Don Cruse at the Supreme Court of Texas Blog responds to the outrage that unpublished memorandum opinions have been made precedential authority but ready access to them has not been provided. All but one of the Courts of Appeals can be searched with an operator in Google: “site:courts.state.tx.us/opinions.” For a specific court, add __rdcoa before “courts”, with the underline being the court’s circuit number. Dallas court opinions can be found at http://www.5thcoa.courts.state.tx.us/search_o.htm. Cruse offers additional advice on how to search Texas Supreme Court opinions, even they are all published and do not pose the same problem as the unreported appellate court opinions. Check out the official website here and Don’s website here. Or simply use the same basic Google trick suggested for the appellate opinions, inserting “supreme” for the specific court and adding “historical” after the last slash instead of “opinions.”

Thanks Don for rising to meet this equal access problem with some excellent advice. Although the system is not perfect, and is a bit cumbersome in its reliance on the less than perfect Google, it does offer some means to reach these resources without having to shell out the big bucks.

Hat tip to Legal Research Plus