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    Academic Universe    Congressional Universe    Statistical Universe    GPO Access

    Law Resources

    Meta-sites with search engines for law resources
    Finding information about lawmaking
    Finding primary law resources
    Finding court cases
    Finding secondary resources
    Special course and research guides
    Guide to citing law resources


    Meta-sites with search engines for law resources
     
    • Emory University School of Law  - Another well organized Law School web site - check out the Federal Courts Finder - It's a map.

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    • Findlaw -  - A very handy, thorough site for searching online law journals and legal materials. Provides links to "Legal Minds Index", "Laws, Cases & Codes", "Legal News", and "Law Crawler".

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    • Findlaw California - Special site set up exactly like the general "Findlaw" for searching California Law.

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    • Cornell Law School_Legal Information Institute of   - This site provides links to law resources arranged by type of law, i.e. statutory, regulatory, and case law.

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    • Meta Index for U.S. Legal Research - (Georgia State University) This site also arranges information by type of law, i.e. (branch of government, and has  search engines for each section.

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    • Substantive Law on the Web - Nicely indexed, easy to use with categories by geographical jurisdiction as well as selected subject areas.
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    Finding information about lawmaking
    • How Our Laws Are Made  - (Library of Congress - Thomas) Detailed information about how laws are made and each step of the legislative process. Describes publications issued by Congress that document various steps of the legislative process. Two WWW sites exist that provide excellent access to the publications of the Congress. Thomas (Library of Congress), and GPO Access (U.S. Government Printing Office)
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    Finding primary law resources

    Finding Federal Laws

    • LexisNexis Academic

      • There are legal resource files, which contain primary sources such as cases, statutes, and regulations as well as secondary materials such as law review articles etc.
       
    • LexisNexis Congressional - Congressional Information Service Index (CIS) Congressional Compass (Congressional Information Service) (1970-current). Guide, index and abstracts to hearings, committee prints, reports and documents issued by Congress. (Also available on CD-ROM from 1989 - current) With Congressional Compass, researchers can track legislative and public policy issues as well as the activities of committees and members of Congress. Actually provides links to certain files in Lexis/Nexis - full text from 1996 and going back. gradually.
       
    • GPO Access - United States Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed - Describes the mission of the U.S. Government Printing Office. Provides links to GPO Access: sites for the Federal Register, Congressional Records, bills, and GAO reports. Indexes federal government publications since January 1994 and will ultimately provide links to federal depository libraries receiving those publications. Indexes Dept. of Energy and GPO sales publications.

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    • Thomas - (House of Representatives through Library of Congress). Includes: Bill Text, Congressional Record Text, Bill Summary & Status, Hot Bills, now called "Congress This Week" and "Major Legislation"), the Congressional Record Index, and the Constitution (now found, along with other historical Congressional documents, under the "Historical Documents" category on the THOMAS home page). Enhancements in the types of legislative data available, as well as in search and display capabilities, have been continuously added.

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    • U.S. Code, CFR, Federal Register, via GPO Access  - Search these and many other databases via GPO Access, the free online database archive available through the U.S. Government Printing Office. Available to all users.
    Finding State and Local Laws
    • Findlaw (State Law Sites)  - This site allows searching by state for legal resources about or within that state.

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    • Municipal Codes Online  - In an effort to make municipal codes throughout the nation more accessible to the public, Seattle Public Library staff have prepared this list of links to city and county codes available for unrestricted searching on the World Wide Web.

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    • State and Local Government on the Net  - This web site is designed to provide easy access to state and local government information beginning with the state and proceeding to the county and city level. 
    Finding International Law Finding Court Cases
    • LexisNexis Academic There are legal resource files, which contain primary sources such as cases, statutes, and regulations as well as secondary materials such as law review articles etc.
       
    • Supreme Court of the United States This site is newly created bu the Supreme Court itself, and has links to the calendar and schedules, court rules, docket, orders and opinions.
       
    • Supreme Court decisions - Cornell Law School has mounted this impressive web site that lists Supreme Court cases since 1990, as well as a listing of state statutes on the net with a topical index, and a new court statistics service.
       
    • Supreme Court Oral Arguments (audio) - Northwestern University Library has mounted audio copies of the Supreme Court arguments for cases back to 1961. You must have the correct hardware and software (not available in the Government Publications Dept.) to listen to these files.
       
    • U.S. Federal Courts Finder - Emory Law Schools' federal courts locator allows you to click on a map by geographic jurisdiction.
       
    • Shepard's Used for Shepardizing Court Cases (i.e. finding out how a court decision has been subsequently treated). Shepardizes all appeals court case decisions (state, circuit, district, and supreme court). Links from the case to related documents. (Note: All links are free regardless of messages that pop up indicating extra charges.)
       
    • Westlaw Campus Westlaw Campus Provides full-text access to law cases, federal and state, legal subject guides, law reviews, statutes and administrative materials, legislative materials and legal encyclopedias. Cases go back to 1945, and the Federal Register back to 1980. Key search allows searching by Westlaw's keynote system of indexing.


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    Finding secondary resources
    • LexisNexis Academic There are legal resource files, which contain primary sources such as cases, statutes, and regulations as well as secondary materials such as law review articles etc.
       
    • America and the Courts - Real audio archive of information related to court cases.
       
    • Court TV - America Lawyer Media, L.P. presents this web site. Use the search engine to find information on the case or issue you are researching.
       
    • FindLaw: Law Schools: Academic Law Journals and Law Reviews - Full Text Search of Law Journals on the Internet created by University Law Review Project and the E-Journals Coalition
       
    • Index to Legal Periodicals Provides access to citations to articles in over 260 legal journals, yearbooks, institutes, bar association organs, law reviews, and government publications worldwide from 1926-1994 in print)
       
    • Omnifile (Social Sciences Abstracts) Provides access to citations for articles and book reviews published in over 415 major international English language scholarly journals in the social sciences, 1984-present; (1974-present in print)
       
    • Washlaw full text index for law journals - Straightforward approach, a site with a search engine up front, that allows you to search all journals listed.
       
    • Westlaw Campus Westlaw Campus Provides full-text access to law cases, federal and state, legal subject guides, law reviews, statutes and administrative materials, legislative materials and legal encyclopedias. Cases go back to 1945, and the Federal Register back to 1980. Key search allows searching by Westlaw's keynote system of indexing. This resource is available outside the Libraries only to students, faculty and staff of The Claremont Colleges.
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    Special course and research guides

    • American Government Resource Guide. - This guide is a comprehensive source of both traditional (paper) and electronic resources that consist mostly of WWW links.
       
    • Research Strategies & Tips These pages will help you find, use, and evaluate information available through the Libraries more effectively.


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    Guide to Citing Law Resources

    The following citation guides are specifically useful in citing government and legal publications.

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    Last updated on 9/3/03 by Mary Martin, mary.martin@libraries.claremont.edu.
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