In addition to our extensive collection of standard primary law sources and leading treatises in every practice area, Lavinia Goodell Library houses several specialized Wisconsin collections. These include Wisconsin court records, briefs, and the Judicial Council Index.

The Lavinia Goodell Library provides public access to briefs and appendices for cases decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Wisconsin Court of Appeals. Briefs filed electronically (July 2009 forward) are available through the Wisconsin Supreme Court & Court of Appeals Access (WSCCA) database. Briefs for cases from 1992 to the inception of e-filing are available in the UW Law Library's Wisconsin Briefs database. Briefs for earlier Wisconsin appellate cases dating back to 1839 are available in the library. Copies may be requested by contacting the WSLL Reference Desk or submitting an Order a Document request.

For more information, please visit our Wisconsin Briefs page.

If you're researching the history of a Wisconsin Supreme Court Rule or a Wisconsin statute relating to civil or criminal procedure, WSLL's Judicial Council Collection may be of interest. This collection contains Council meeting minutes and committee documents dating back to the 1950s. Detailed information, including an index that lists every committee document we have, is available on our Judicial Council Collection page. Full text documents are not available online. For assistance in doing onsite research or obtaining copies of JCC documents, please contact the Reference Desk.

We maintain two separate replaced pages collections.  The first consists of superseded chapters and sections of the Wisconsin Administrative Code. Dating back to Register 27 (1958), our Administrative Code Replaced Pages Collection is an invaluable resource for any researcher of state regulatory history or prior language of a particular Administrative Code section. We also maintain superseded Wisconsin Jury Instructions: Children, Civil and Criminal.