Searching by Citation is the most efficient way to find the case you need! Here’s an example of how to interpret them:
United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S. Ct. 738, 160 L. Ed. 2d 621 (2005)
Citations must be formatted correctly, including punctuation, for a successful search. For more information see the Nexis Uni Help section.
Tip: If you are not sure what the abbreviation in a citation stands for....Google it!
Using Nexis Uni, you can search legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790. You can search federal and state cases or codes and limit your search to a specific date range.
To do this:
When you click on a case, you will usually see the case citation information, followed by information such as the Case Summary, Core Terms associated with that case (which you could use to search for similar cases), and Headnotes (if there are any). The Headnotes are like the "Cliff's notes" version of a case, telling you the major points or highlights. You can click on each Headnote to jump to its location in the full text of the case.
The full text of the case will usually follow the Headnotes. You can print the full text in an HTML version by clicking the "Print" icon; however, this will not give you the page numbers that you'll need to cite the case properly in your research paper. For more information on accessing PDFs, refer to that box on this page.
Court cases listed in Nexis Uni will include an HTML version of the decision, but if you want to have the page numbers to cite in your research paper, you will need a PDF version.
For cases that are published by Nexis Uni, for example in the United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition (L. Ed. 2d as listed in the citation above), there may be a link in Nexis Uni to that PDF at the top of the case. (Look for a link that says something like "View Official Reports PDF of This Document"). Keep in mind though that this will be the text from the parallel citation, not the official citation.
To access the publication for the official citation (such as the United States Reports in the citation above), check HeinOnline to see if the case is available there in full text.