Arizona Case Law Search: Research AZ Case Law, Court of Appeals Opinions, and Supreme Court Decisions in Plain English

How do I search Arizona case law?

Describe the issue as a full question rather than a keyword string, then read the results with two Arizona filters in mind. First, check whether the decision is a published opinion or a memorandum decision, because in Arizona that distinction is absolute: a memorandum decision carries no precedential weight at all. Second, check the date on any memorandum decision you plan to lean on, because only those issued on or after January 1, 2015 can be cited for persuasive value.

What you do not need to filter on is the division. Researchers who trained in Ohio or Washington arrive expecting the geography to matter and waste time deciding whether a Tucson opinion reaches a Phoenix case. It does. The statute makes any published opinion of either division an opinion of the Arizona Court of Appeals, so a Division 2 holding is binding authority in Maricopa County superior court. Treat the division as a docket detail, not a jurisdictional one.

After that the usual checks apply. Confirm the Supreme Court has not granted review since the opinion issued, and confirm the opinion has not been depublished, which is a live possibility in Arizona and removes the decision from the body of authority you can rely on.

Can you cite an unpublished opinion in Arizona?

You can cite a memorandum decision for persuasive value, but only under conditions, and it is never precedent. Before January 1, 2015, Arizona flatly banned the practice. The rule change effective that date opened a narrow door through Arizona Supreme Court Rule 111(c), and the door has three hinges: the decision must have been issued on or after January 1, 2015, no published opinion can adequately address the issue before the court, and the decision must not have been depublished in whole or in part.

Two mechanical requirements come with it. The citation has to identify the decision as a memorandum decision, so a reader is never misled about what they are looking at. And you must furnish the decision to the court and to opposing counsel, either as a copy or as a hyperlink. Separately from the persuasive-value route, a memorandum decision may always be cited to establish claim preclusion, issue preclusion, or the law of the case, and to alert an appellate court to other memorandum decisions when it is deciding whether to publish an opinion, grant reconsideration, or grant review.

The useful way to read this is as a signal about your research rather than a filing formality. Arizona courts publish under ARCAP 28(b) when a decision establishes, alters, modifies, or clarifies a rule of law, calls attention to an overlooked rule, criticizes existing law, or involves an issue of unique interest or substantial public importance. If the only support for your proposition is a memorandum decision, the court has already signaled that no published opinion resolves the question. That usually means the point is genuinely open. Our guide on <a href="/blog/can-you-cite-an-unpublished-opinion">when you can cite an unpublished opinion</a> compares the federal rule and other states, and <a href="/blog/published-vs-unpublished-opinions">published versus unpublished opinions</a> explains why courts designate them at all.

Where can I find Arizona Court of Appeals opinions online?

The official opinions are free. The Arizona Judicial Branch posts Supreme Court and Court of Appeals decisions as they are filed and marks each one as a published opinion or a memorandum decision, which is the single most important field on the page for an Arizona researcher. Google Scholar and CourtListener carry the same decisions with better full text search than the official site offers, and the Arizona Revised Statutes are free at azleg.gov, where the statutory text quoted above comes from.

What none of them give you is a citator, a plain-language holding, or any signal that the opinion has since been reviewed or depublished. That last one is the specifically Arizona-shaped gap. Depublication is not a theoretical risk here, and a free database will happily serve you the full text of a decision that no longer counts as authority, with nothing on the page to warn you. The enterprise platforms close that gap with editorial headnotes and the KeyCite and Shepard's citators, at a per seat price a three-lawyer firm in Tucson has a hard time justifying. A self-serve tool that returns the cited holding, names the deciding court and division, and flags subsequent treatment covers the everyday work for a fraction of that. We lay out the category in the <a href="/legal-research-software">legal research software</a> guide and the real numbers in the <a href="/legal-research-software-pricing">legal research software pricing</a> breakdown.

One habit closes most of the remaining risk. Whatever tool you use, run the treatment check as a separate step rather than assuming the search surfaced it, and do it again before you file rather than only when you first find the case. Arizona opinions can be reviewed, vacated, or depublished in the weeks between research and filing, and the check is cheap compared to citing a decision that stopped being law while your brief sat in a drafts folder. Our walkthrough on <a href="/blog/how-to-check-if-a-case-is-still-good-law">checking whether a case is still good law</a> covers what the signals actually mean.