Supreme Court Cases in the United States Reports Collection

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), has made hundreds of historic volumes of U.S. Supreme Court cases available dating from 1790–1991. These cases are published officially in the United States Reports and are now available on GPO’s GovInfo.

"GPO is proud to make these historic volumes of Supreme Court cases available to the American public," said GPO Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern. “The addition of this collection to GovInfo is just one more step toward GPO delivering on its vision of an America Informed."

Some notable cases available in this release include:

• Marbury v. Madison (1803): Establishes judicial review, which gives the Supreme Court the authority to review the actions of other branches of Government to determine whether they are constitutional.
• McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): The Constitution gives the Federal government certain implied powers.
• United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898): The Court affirmed the principle of birthright citizenship in the United States, holding that anyone born within the country's borders, with limited exceptions, is a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parents' nationality or immigration status.
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954): The Court finds that segregated schools in the states are unconstitutional.
• Cooper v. Aaron (1958): The Court rules that States cannot nullify decisions of the Federal courts.
• Mapp v. Ohio (1961): The Court rules that illegally obtained material cannot be used in a criminal trial.
• Gideon v. Wainwright (1963): The Court finds that indigent defendants must be provided representation without charge.
• Miranda v. Arizona (1966): The Court rules that police must advise criminal suspects of their rights under the Constitution to remain silent and consult with a lawyer.
• Loving v. Virginia (1967): Declared state laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional.
• United States v. Nixon (1974): The Court finds that the President is not above the law.

For this release, more than 28,430 individual Supreme Court cases have been published on GovInfo.

The volumes are compiled and published for the Court by the Reporter of Decisions. A volume of the United States Reports also usually contains a list of Justices and officers of the Court during the Term; an allotment of Justices by circuit; announcements of Justices’ investitures and retirements; memorial proceedings for deceased Justices; a cumulative table of cases reported; orders in cases decided in summary fashion; reprints of amendments to the Supreme Court’s Rules and the various sets of Federal Rules of Procedure; a topical index; and a statistical table summarizing case activity for the past three Court Terms.

Searching the United States Reports

GovInfo contains volumes 2 (1790) through 501 (1991) of the United States Reports. Volumes 502 to the present are available from the U.S. Supreme Court .  The early volumes were privately published by the reporter, so the name of the reporter who compiled the volume appears in the United States Reports citation for these “nominative” reporter volumes. In addition to U.S. Supreme Court opinions, volumes 2-4 contain opinions from Pennsylvania, the U.S. Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Circuit Court. Pennsylvania opinions are only available in the full volume. Volume 1 contains only Pennsylvania opinions and is not included in this collection on GovInfo.

United States Reports volumes and individual sections within each volume are available as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. In addition, text files are available for each full volume.

Learn more about the United States Reports, ways to search or create complex queries using metadata fields and values, and various other details to assist in accessing the United States Reports content in GovInfo here.

• The United States Reports are available for full-text searching, and you can also use metadata fields and values to craft specific searches through either the Basic Search or Advanced Search. Some of the unique metadata fields include: Citation, Title, Category Decision Date, Party, Petitioner, Respondent, Organization, United States Reports Volume Number, Reports Volume, Reporter, Volume Term, Subject, Chief Justice, Authoring Justice, and more. See additional fields available for searching the United States Reports.
• United States Reports volumes are available to Browse and download at the Volume and Report levels.
• Use the Basic Search filters located to the left side of search results to target your search further. This example shows a search for the term "Western Union" with filters applied on the United States Reports, the Topic Telecommunications, and the Court Term 1887.
• See this example using Advanced Search functionality for United States Reports documents. Select United States Reports from the drop-down list. Under Search In, select up to five fields, including full-text, over which to search the United States Reports collection. In this example, Chief Justice is Melville Weston Fuller, Reporter is Charles Henry Butler, and Petitioner is Railroad; then click the Search button.
• United States Reports are also searchable using the Citation Search functionality. See this example by selecting United States Reports from the Collection drop-down, selecting U.S. Reports Citation under Volume Number Type, selecting 95 under Volume Number, and typing 571 into the Report Page Number box. Click the Search button and choose the PDF or Detail button.

For more information about the United States Reports, view information on the Help page to learn how to search this important collection on GovInfo. View newer opinions on the U.S. Supreme Court website.