Petition to Decision: the Supreme Court and 42 U.S.C. § 1983

If you are looking for a comprehensive digital archive of all the available papers of the Supreme Court justices relating to selected civil rights cases, you're in luck. David Achtenberg of the University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Law, just launched the Petition to Decision website.

Focusing "on decisions in which the Supreme Court interpreted 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the principal statutory vehicle used to sue state and local officials for violations of constitutional rights, the site presents an interactive timeline of the various cases, identifying every step in the justices’ decision-making process and linking each step to digital copies the relevant internal papers."

"The long range plan is for Petition to Decision to include a wide range of § 1983 cases dealing with issues such as municipal liability, official immunity, color of law, etc. The current, pilot version of the website is limited to cases dealing with municipal liability issues. Additional case files and features will be added on a regular basis."
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat