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Finding Opinions Written by Specific Judges
Sometimes it is helpful to find opinions written by specific judges. An attorney may have an upcoming case before a judge and want an idea of how that judge might rule. Alternatively, a researcher may be looking for background on a judge and want his or her opinions as part of that research. LexisNexis® provides a convenient way to find decisions by a particular judge.
When a case is placed online the name of the judge hearing the case is put in a segment within the document. By using a segment search which restricts your search to just the segments that contain the name of the judge, you can retrieve only those cases decided by a particular judge. The segments that might contain the name of a judge are the following:
- Concurby—the judge writing the concurring opinion
- Dissentby—the judge writing the dissenting opinion
- Opinionby—the judge writing the majority opinion
- Writtenby—the judge writing the concurring opinion, dissenting opinion, or majority opinion
- Judges—the judges appearing on the case
- Opinion—the main opinion (sometimes the opinion says “before the Honorable John Doe")
While the writtenby segment should contain the name of any judge writing an opinion in a case, there are some cases which do not contain the writtenby segment. To pick up all cases, it is best to construct a search using the writtenby, judges, and opinion segments. A search for opinions written by Jane Doe would be the following:
writtenby (doe) or judges (doe) or opinion (before pre/10 doe)
The last portion of the search looks in the opinion itself to find where the word “before” appears preceding the name “doe” by no more than 10 words. This search uses only the last name of the judge because first names or initials are not always listed in opinions.
For additional tips on using segments or for searching case law, visit the LexisNexis Knowledge Base.
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