You may have heard of the service PACER ,which provides copies of federal case dockets online for $.8 a page.  PACER is good because you can search by name in multiple federal district, appellate and supreme court levels.  However, if you already have the docket number you can pull up the docket on a new service called www.freecourtdockets.com. This company is supported by advertisement so they can offer the free access to the docket information.   It provides access to U.S. District Civil and Criminal court dockets as well as Bankruptcy Court dockets. 

They will adding the U.S. Federal Court of Claims and International Court of Trade, U.S. Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming months.  They also provide some links on the main page to cases which are “Hot Dockets” or cases of popularity like “Geronimo v. Obama” where descendants of Geronimo are suing Obama, Yale University, and the student group “Order of Skull and Bones” over rights to the remains of Geronimo.  These and other cases are linked on the main page. 

You will still need to access the main PACER site in order to see copies of any document mentioned in the docket and the site will automatically take you to the District of your case on PACER when you are ready for viewing those documents.