Search Tips

To search for a case: Use quotes to make your results more precise. Example: "NRDC v. Costle"

To search within one or more subjects, enter a search term and then filter the results by subject.

Your searches can use the following operators.

Operator	Description
AND	Find books that contain multiple words you specify. Example: criminal AND intent AND negligence finds all books that contain those three terms.
OR	Find books that contain any of several words. Example: alimony OR maintenance Example: (dog OR cat) AND bite Example: *"hydraulic frac" OR fracking OR hydrofracking**
"	When you put a word or phrase in quotes, the results include only books with the same words in the same order as the ones inside the quotes. You can use quotes to get more precise results when you search for cases. In general, use quotes only if you’re looking for an exact case or word or phrase; otherwise you may inadvertently exclude helpful results. Example: "NRDC v. Costle" Example: "rule against perpetuities"
-	When you use a dash before a word, the search engine excludes books that contain that word from your results. Example: tort -intentional
?	The question mark is a wildcard that matches exactly one letter. Example: he? matches three-letter words starting with he, such as hem, hen, and so on.
*	The asterisk is a wildcard character that matches zero or more letters. Example: he* matches any word starting with he, such as he, her, hello, helicopter, and so on. Wildcard matching works only within a single word. For example, mth matches method but not meet there.
NEAR/n	Find a term within n words of another term. Examples: Searching on dog NEAR/4 bite returns results where dog is within 4 words of bite. Searching on covenant NEAR/3 comp* returns results where covenant is within 3 words of words beginning with comp. Searching on (dog OR cat) NEAR/3 bite returns results where dog or cat is within 3 words of bite. Searching on dog NEAR bite returns results where dog is within 10 words of bite. (If you don't specify a number, the default of 10 is used.) Note: Each word in your NEAR search is highlighted in your search results. For example, if you search on dog NEAR/4 bite, the system correctly finds only chapters where dog is within 4 words of bite. Additionally, the words dog and bite are highlighted throughout the search result chapters, even when dog is not within 4 words of bite.