I came across a new law blog recently, entitled Circuit Splits, focused on splits in appellate courts sitting in different federal circuits. It’s a new blog, but it shows promise. In a recent post, they put up something I had been looking for in the past in and thought I would share: different ways to research circuit splits in various legal database platforms.
Westlaw
In an article published in the Stanford Law Review entitled “Measuring the Effects of Specialization with Circuit Split Resolution,” Eric Hansford describes how he identifies circuit splits using Westlaw’s SCT database:
To find the circuit splits, I used the SCT database on Westlaw. After much trial and error, I settled on the search: <(division divide! conflict! split inconsis- tent differ! disagree! uncertain!) /p (“courts of appeals” circuits lower)>. The search reflects every formulation I could find that the Court uses to announce a resolution of a circuit split. I did not, however, read every page of the United States Reports; the search probably omitted some resolutions.
There are also search instructions for LexisNexis and Google Scholar. Westlaw and the like are powerful and useful, but it’s also fairly ridiculous that you have to use the above search string to actually find what you’re looking for. It’s one of the reason’s I’m glad competition is heating up in the legal search area with the likes of Fastcase, Bloomberg, Google scholar, etc. Hopefully the competition will lead to improved search tools for case law.
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