ITHACA, N.Y. -- One of the most-accessed legal Web sites in the world just got better. The Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell University Law School is now offering free details on high-profile cases before they are argued and ruled on by the Supreme Court, including one on medical marijuana (Ashcroft v. Raich ), another on restrictions on interstate alcohol sales (Granholm v. Heald ) and a third on the constitutionality of executing young people who were under 18 when they committed a capital crime (Roper v. Simmons ).

Written in an easily understandable style for everyone from journalists to teachers to bright high school students, the analyses of upcoming Supreme Court cases are put together by a team of Cornell Law School students. The goal is to help people who are neither lawyers nor legal scholars grasp the issues at stake and why they are important.

Brief summaries of key upcoming Supreme Court case analyses are posted on the LII's E-mail Bulletins/Supreme Court Previews Web page, http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/ , and sent via e-mail regularly to subscribers of the LII's free Supreme Court Previews e-mail bulletin service. Site visitors and subscribers can then click on the cases that interest them to get in-depth details on the constitutional issues involved, questions to be presented before the court and summaries and analyses of the cases, with historical references and links to earlier, relevant cases.

"We thought we could do a more in-depth technical analysis than conventional media but still keep it understandable to a general audience," said Thomas Bruce, director of the LII. "We want to help more-specialized groups, teachers doing lesson plans for civics classes, journalists and other information brokers, as well as our own student body."

The LII, http://www.law.cornell.edu , is the second most linked-to law site on the Internet (after the U.S. Library of Congress), with more than 1 million data requests daily from around the world. It promotes worldwide, free public access to law via the Internet, connecting people to all the current provisions of the U.S. Code as well as to Supreme Court and New York Court of Appeals decisions. To subscribe to the LII's free Supreme Court e-mail bulletin service, go to the LII site, then scroll down to E-mail bulletins/Supreme Court (LII Bulletin).