Oregon Legal Research Blog
If you think the U.S. Supreme Court posts official versions of their opinions on their website … hahaha … I have a virtual bridge and an inside WH or Congressional source to sell you for $1B dollars. (Tip: Beware of any source who charges too much or too little and read those disclaimers, e.g. click on “Latest Slip Opinions.“)
If you think that is the only problem with online Supreme Court opinions, guess again: what about their link rot? See e.g.:
NYT article, “In Supreme Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere,” by Adam Liptak, Sept. 23, 2013.
Well, UC Berkeley Law Library’s U.S. Supreme Court Web Citations to the rescue. The UC Berkeley School of Law (not the Supreme Court, sigh) comes up with one solution to the U.S. Supreme Court Web Citations link rot problem:
“The UC Berkeley School of Law Library has partnered with application developer Philip Ardery to address this problem by hosting U.S. Supreme Court Web Citations, a web service that captures snapshots of any web resource cited by the United States Supreme Court immediately after their opinions are issued. The goal of the service is to leverage current web and archiving technologies to minimize the link rot that complicates research as websites change or become unavailable over time.
We invite you to explore the tool and share it with your colleagues who may benefit from it. You can also subscribe to receive updates.
This site was developed by Phil Ardery and is hosted by UC Berkeley Law Library.”
Hat tips to UC Berkeley reference Law Librarian, Marlene Harmon, and the law-lib listserve.