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"[USSC+ CD-ROM] is a model of intelligent development of a CD-ROM."
- The Economist Review of Books & Multimedia, December 1996
The U.S. Supreme Court
on a Silver Platter |
Purchase the next two versions of USSC+ CD and save $10!!
(See online order form for details)
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Whether you are an attorney, a paralegal, a librarian, or a layperson, you should be aware that a revolution has occurred in legal publishing, and that access to the full text of thousands of decisions of the United States Supreme Court no longer involves hundreds of volumes containing hundreds of thousands of pages and costing substantial sums in initial purchase and upkeep.
Now, modern technology permits these decisions to be delivered on a single disc, and to be searched electronically in seconds. The goal of the USSC+ CD-ROM Project is to provide such a research tool, and to do so at a price affordable even for the single legal practitioner or layperson. |
PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS
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Scope |
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Version
2005-2 contains
27,109 cases, including complete coverage from
1792 to present plus some
80
additional earlier leading cases dating as far back as 1793.
It contains more than
600,000 pages
of text.
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Supplementation |
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All registered purchasers of USSC+ CD-ROM will automatically be notified whenever a new replacement disc is available. Return of outdated discs is not required. Instead, we encourage the user to give them to colleagues so that they too may experience the revolution!
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Cost |
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Single-user license: Initial purchase price $79, plus $3 packing and shipping.
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Unlimited network license: Initial purchase price $495, plus $3 packing and shipping.
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Optional semi-annual updates (same for both license types): $79 plus $3 packing and shipping.
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Minimum Hardware Requirements |
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Windows PC computer
with at least 4MB RAM and at least 5 MB of available hard disk
space.
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Software Platform |
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Folio Views 3.11.4
by Folio Corporation, Provo, Utah -- network-ready,
cross-platform, client/server, multi-user software. |
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SOFTWARE FEATURES
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Indexed full-text searching |
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Find words or phrases using Boolean operators, "wildcards," proximity searches, word stems, or thesaurus operators. For most searches, retrieval is instantaneous.
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Case classifications |
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Our editors have also greatly enhanced searching efficiency by categorizing each case according to a list of over 1000 searchable "subject matter groups" which may be incorporated, alone or in combination with other elements, in the search query. These groups include legal concepts (e.g., "racial discrimination", "limitations"), general areas of activity ("education", "health care", "publishing"), categories of individuals (attorneys, physicians, Indians) opinion types (lead opinion, concurrence, dissent), and the names of opinion authors.
Incorporation of subject matter groups into a search query can substantially narrow the focus of a search. Thus, a search for the group "weapons" will locate 25 cases dealing with that subject, but using both the group "weapons" and the group "schools" will lead the researcher directly to the Lopez decision handed down during the 1994 term.
Likewise, groups searches may be mixed with word of phrase searches. Thus, although the disc contains five decisions categorized as involving "crime victims", the search would be narrowed to one (Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. New York State Crime Victims Board) if the query also specified the search phrase "Son of Sam".
Since opinions are also separately categorized by opinion author, a search employing the groups "o'connor" and "abortion" will immediately isolate the 12 opinions in which Justice O'Connor has expressed her views on the subject of abortion
While the "subject matter groups" system is not nearly as detailed as other systems of legal taxonomy -- e.g., West Publishing Company's Key Number System -- it has the great advantages of being portable (an outline of West's Key Numbers occupies thousands of pages) and "in the clear" -- i.e., expressed in common English, not in abstract decimal numbers.
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Hypertext linking |
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Besides the power of word, phrase, and subject matter group searching, one of the greatest advantages of doing legal research electronically, rather than with hundreds of printed volumes, is ease of "navigation" within and between various decisions. Imbedded in the decisions reported in USSC+ CD-ROM are more than half a million hypertext "link" symbols (GO>). "Double clicking" on a symbol will instantly transport the user to another position in the database, depending on the nature of the link:
Footnote links -- activating a footnote link (e.g., "{GO>8}") brings the text of the footnote in question to the screen.
Intra-case links -- references in an opinion to other pages of the same decision (e.g., "post, p. GO>235") are likewise linked. Similar intra-case links are implemented for various subdivisions of the lead opinion, as described in the Court's Syllabus, and for the various separate concurring and dissenting opinions of individual Justices.
Inter-case links -- when an opinion cites another decision (e.g., "See also GO>Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, GO>125 (1973)), a link is provided to the beginning of the cited case (the first GO> in the above example) and/or to the specific page specified in the citation (the second GO>). We know of no competing product which implements hypertext links for the latter, "loc cit.," type of citation. Rather, other products link to the top of the cited case, and the user must thereafter manually find the particular page cited.
After any of the above-described links has been activated, the user may return to the original location simply by pressing the F5 key or selecting "Backtrack" from the Toolbelt.
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Electronic Table of Contents |
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Selecting the "Contents" feature by pressing [Ctrl]-t or activating the appropriate Toolbelt selection presents a new screen which lists the cases contained on the disc in reverse chronological order (i.e., newest cases first). When a search is being performed, the Contents screen contains only cases which meet the criteria of the search. Thus, after a search is performed for cases assigned the subject matter groups "affirmative action" and "Thomas", the Contents screen will list only those opinions in which affirmative action has been addressed and Justice Thomas has written an opinion.
By double-clicking on a listing found on the Contents screen, the user may instantly access the case in question or any of its various subparts. Alternatively, a list of the cases meeting the search criteria may be obtained by printing the Contents screen.
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Annotations |
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By utilizing a personalized "shadow file", a user may add his or her own gloss to the database without affecting the original file. Customized highlighters may be employed to emphasize passages of text, extensive notations may be attached to particular words or paragraphs, or multiple bookmarks may be inserted to facilitate resumption of research at a latter date. Notations and highlighted passages may themselves be searched separately.
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Output |
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Entire cases or selected portions thereof may be copied to a brief-in-progress, printed, or saved to disk (output filters for Microsoft Word and WordPerfect wordprocessor formats are provided).
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Help |
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USSC+ CD-ROM comes with extensive on-line documentation, and help may also be obtained via our toll-free number. |
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