For the third year in a row, the Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute (LII) has posted detailed previews of the U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming cases at its LII Bulletin Web site at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/.

For more than 15 years, the LII has been considered one of the most respected sources of primary law and legal commentary on the Internet through its annual bulletin. Journalists, educators, government officials and citizens interested in law can access the summaries of Supreme Court cases through the LII Bulletin, which also is e-mailed to 16,000 subscribers before each oral argument session. The site has links to more than 688,000 Web pages, making it one of the most frequently cited and linked legal resources on the Internet.

"It's the best one around," said Arthur D. Postal, Washington bureau chief of the National Underwriter, a trade publication that serves the insurance and financial services industries. "The Web site allows me, in the shortest period of time, to get the information I need for my stories."

The institute created the first legal Web site in 1992, offering the public free legal information, and it has become increasingly popular since it began producing analyses of Supreme Court cases three years ago.

Students at Cornell Law School are selected to write for the LII Bulletin through a competitive process. This year 30 students were chosen to join the staff from a pool of 75 applicants, says Thomas R. Bruce, director of the Legal Information Institute.

Heidi Guetschow, a third-year law student who is the journal's editor-in-chief, said she wanted to write for the LII Bulletin to help increase accessibility to the world of law.

"We really try to put the procedural and technical issues in context and explain why they are important to the way the country works and the way we all live our lives," Guetschow said.

-- Adapted for the Cornell Chronicle by Franklin Crawford.