to 1955 is only rarely available. 

Some Supreme Court records and briefs (documents submitted to the court for consideration in the case) are published in books or microforms under the title "United States Supreme Court Records & Briefs." Oberlin's digital access to these titles is patchwork, but if you consult Search.Libraries for that phrase you may get lucky and find a digital copy of this publication from a year corresponding to your case. HathiTrust may also include digital copies of briefs held in libraries as individual books.