State Judicial Branch
I. What’s What in Health Policy >> B. State Government >> State Judicial Branch (last update 11.2.15)
Overview
- National Center for State Courts
- Judgepedia. State Courts. Portal to state courts
- Harvard Law School. “Free the Law” project is digitizing virtually every state, federal, territorial and tribal judicial decision since colonial times. Complete state results will become publicly available this fall (2015) for California and New York, and the entire library will be online in 2017. The cases will be available at www.ravellaw.com. The project will also offer some sophisticated techniques for visualizing relations among cases and searching for themes. This will allow users to trace how a case went from state to federal appeals courts (including Supreme Court if pertinent), along with companion cases involving the same issue.
State Court Sites
The link above provides links to state courts sites compiled through www.statelocalgov.net. The following describes what links are provided: The judicial branch of state government interprets and applies existing law to cases brought before its courts. Many states, such as Massachusetts and Utah, now have unified court systems that include a Supreme Court, courts of appeals, juvenile or family courts, and district or trial courts located throughout a state.
The main state judicial site may feature court calendars and procedures, news, biographies of judges, directories, forms, court records, such as opinions and case reports, and information on how to file claims or start a proceeding for a divorce or to settle a financial dispute. There may also be probate courts, small claims courts, information for or about juries, and lists of lawyers. The state’s law library may be included in the main judicial site, or may have a site of its own.
Often county and municipal courts that are not operated by the state are accessible via a state’s judicial website. The State and Local Government on the Net Directory lists only the main state judicial site and law library.
Disclaimer: The State and Local Government on the Net Directory is not affiliated with any branch or level of government. Although these pages are updated frequently, they are not as up-to-date as the information contained on individual state and local government servers.