Briefs in current Supreme Court cases can finally be obtained directly from the Supreme Court, through its website, without relying on a third-party service. Historically, that was done through the American Bar Association. However, they were a poor custodian of U.S. Supreme Court briefs, and in fact, all the briefs they used to provide seem to have disappeared. In recent years, SCOTUSblog has been a better source for briefs, and it’s a shame that the Supreme Court “outsourced” this important responsibility for so many years to the ABA.
To find briefs from the Supreme Court, you must use their Docket Search feature. For example, if you search for No. 17-1594, you’ll see links to all the documents electronically filed with the Court for that particular case. For briefs that predate the electronic age, your best bet is to visit the nearest law library that the Supreme Court has designated an official “depository” of Supreme Court briefs.
You may also find something interesting in the tiny collection of Featured Briefs that we and others have scanned over the years.