Precydent

Precydent is a new service that searches free U.S. legal documents. Still in beta, this version contains only U.S.Supreme Court and U.S Court of Appeals cases, but the ambitions it has set for itself are impressive (see nuggets from blurb, below). The focus is U.S. law, but curiously, 6 of the 8 members of the Precydent team are in Italy...in Como and Catania.

(from the "about" info:) We have heard law students ask, as perhaps you have, about online legal research: "Why can't I just do my search with a few search words, like I do on Google?" PreCYdent has an answer to that question: Now you can. ...We believe judicial opinions and statutes must be in the public domain, in practice as well as in theory. To us this means that effective legal research in all of these materials should be free to the user -- not expensive, not inexpensive. Free. We believe this principle is of vital importance not only to the United States, but to all nations that practice or aspire to practice the rule of law....
...we want to go further the simple search. You can contribute and participate directly in our effort and our campaign. On our web site you can register and upload any kind of legal document, including judicial opinions that are in the public domain."