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"Complete state results will become publicly available this fall for California and New York, and the entire library will be online in 2017, said Daniel Lewis, chief executive and co-founder of Ravel Law, a commercial start-up in California that has teamed up with Harvard Law for the project. The cases will be available at www.ravellaw.com. Ravel is paying millions of dollars to support the scanning. The cases will be accessible in a searchable format and, along with the texts, they will be presented with visual maps developed by the company, which graphically show the evolution through cases of a judicial concept and how each key decision is cited in others."

"The massacre of children at a Connecticut elementary school by a deranged young man using an assault weapon riveted the attention of Americans on a subject that they never leave alone for very long, and that their legislators have found no endurable solution for: finding a balance between the protection of the putative right to own guns, and the protection of life, liberty, and happiness that is threatened by the very people who own those guns. The challenge is to craft laws that will adequately protect the public while remaining consistent with the second amendment of the US Constitution, which is now specifically interpreted to mean that individuals have a right to possess a firearm for traditionally legal purposes, such as self-defense."

Grammar instruction may have waned in some classrooms starting in the early 2000s, largely because the high-stakes tests required by the No Child Left Behind law didn't assess grammar specifically. But with most states now using the Common Core State Standards, there's some thought that grammar is making a comeback-along with perennial debates about how best to teach it. "We are asking kids to dive into complex texts and understand them, so we need to teach them how to read complex sentences," said Chris Hayes, a veteran elementary teacher in Washoe County, Nev. And that requires deep knowledge of grammar.

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Those federally mandated math and reading tests will continue, but a sweeping rewrite of the nation's education law will now give states - not the U.S. government - authority to decide how to use the results in evaluating teachers and schools."

High school testing is on the brink of a profound shift, as states increasingly choose college-entrance exams to measure achievement. The new federal education law invites that change, but it comes with some big caution signs and unanswered questions.