A docket is a record of the court proceedings for a particular case. It includes some basic information about the case, including party names, the jurisdiction, the presiding judge, the docket number, nature of the suit (e.g. trademark), and a chronological list of the proceedings in a particular case.
Dockets from back to the early 2000s are now searchable online for almost every federal jurisdiction. The federal court has a public access system for dockets called PACER that is searchable through Westlaw, Lexis/Courtlink, and BloombergLaw. The PACER system does have its own publicly-available searchable database, but users incur a cost for each docket and document viewed, and the cost is NOT reimbursed by the library. Students should consult Westlaw, Lexis/Courtlink, and BloombergLaw first; more information about how to get to the dockets databases in these services is below.
State court dockets for many jurisdictions are also searchable online, although not always. The state courts do not have a unified docketing database like PACER, so coverage is spottier, and varies from state to state. Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law all provide information about federal and state docket coverage on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis.
If you are looking for briefs and other court documents from a specific case, the docket could be a worthwhile place to check. Many newer federal and state dockets provide links to the actual documents that are being filed in a case. There are also court documents and filings databases in Westlaw, Lexis, and BloombergLaw that could be helpful for broader searches. Please note that if the document you are looking for is under seal for any reason, it will not be possible to get it.
