LibGuides: Law & Legal: Case Law

Arizona State Courts

Arizona Judicial Branch
Links to Arizona Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Superior Courts, and Municipal Courts.

Links to state and federal courts in Arizona.

Public Access to Arizona Court Records
Search the dockets for most superior, municipal, and justice courts in Arizona. Cases from 153 out of 180 courts are included. The superior courts in Maricopa and Pima counties are not included.
Maricopa County Superior Court
Information on Superior and Justice courts, adult probation, juvenile probation, and more. Click on "Get Case Information" to search dockets back to 1987.
PIma County Superior Court
Links to court departments, self-service forms, the clerk's office, court records, and more.

Free Case Law and Federal Court Websites

American case law relies on precedence (using an earlier case that argues the point you want to make.) Most published case law comes from the state or federal Courts of Appeals (also called appellate courts) and the Supreme Court, because those opinions explain in detail why the judges ruled a certain way. Some Federal District court cases are published and are available to researchers. Arizona Superior Court judges do not issue lengthy opinions, and Superior Court decisions generally are not available.

LLRX Court Rules, Forms & Dockets
Links to more than 14,000 sources for state and federal court rules, forms and dockets from LLRX, a resource for law librarians and legal researchers.
Other Federal Courts
The United States district courts are the trial courts of the federal court system. District courts have jurisdiction to hear nearly all categories of federal cases, including both civil and criminal matters. There are 94 federal judicial districts, including at least one district in each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Three territories -- the Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands -- also have district courts that hear federal cases.
Oyez Project: U.S.Supreme Court Multimedia
Provides transcripts and audio files of Supreme Court cases. For selected cases argued before 1979, and for nearly all cases argued after 1979, the site provides unofficial versions of the transcripts, along with the audio whenever available.
Supreme Court of the United States
Search dockets, oral arguments, briefs, court rules, court opinions,and more at the Court's official website.
United States Bankruptcy Court - Arizona
This website offers forms, publications, information for debtors and creditors, court rules, and other information about bankruptcy. The court hears cases in Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Yuma and Prescott.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
The Ninth Circuit includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Washington. Headquarters is in San Francisco.
United States District Court - Arizona District Court
This federal court hears cases in Phoenix, Tucson, Flagstaff, Yuma and Prescott. The website provides information on judges, court opinions, rules, and other topics.
Westlaw Next
Westlaw is a major resource for case law, statutes, and other legal publications. Users can locate information through our PVCC subscription that is not available on other Internet sources.