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Judges and the Judiciary: Exploring America's Court System (Formerly known as Congress and the Courts)

This library brings together materials on the composition, structure, oversight, and procedures of the judiciary, analyzing how the courts touch the lives of everyday Americans.

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Main Search Bar Tips

  • The main search bar is stationary throughout HeinOnline
  • Once inside the Judges and the Judicary: Exploring America's Court System database, the search bar will search only within this database, unless the Search All Databases box is ticked
  • Need something more robust? Click Advanced Search to perform a search using custom drop-downs
  • Need a refresher on how to construct a perfect search? Click Search Help for a quick reference guide to commonly used search syntax

The main search bar is stationary at the top of the page.

Using the Main Search Bar

  • For example, enter the phrase "nonpartisan election" inside quotation marks into the search bar
    • Select where you want to search for this phrase: as an Author, appearing in the Title of any document or article, as a Citation, or in our Catalog as a title. Want to see your search in any of these fields, or appearing in the full text of a document? Select Just search for

Start typing in the main search bar to see search options

  • Use the facets on the left side of the page to narrow your results by Subjects, Date, Document Type, Section Type, Title, State Published, Location, Person, Organization, or Congress and the Courts
  • Terms matching the search query appear in bold text within the matching text page snippets
  • Sort search results by relevance, volume date, or title
  • Save to your MyHein account, email a result, display download options, or download a PDF using the icons on the right side of each search result
  • Use the icons next to the sort-by bar to modify your current search, to search within results, to toggle all matching text pages, or to turn OFF infinite scroll

Search results page. Toggles to refine your search by Date, Document Type, Section Type, Location, Title, Organization, Person, and Subjects appear on the left hand side of the page. A matching text page snippet showing search terms in bold will always display beneath each result, with the option to toggle all matching text pages.

Using Advanced Search

  • Click Advanced Search to be taken to a page with custom facets to help maximize your research within this collection
  • Use the drop-downs to choose a variety of ways to search: 
    • Text
    • Book Title
    • Book Author
    • Section Author
    • Section Title
    • Volume Date 
      • Add another search field if three isn't enough
  • Select a Document Type to search within, Ctrl + click to select multiple subcollections, or search in all
  • Pick a title by citation to search within
  • Restrict results within a date range and change how results are sorted

Three search fields. Two are set to searching within the Text of documents for the terms "supreme court" and "federal judge." Below, a list of all document types. Congressional Hearings is selected to search only within those documents.

 

 

Venn Diagram Search

  • Venn Diagram Search offers a visual representation of how search terms interact with each other
  • Helps users both refine their current search terms and become better researchers going forward
  • Find the link to Venn Diagram Search on the Advanced Search page
  • Searches are constructed by stringing together multiple terms separated by the Boolean operator "AND," with phrases grouped together in quotation marks
  • Results on the right side of the page pertain to the search as we originally constructed it (represented by the red slice in the center of the intersecting circles)
  • Select Clear for the ability to hover over the different segments of the diagram and see all possible search term combinations from our original query.
  • In our example, we can see results for:
    • "judicial appointment" AND "appellate court"
    • "appellate court" AND reversal
    • reversal AND "judicial appointment"
    • the terms "judicial appointment," "appellate court," and reversal individually
  • Sort the results, save or export, turn to the specific page of a result, or start at the beginning of a given title

Three intersecting circles representing the terms "judicial appointment," "appellate court," and "reversal," with full text snippet results matching the search terms on the right-hand side.