When a trial judge has a record that is devoid of the facts you want, what about just going online to find what you need for your order? Most judges would say that type of “judicial notice” is not usually permissible. But a story recently in the Washington Post sheds a slightly different light on the practice of “just google for what you need.” The story begins,” Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down parts of Arizona’s tough anti-illegal-immigrant law outraged” more than a few liberals, not necessarily about the words that he wrote, but the “facts” that he found. 
“As part of his argument, that the decision imposed on the sovereignty of the states, Scalia reached outside the briefs and the oral arguments to mention President Obama’s recent decision to allow some illegal immigrants who were brought here as children to remain in the country. ”  Supreme Court justices have always looked outside the briefs to find facts, but the internet is making it easier.

William & Mary Law Professor Allison Orr Larsen makes that argument in her study of 15 years of Supreme Court decisions, the Washington Post reports. She found more than 100 instances in which justices cited facts not found in any of the briefs.

The practice is common in the Court’s most important cases from 2000 to 2010, Larsen writes in her article. In 58 percent of those 120 cases, justices mentioned facts outside the record.