SMU  

Underwood Law Library
Dedman School of Law  

Federal Tax Research:
Court Decisions & Briefs

[Commercial links in teal only accessible to subscribers]           
[Last reviewed  Apr. 30 2008]

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Tax Court
  U.S. Tax Court. Full and memorandum opinions from September 1995.  Summary opinions from January 2001.  Also, Tax Court rules, forms, and other information. Includes keyword searching of opinions under the "Opinions Search" tab at home page.  At the search page, click on "help" to see more details. For more on summary opinions of the Tax Court, see I.R.C. § 7463.
  Tax Court decisions are available on Westlaw and LexisNexis (requires ID).
  Tax Court Briefs. (Westlaw)  Selected briefs beginning in 1999. Commercial database requires password or credit card.
  U.S. Board of Tax Appeals Reports (v.1-47) and U.S. Tax Court Reports (v.9-  ) in US Federal-Judicial collection (LLMC-Digital)  (restricted to law school network or VPN access).
Actions on Decisions  (IRS)  Downloadable from 1997-1 forward.  Listed by number with short title. (PDF format)

U.S. Supreme Court
  Supreme Court of the United States home page.
  U.S. Reports bound volumes (US Sup. Ct.).  Begins with vol. 502 (Oct. 1991-  ). PDF files.
  See LexisNexis (from 1979) and Westlaw (selected from 1870) for U.S. Supreme Court briefs.
♦ 
U.S. Supreme Court Opinions (Findlaw).  FindLaw's searchable database of the Supreme Court decisions since 1893 (U.S. Supreme Court Decisions: US Reports v.150- , 1893- ). Browse by year and US Reports volume number and searchable by citation, case title and full text. 
♦  AltLaw Alpha  (Columbia & U. Colo. Law Schools).  Free, full-text searchable.  Quotation marks used for searching phrases.  U.S. Supreme Court cases from 1781; coverage of U.S. Court of Appeals cases varies by circuit, but most of the selected cases are from the last forty years.  See "Coverage" link for details.  Results list in reverse chronological order or relevance order.

Other Federal Courts
  U.S. Court of Federal Claims   Decisions beginning in July 1997. Keyword search or chronological listing.
  Links to federal courts(Findlaw)  Search by case name, citation, keyword. 
  Federal Courts Finder(Emory)

Commercial Databases including Decisions from Federal Courts
  LexisNexis  Commercial database requires password.  (This is the Law school link.)
  LexisONE - Some searching for free after registration; also credit card charging for documents.
  Westlaw  Commercial database requires password or credit card. (Law school link.)
  LOIS  Commercial database requires subscription/password.
  VersusLaw  Commercial database requires subscription/password.