How to Link to a Google Scholar Case
Mar 31st, 2010 | By Josh Camson | Category: 2010 Tech Guide, FeaturedIt’s no secret that Google Scholar now includes court opinions and legal journals. The legal journal articles are just search results that will redirect you to the hosting site. However, a large number of the court opinions are hosted right in Google Scholar. The only problem is that linking to these opinions is not the clearest thing in the world. For instance, let’s say we do a search for the commerce clause, my favorite of the Constitutional clauses.
Our first result is United States v. Lopez. Once we click on it, the case comes up. However, our search terms are highlighted throughout. Not the most attractive thing if you want to send this case to someone else.
The problem is the link. Right now the address bar has “http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=18310045251039502778&q=commerce+clause&hl=en&as_sdt=800000000003″ in it. If you paste that link into your browser, you will get the case, but it will still be highlighted with your search terms. The format of a proper google scholar link is http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=CASENUMBER. The case number is the number after the first equals sign and before the ampersand. So the case number for US v. Lopez is 18310045251039502778. If we plug that into the formula, we get http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=18310045251039502778 which gives us the same case, with no highlighting.
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An even simpler method is to click on the “All x versions” link, and then click on the Google Scholar version of the case for a clean sample.
[Reply]
Josh,
Thanks. This is helpful. I’ve noticed that some Google Scholar case URLs are not permanent. I’ve used them in blog posts, and later, they die and no longer point to the case that I am citing. Do you know if there is a fix for that?
Patrick
[Reply]