Legal Information Institute Cornell Law School Ials Digital

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 28, 2025, 2:56 PM

legal information institute cornell law school ials digital

The Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII), founded in 1992, provides free access to US federal and state legal material, including US Supreme Court decisions, decisions of the US Courts of Appeals and other federal... Secondary materials on the site include 'Wex', an open access legal dictionary and encyclopedia, and the 'Introduction to Basic Legal Citation' by Peter W. Martin. We believe that everyone should be able to read and understand the laws that govern them, without cost. We carry out this vision by: We hope you'll learn more about us, and help support our work.

The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a non-profit public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and Tom Bruce,[2][3] LII was the first law site developed on the internet.[4] LII electronically publishes on the Web the U.S. Code, U.S. Supreme Court opinions, Uniform Commercial Code, the US Code of Federal Regulations, several Federal Rules,[5] and a variety of other American primary law materials.[6] LII also provides access to other national and international sources,... Since its inception, the Legal Information Institute has inspired others around the world to develop namesake operations.[6] These services are part of the Free Access to Law Movement. LII was established in 1992 at Cornell Law School by Peter Martin and Tom Bruce with a $250,000 multi-year startup grant from the National Center for Automated Information Research.[9] The LII was originally based...

LII has an extensive collection of law from the Supreme Court of the United States.[15] It hosts all Supreme Court decisions since 1990 and over 600 historic Supreme Court pre-1992 decisions in web form... The LII Supreme Court Bulletin is LII's free Supreme Court email-based subscriber and web-based publication service.[17] The Bulletin provides subscribers with two distinct services.[18] The first is a notification service. LII Bulletin emails subscribers with timely notification of when the US Supreme Court has handed down a decision.[19] It also provides subscribers links to the full opinions of those cases on the LII site.[19] Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute is probably the most expansive legal reference tool online. Useful features include links to every legal topic imaginable, constitutions and codes, court opinions, law by source or jurisdiction (the 50 states and DC), and the American Legal Ethics Library. Key features are The United States Code, U.S.

Supreme Court (1990-date), and New York State Court of Appeals opinions. Cornell's Legal Information Institute is a non-profit site that is free for anyone to use. It hosts Supreme Court cases from 1990 to present in both HTML and PDF and often provides links to users looking to access various federal and state cases, statutes, and regulations. Please note that, when it comes to lower Federal and State cases, LII mostly links users to other sites where they will find the case and does not have the case itself on the... If you have an idea of what you're looking for, such as a party name, you can use the search bar to locate your resource. Another way is to hover over the "Get the Law" tab at the top of the page and selecting "Supreme Court." However, you can also scroll down and find a section titled "Legal Resources,"...

Both links will redirect you to a page with a list of the most recent decisions. Below that list, there will be a text box with a variety of resources, such as the "Archive of Decisions" and "Current Awareness." Using these links, you can easily find those same recent decisions,... See below for an example of the text box. The easiest way to locate Federal Cases is to hover over the "Get the Law" tab then hover over the "Law by Jurisdiction" option. From there, you'll be able to select "Federal Law" and can scroll down to the "Judicial Branch" section, where you'll find links to decisions from the Supreme Court, Federal Court of Appeals, and other... One way to find state cases is to hover over "Get the Law," then "Law by Jurisdiction." You'll then be given the option for "State Law." From there, you'll want to select "Listing by...

You can select a state, which will redirect you to a page with links to various websites that can be accessed to locate state court level opinions. For example, if you select Alabama, you will be redirected to a page that has various links to: Alabama's Constitution and Legislation; their Judiciary; Regulations and Other Agency Materials; and Additional Collections of State... Thank you for wanting to learn more about the Legal Information Institute. The LII is an independently-funded project of the Cornell Law School. We are a small team of technologists who believe that everyone should be able to read and understand the laws that govern them. We employ technology to gather, process, and publish public legal information that is accurate and objective.

Learn more about our operation here. The LII Crawler gathers links to guidance for industry published by federal agencies. Cornell University is committed to making its websites accessible to everyone, including individuals with disabilities. To report a problem or to request an accommodation to access online materials, information, resources, and/or services, please send the website address or URL and the specific problems you have encountered to liiaccessibility@cornell.edu. Web accessibility help requests will receive a reply as soon as possible; no need to read further. The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a research and electronic publishing activity of the Cornell Law School, founded in 1992 by co-directors Thomas R.

Bruce and Peter W. Martin (now Director and Director Emeritus, respectively). Its work is supported by the National Center for Automated Information Research, a growing number of corporate sponsors, and the Keck Foundation through grants and funded joint studies. The Institute publishes electronic versions of core materials in numerous areas of the law both online and packaged for download -- ranging from the Constitution to the U.S. Code. It maintains this Internet site and its many resources.

It builds software tools assisting Internet users and publishers. And through workshops and consultation it works to aid others who want to explore the full potential of electronic publication and communication. Why has Cornell Law School established such a program and what kinds of activities has the Institute undertaken, both on the Internet and via other electronic means? For more on these and related questions, click here. Since May of 1990, the Supreme Court has released its decisions to the Internet. Since 1993 the LII has provided access to those decisions.

Initially the LII provided a hypertext front-end and search engine for decisions archived at Case Western Reserve University; it now receives the decisions directly, mounting them on a dedicated server. The LII also offers a growing collection of selected historic decisions. The LII also offers the U.S. Constitution, and biographical material on all members of the Supreme Court (including links to the recent opinions written by each justice). Thanks for your interest in the Legal Information Institute (LII). You can learn a little about our organization below.

And when you're done, learn about our staff because, believe it or not, it takes the hard work of real people to maintain and improve a site as big as ours. The main expense in running a website is not technology, even on a site that offers more than 500,000 pages to 30 million unique visitors every year. Instead, more than 80% of our budget goes to salaries for our small staff, and to stipends for the law and computer science students who work with us. Almost all the remainder is spent on computing facilities, which we tailor to demand using cloud-computing technology. Less than 5% goes to administrative overhead. Because our core staff is small and our activity level is high, it is hard to tell you precisely how this money is spent.

How much of the time that Dan Nagy spent working on a server should be allocated to the WEX legal encyclopedia? To the collection of Supreme Court decisions? How often do Dave Shetland's code libraries get used for the Code of Federal Regulations, and how often for the US Code? How many red pencils did Sara Frug use up editing the Federal Rules? These are hard questions to answer, and maybe not so important so long as you understand that nearly all of your money buys talent. We try to apply that talent as effectively and efficiently as we can.

Legal Information Institute Cornell Law School Ials Digital

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The Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII), Founded In 1992, Provides

The Legal Information Institute (LII) Is A Non-profit Public Service

LII Has An Extensive Collection Of Law From The Supreme

Supreme Court (1990-date), And New York State Court Of Appeals

Both Links Will Redirect You To A Page With A