Sources:

Printed Case Summaries:

All cases may be found in publications of the U. S. Supreme Court: United States Reports and USSC Slip Opinions.

Electronic-format Summaries:

Since 1990, the Supreme Court has published its decisions on the Internet as Project Hermes. Those lucky enough to have access, can find electronic-format summaries through the Lexis/Nexis research service of Mead Data Central. On the Internet, complete cases are available through FindLaw, USSC+, and other sources.

These Summaries:

Text provided here was obtained from Project Hermes and printed Supreme Court documents, and on-line sources. Printed documents were transformed into electronic format principally through the use of optical character recognition (OCR) software. Lexis/Nexis, FindLaw, and USSC+ were used to identify useful cases and obtain cross-references.

Acknowledgements:

I wish to thank the Department of Economics at Duke University for its generosity with its resources during my sabbatical (1993-4). I thank and commend the reference and government documents librarians at Perkins Library, Duke University, for their assistance. This project would not have been possible without the sabbatical salary support of Saint Olaf College; I am most greatful for this.

This project is dedicated to my wife, collegaue, and coworker Rebecca Judge who has been supporting me with love and economic analysis since my first course in antitrust.

A.D.B.

Case Numbering Conventions

Cases heard by the Supreme Court will have numbers assigned to them of the form "nnn U.S. mmm" where "nnn" and "mmm" are numbers. The "nnn" provides the volume of United States Reports that the case appears in and "mmm" gives the first page. So, 221 U.S. 1 refers to U.S. Reports, volume 221, page 1.

Some Supreme Court cases have not yet been assigned volume and page numbers by the Court. For these a docket number is provided for identification. Incidentally, it is by docet number that cases are filed in Project Hermes (see above).

Cases heard in U.S. District Court and in the Courts of Appeal follow a different numbering scheme. Below are some examples.

301 F.Supp. 982

This refers to volume 301, page 982, of the Federal Supplement.

651 F.2d 76

The reference is to volume 651, page 76, of the Federal Reporter, 2nd Series.

85 Fed. 271

This refers to volume 85, page 271, of the Federal Reporter (first series).

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