There are different levels of courts, and they go by different names in each jurisdiction. A case is first brought in the trial court. The losing party may appeal to the appellate court. The losing party in the appellate court may appeal to the highest court.
On the federal level, the trial courts are known as Federal District Courts, the appellate courts are the Courts of Appeals, and the highest court is the U.S. Supreme Court.
For New York Courts:
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In New York, the trial courts (also known as "Courts of Original Instance") are Supreme Courts and other local courts (such as District Courts), the appellate courts are the Appellate Division, and the highest court is the Court of Appeals. See chart on left. New York is unusual in designating its lowest court as the "Supreme Court". In other states the trial courts may be known as "Superior Court", the appellate court as "Appellate Court" and the highest court as the "Supreme Court". You can see an example of this in Connecticut.
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Case opinions are published in reporters. Many cases are not published (mostly trial court cases). Official reporters are considered authoritative. These are usually published by the government itself or by a private publisher working under a government contract. An official reporter is “official” because the relevant government body or court system has adopted it as an official publication of cases. Knowing the "offical" reporter is important for proper citation format (a.k.a. "bluebooking"). All other reporters of the same cases are considered unofficial. Unofficial reporters are published by commercial publishers and are usually much timelier than official reporters.
Cases are available online through fee-based services such as Bloomberg Law, Lexis, and Westlaw. They are available for free at court web sites, Google Scholar, Caselaw Access Project and other legal portals such as Findlaw and Legal Information Institute.
TYPES OF REPORTERS:
Federal (online and Reading Room)
Supreme Court:
United States Reports (official)
Supreme Court Reporter (West, unofficial)
United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer’s Edition (Lexis, unofficial)
Appellate and District Courts:
Federal Reporter (appellate court decisions) (West, official)
Federal Supplement (district court decisions) (West, official)
Federal Appendix (“unpublished” court decisions) (West, unofficial)
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West’s National Reporter System divides the country into regions and publishes the decisions of the appellate courts of the states in each region. See map at left. Regional Reporters – Atlantic, North Eastern, North Western, Pacific, South Eastern, Southern, South Western. (Please note that these regions were divided many years ago, and thus are not entirely intuitive—for instance, the area covered by the North Western Reporter mostly includes Midwestern states).
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State Reporters – Many states have their own official reporters. Cases from states that do not have their own reporters can be found in the Regional Reporters. Some states, such as NY, have both official and unofficial reporters. In this library, we rely on the Regional Reporters for states other than New York.
Subject Reporters (online and Law Classified (not current), by subject) – cases on specific areas of the law such as bankruptcy, education and securities regulation. Cases are published chronologically in multi-volume sets. In print, between new volumes, the most recent cases are supplemented in paperback books, called “advance sheets.” (One of the main advantages of many electronic systems is the nearly immediate updating they provide.)
Case law is available online via subscription database including, but not limited to Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg Law. There are also free alternatives including, but not limited to, court webpages and Google Scholar.
Depending on the source that you are searching, there are several options for locating cases on a specific topic.
When you locate a case that is helpful on West or Lexis, you can then use the subject classifications (which are in numbered paragraphs in the beginning of the case, called "headnotes") in that case to find other helpful cases.
