Constitution Annotated (Congress.gov) contains legal analysis and interpretation of the U.S.Constitution, based primarily on U.S. Supreme Court case law.
Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII) contains an updated edition of the Congressional Research Service's U.S. Constitution Annotated with hypertext interpretation of the CRS text. It links to U.S. Supreme Court opinions, the U.S. Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations, and allows for navigation through search, breadcrumbs, linked footnotes, and a tables of contents.
The Founders' Constitution (an online equivalent to the print edition) organizes original source documents according to constitutional provision.
The following are some of the top sources for federal statutes and legislative history. Note that federal statutes on free sites are typically unannotated, and you should check that they are the current version. A number of these resources have popular name tables, which are very helpful if you only know the popular name of the statute (e.g. The Americans with Disabilities Act).
Congress.gov contains a wide range of government documents, including legislation, committee reports, congressional records, and treaty documents.
GovInfo is the free, official source of federal documents by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), including the official version of the United States Code, published versions of bills, and history of bills. You can browse by individual code titles, or search by popular name, citation, or a word or phrase.
The Office of the Law Revisions Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives provides a current version of the U.S. Code that is searchable and has a Popular Name Tool.
The U.S. Senate Reference website includes a "How To . . . " page with excellent guides on how to find online materials related to the legislative process and the Senate.
The LII's U.S. Code resource provides a text of the U.S. Code that can be searched by citation or natural language, and has a Popular Name Table.
GovTrack, a non-governmental website, is a free research tool that tracks legislative activity and provides statistics (e.g. voting records) and other information on federal legislation and members of Congress. It offers customized tracking alerts.
Legislative History Resources - While there are paid databases that are useful for legislative history research (e.g. ProQuest Legislative Insight), much of this information is available for free online if you know where to look. Going through the legislative history research steps and sources is beyond the scope of this guide, but here are a few great research guides:
The following are some of the top free resources for researching administrative law. There are many great resources, but because this is not a comprehensive guide to researching administrative law, make sure to take a look at the other research guides noted below.
The Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) is an unofficial web version of the CRF that is updated daily. The e-CFR's Getting Started guide gives detailed information about using the eCFR. The e-CFR is also available on the Legal Information Institute (LII)'s CFR page, which includes hyperlinked CFR sections.
Regulations.gov contains federal proposed and final rules, as well as other documents open for public comment. For an introduction to running searches and finding administrative documents, watch the short Welcome to the new Regulations.gov video.
New regulations and proposed changes to regulations are first published on FederalRegister.gov. For details, see the Federal Register Tutorial: What it is and How to Use It guide.
FindLaw's Code of Federal Regulations page allows you to search by CFR section, subpart or keyword.
Agency websites
Agency websites have an abundance of free materials and can be a great place to begin administrative law research. To find an agency, search USA/Directory.
There are numerous online sources for free U.S. case law. It is important to note that many of the finding aids and editorial enhancements on Lexis and Westlaw are not available through these free resources. Also, Lexis and Westlaw have citators (Shepard's and KeyCite) which enable users to check whether a case has been overruled or negatively impacted by later cases. Reliable and free online citators are not yet available.
The U.S. Courts website has both a Federal Court Finder and a Court Locator map that link to federal appellate and trial court websites. Many of these court websites have opinions, briefs, and other case filings.
The Caselaw Access Project, a project of Harvard's Library Innovation Lab, is making all U.S. case law freely available online. You can run keyword or advanced searches, or browse individual volumes. The Caselaw Access Project's collection is available via an API and bulk download, which can be very useful for research involving large case law datasets.
The Free Law Project, a nonprofit, provides access to a range of free legal materials through online tools and archives, including Court Listener and RECAP:
Court Listener is Free Law Project's online archive of legal opinions, filings, and judge data. Enter your keywords or citation into the search box on the homepage, or click on Advanced Search for a more focused search. Court Listener's opinion pages have a "Cited By" feature that provides links to other available citing opinions, an "Authorities" list with links to the opinions cited, and "Related Opinions" that cover similar topics.
Free Law Project's RECAP Project is a searchable online archive of millions of free PACER (the federal courts' online filing system) documents, including court opinions. The court opinions collected through the RECAP Project can be accessed through the RECAP Archive. Note that RECAP is both an online archive and a free extension for Firefox and Chrome (the extension enables dockets or PDFs purchased through PACER to be added to the Recap Archive).
FindLaw's Cases and Codes database includes both federal and state cases. Note that coverage varies depending on the court. Search by keyword or citation. The Opinion Summaries Archive provides field (including legal topic and industry) and full-text searching for U.S. Supreme Court, circuit courts, and selected district and state court opinions.
Justia.com has a database of federal case law with broad coverage, which varies by court. Search by keyword or citation in the search box or browse opinions by court and year.
Google Scholar has an extensive database of federal cases, including U.S Supreme Court, appellate, district, tax, and bankruptcy courts. Click on the "case law" radio button and enter your search terms. To pull up advanced search features, click on the menu button at the top left-hand side of the screen; use the facets on the left-hand side of the screen to narrow your results. The Library of Congress has a short tutorial on using Google Scholar for case searches.
Other Resources:
Presidential documents, including executive orders, proclamations, and other signed presidential materials are available on several free online sources.
The Federal Register's Executive Orders, Proclamations, and Other Presidential Documents pages contain presidential documents going back to 1994.
The National Archives has a Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders page with presidential documents dating back to 1945 and online editions of the Public Papers of the Presidents.
Govinfo's Compilation of Presidential Documents page has the weekly and daily official publications of materials released by the White House Press Secretary.
The White House website links to executive orders, proclamations, presidential memoranda, and other presidential documents.
A searchable database of presidential documents hosted by UC Santa Barbara, with presidential documents ranging from Executive Orders to President Trump's tweets.