Search our database of Supreme Court Order Lists
Database coverage, search tips, and other informationThis database contains actions of the Supreme Court as described in their regular Monday order lists. The database begins with the first order list issued in October of 1998 and continues through the most recent order list issued by the Court.
Most importantly, order lists contain information on which cases the Court agrees to hear (cases for which the Court "grants certiorari") or decides to let stand as they were decided in a lower court (cases in which the Court "denies certiorari"). Other information contained in order lists includes a variety of decisions about procedural matters, about how cases are to be heard and argued, about the filing of briefs, and about other administrative matters.
The form above permits you to search using as much information as you know about a particular case. Putting more information into the form further restricts the search. For example:
- Filling in one of the party name fields with Smith would retrieve all cases in which either of the parties was named Smith.
- Filling in one party name field with Smith and the second with Teachers would get all cases in which one party was named Smith and the other contained the word Teachers
- Filling in the party name Smith and the date fields with 01/01/99 and 01/31/99 would fetch all Smith cases from January of 1999, but
- Filling in only the date fields with 01/01/99 and 01/31/99 would get all January 1999 cases regardless of party name.
- Filling in only the "from" field gets all cases after that date.
- Filling in only the "to" field gets all cases before that date.
- Since a docket number uniquely identifies a case, no further information is needed if you make use of a docket number in searching.
- Note that all dates should be entered in the format MM/DD/YY, eg. 12/31/99 for the 31st of December, 1999.
- Checking the "substring search" box causes your search terms to be matched if they occur as part of a word, eg. Smith would retrieve Smith, Smithsonian, Naismith, etc.