Your Place for Supreme Court Records & Briefs – Pic of the Week

Today’s Pic of the Week features our collection of Supreme Court Records and Briefs.

As I was showing off our closed stacks collection to the Law Library’s two newest reference librarians, Latia Ward and Janeen Williams, it struck me that this vast collection might make for an interesting blog post.

Debbie Keysor, now Chief of the Public Services Division, wrote a post in 2012 on the how and when of binding Supreme Court Records and Briefs.

This post focuses on the results of all her (and prior and subsequent government documents librarians) hard work.

At present there are 563 volumes of the official reporter of U.S. Supreme Court opinions.  Approximately 80 cases are granted plenary review out of thousands more that the Court disposes of each term.

And with each of these cases comes briefs:  these days, lots and lots of briefs.

So for the 530-some volumes of the United States Reports for which the Law Library has been binding briefs, we have 26,521 volumes of these Supreme Court documents.

For example, the photo above depicts the briefs for a single case published in volume 539 of the United States Reports for the 2002 term.  Six of these volumes contain only amicus curiae briefs.

The Supreme Court itself has the most complete collection of these materials.  But, as access to their library is limited, we hope to see you soon.