Think blogs are fair game for citation in law review and journal articles, and even court opinions? You're not alone. (More after the jump.)

Did you know that October 14 was Open Access Day?  No?  That's ok, because Ed Greenlee and I didn't either until we were asked by Shawn Martin, Head of Scholarly Communication at Van Pelt library, to commemorate the event by giving a talk to the librarians on examples of Open Access in legal research and scholarship.  While the presentation was geared towards our library colleagues, we provided links to some important legal research tools that are available free of charge on the Internet.  They include:

Cornell University's Legal Information Institute.  The Legal Information Institute is a web portal to a large number of free web sites containing primary legal materials: case opinions, statutes, and administrative materials.

THOMAS.  The THOMAS site is maintained by the Federal Government and offers a wide range of legislative materials, from various versions of bills, to selected hearing transcripts and legislative history summaries along with hot links to key documents.

The Directory of Open Access Law Journals.  This site provides a list of institutions participating in the Open Access Law Program.

"Wikibooks" and virtual casebooks.  Wikibooks is an open source for a wide range of texts. At the present they offer a limited number of books in the area of law but Wikibooks will be a growing resource for open access legal texts.

Wex.  Wex is like Wikipedia but for legal information: it attempts to provide a community-edited legal encylopedia and dictionary.

eLangdell.  eLangell is an open source project of CALI (Computer Assisted Legal Instruction) program and the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. Just initiated in June of this year, it will offer a variety of materials including multimedia course materials and case books.

Opencongress.org.  Part of the Sunlight Foundation's suite of free government information databases, Opencongress.org is an innovative example of bringing Web 2.0 tools like blogging, RSS feeds, and social bookmarking to the public policy arena.

As our presentation demonstrated, there are a great many resources for legal research out there that aren't named Westlaw or Lexis-Nexis.  And they are doing some innovative things in the way that legal information is presented online.  None of this would be possible without the Open Access movement's committment to unfettered access to, and use of, information resources.

Law librarians are regularly called upon to provide information with regards to how individual members of Congress have voted on certain topics.  As both a lawyer and a librarian, I am constantly amazed by the availability of U.S. Government information, including the voting records of our Federal Electorate, which is handily available on the Internet.  This is true process transparency in action, as part of what makes our democratic process great is the ability to hold our electorate responsible for their action (or inaction) through the voting process.  As we are on the heels of an important election, the interests of legal research and the public interest are once again intertwined.  I offer you below some legal resources by which you can make your own accounting before you head to the polls this November.  Beyond the near term elections, this information can help any student of the law track bills, examine a bill's history, and understand the voting records of our elected officials.

Project Vote Smart is a bipartisan-volunteer organization that has proclaimed itself the "voter's self-defense system."  This fantastic website makes accessible the voting records of every candidate and elected official from the President to local government officials in each state.  Another important feature is that the website breaks votes down by subject area to enable voters to examine how candidates cast their ballot on subjects of special importance to them, the individual voters.  Not only is the information readily available and presented in a format that is easily understood, Project Vote Smart provides a variety of search mechanisms, including an area code search, to assist voters to gain information on candidates who hold local government offices that they might not be aware of.  Additionally, the website enables RSS feeds to allow voters to stay informed and updated on a regular basis.

Thus, if you're nearing Election Day and can't decide on a candidate for either a federal, state, or local position, I would recommend visiting Project Vote Smart to see where your candidate falls on the issues that interest you.  If, on the other hand, you are interested in examining the roll call votes on a particular piece of legislation that is, or was, pending before either the House or the Senate, then you should also be aware of the official government websites described below.

THOMAS is a source of U.S. Government information that is organized and published by the Library of Congress.  Here, you can gain information relating to the roll call votes on every bill that went before the house (since 1990) as well as the Senate (since 1989) by visiting the roll call vote page.  Additionally, another two sources for examining roll call votes are the Clerk's office for the House of Representatives and the Secretary's Office of the Senate.

On each of these government sites, the roll call votes are broken down by Congressional Session and individual bills instead of individual members.  This information, however, when combined with that available through Project Vote Smart, allows any citizen to get the complete picture with just a few clicks of their mouse.

Here's a scenario with which you might be familiar.  You're working on a paper, and you know that the trend of what Americans think about some aspect of your topic is likely to be helpful in making your point. It could be anything from views on the legalization of marijuana, to the importance of the separation of church and state, to the legalization of abortion, to which candidate various groups will support for national office. There seems to be no limit when it comes to opinion polling. How do you get the data you need for your paper?  What are the options?

Generally, people using public opinion surveys look for one of three things:

1. An individual question that appears in one survey or that appears in several surveys over time (enabling a trend or time-series study). The sought-for elements are the question text (with potential or actual responses) and the frequencies for each response. This aggregate data is also called "marginals" or "toplines." This is the "Yes 40%, No 30%, Don't know 15%, Braindead 5%, Other 10%" information.
2. All the questions appearing in one survey. The safest way to retrieve a questionnaire's questions is to start from a known question in, say, iPOLL*, and search on that question's survey organization plus beginning and ending dates. iPOLL*, the Odum Institute* question database, and the Gallup Brain* offer a shortcut that might omit some of those modular questions recycled among concurrent surveys -- for each question retrieved, the database presents a hyperlink that assembles the questions. 
3. The raw data, or individual respondents' responses to each question, also known as microdata [where marginals are aggregate data]. Seldom if ever would you want microdata, even if you were to say, "I want the data for these questions." In most cases, what you really want are marginals, or frequency of response. Generally, you will need microdata only when you ask as a follow-up question: "I need to know how many Hawaiians hated Ronald Reagan" or "Do poor, uneducated city dwellers approve of school vouchers?" The trigger in these cases is the detail, the subgroups. Other potential microdata uses would involve relations among more than one question: "How many people who like mustard on their pretzels would pay $500 for an Eagles ticket?" Generally, unless you have viewed the survey's questions or codebook, it's likely not worth your time, or the time of the person who's going to help you with using SPSS or SAS, to re-process the raw data.

*It's safe to assume that more than 90 percent of you are interested in either 1. or 2. above. iPOLL, the Odum Institute and the Gallup Brain are the three places most people go for question-level info:

iPOLL (Roper Center), Penn Library Web
Authoritative, includes archived Gallup, Roper, and other pollster questions back to the 1930s.  The Roper Center archives ABC News and New York Times media polls as well as Kaiser Family Foundation polls, Los Angeles Times polls, National Opinion Research Center polls, and Wall Street Journal polls; the jewels in the Roper collection are the Roper polls (including the famous "Bowling Alone" surveys), their Japanese and Latin American polls, and the Gallup Organization polls.  The LexisNexis version of iPOLL, RPOLL, has identical content, but searching and question formatting are not so good.  iPOLL draws from survey organization and survey sponsor press releases, survey reports, data documentation, and lots of other sources.  I recommend it most highly.

Odum Institute Public Opinion Poll Question Database, Penn Library Web
A fine small-scale competitor to iPOLL, covering the Harris Polls and the Network of State Polls (e.g., the Pennsylvania Poll, the California Poll).  In the "Search" dropdown, choose "Question Text."

Gallup Brain, searchable via Sharon Black, Annenberg School Library
Gallup charges a pretty penny for access to their full archive question database.  You will not get access by going through http://www.gallup.com either.  As all the old Gallup polls and the main series of recent Gallup surveys appear in iPOLL, you can often get what you need without accessing the Gallup Brain.

There are other places to go for polling data.  If you want to explore on your own, feel free to browse the University Library's Research Guide on Public Opinion Polls.  However, there are numerous specialized and local polling entities which do not appear in the guide.  I would be happy to do my best to help you find and begin to use any of this data

Reference librarians like to help people find useful information; it is one of the joys of our jobs.  Recently, I have been asked by several patrons where they can access PDF copies of information produced by the Federal Government.  As a reference librarian, I enjoy these kinds of questions because they provide terrific opportunities to both assist and educate patrons on a legal resource available, available to anyone free of charge, through the Government Printing Office (GPO).

The GPO is the Federal Government's primary centralized resource for gathering, cataloging, producing, providing, authenticating, and preserving published Federal Government information in all its forms.  The GPO's core mission--"Keeping America Informed"--dates to 1813, and it is this inherent function of government that GPO carries out on behalf of the public for all three branches of government and many of the federal agencies. 

One of the ways that GPO produces and distributes information products and services is through online access via their GPO Access website.  The information provided on this site is the official U.S. Government published version, and GPO Access makes approximately a quarter million titles available to the public.  Moreover, through GPO's partner websites, an additional half million titles are accessible.

The GPO has done a terrific job organizing access to materials produced by the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches of our Federal Government.  Visiting these sites, you will encounter the kinds of resources reference librarians are asked about on a a daily basis such as the Legislative History of Bills, the Congressional Record, Conference and Committee Reports, Public and Private Laws, the Statutes at Large, the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, and Court Opinions, just to name a few.  It is important to note however, that excepting the Supreme Court materials, GPO Access only provides historical access to resources dating back to the 1990s.

GPO Access is a terrific resource that is both free and easy to use.  With just a little practice, researchers can save themselves and their clients a great deal of money by pulling resources from this open source.

Many of us, if not most, use popular online search engines like Google and Yahoo! to search the web. While these search tools often locate what we want, we might still wonder to ourselves, "What else can I have find outside of Google?"

General search engines retrieve web pages by employing "spiders" or robots to visit web pages periodically and index their content. These general search engines, however, are not effective in locating "deep" or "invisible web" pages--web pages that do not contain hyperlinks, which would otherwise allow spiders or robots to identify pages. Examples of web page file formats not indexed by search engines include image files (i.e. tiff and gif), streaming media (i.e. flash and mp3), specialized searchable databases, and pages intentionally excluded by a web page designer. Since the deep Web is, by some estimations, 400-550+ times larger in size than the "surface" or "visible" Web, the importance of deep Web searching becomes all the more apparent.

Deep Web searching is particularly appropriate when specific or precise information such as statistics or data are needed. Deep Web searching is also appropriate when authoritative, timely, and exhaustive information is needed.

If general search engines do not retrieve what you want, deep Web searching may be worth a try. Deep Web pages may be identified by using subject directories and search engines.

For academic research, well-regarded subject directories that canvass the deep Web include the Librarians' Internet Index and Infomine. General deep Web search engines include Incywincy and OAlster.  For in-depth deep Web searching, consider meta-search engines such as SurfWax and Copernic Agent.

If you wish to locate other deep Web search engines, type your key words in a general search engine such as Google, followed by "database." For instance, if "'air pollution' and database" is entered into Google, you will retrieve the Environmental Protection Agency's AirData web site, which provides "access to air pollution data for the entire United States."  For example, I tinkered with the AirData web site, and I was able to generate 2007 Philadelphia Air Quality Index Report (below).


If you are already visiting a web site and you wish to determine if deep Web searching is available, review the site map to see if the words "database "or "statistics" appear. In addition, you may also want to search for "database" within the web site's internal search engine.

While many previously-invisible pages are now visible with the use of general search engines, the breadth, depth, and weight of the deep web provide a glimpse into the information world beyond Google.  As the title of this post indicated, however, the deep Web is still an emerging front in the field of research and requires time, effort, and, sometimes some additional assistance.  With that in mind, if you are interested in learning more about your options regarding the deep Web, don't hesitate to contact me for more information.

You’ve heard that a regulation is due any day now, and you can’t wait to see it.  Where do you turn? 

The Office of the Federal Register has created the Public Inspection Desk to provide online access to materials that will be published in the Federal Register.  Typescript copies are available as PDFs.  Many federal agencies have been doing this for some time (e.g., the SEC) and probably will remain sources for advance copies of rules, regs and notices that will be published in Federal Register materials.  However, one of the most useful features of the Public Inspection Desk is the target date of publication.  If you are going to work in a regulatory practice, you will want to save this link: http://www.federalregister.gov/inspection.aspx.

This is only part of the story.  Federal rules and regulations touch on all aspects of our lives.  We know that new rules appear in the Federal Register.  And we also know that those rules are codified as regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).  The Feds have even worked out how to help you find current regulations with nearly one-stop shopping – in the eCFR.

If you want to learn more about federal regulations and research in administrative law, I'll be conducting a presentation entitled "Administrative Law: Federal Rules and Regulations" at noon on February 23, 2009 in G-214.  Please contact me to sign up, as pizza will be provided.

Penn Law School is fortunate to be a beta site for Bloomberg Law (BLAW), a division of Bloomberg, a major provider of business and financial information.

If you have access to Biddle Law Library's electronic resources, you now have access to a new database: AudioCaseFiles (ACF). ACF provides multimedia access to audio opinions and trial video. You can search by course or casebook to locate material from 1L classes and 2L and 3L subjects.                                                           

Through streaming video, visitors to the site canl watch practitioners argue cases on products liability, antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, and other areas of the law. You can listen to the audio content through your computer or download it in MP3 format. Streaming trial video is also available.

 

As we enter the March Madness of The Final Four, here is a legal research tip that should help you to visualize the relationships between four primary legal sources.  I like to call them "The Big Four."

The Big Four comprises the following four resources: Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations.   Even if you forget the mechanics of moving from any one quadrant to the other three--as in basketball, practice makes perfect--you will be ahead of the game in your summer or permanent job if you can internalize the basic concepts portrayed in the chart below. 

You may also download this chart by clicking the following link: big four09.pdf.

The top 2 boxes in the Big Four chart are statutes passed by Congress.  The bottom 2 are regulations written by agency officials.  The bottom 2 are sometimes called "delegated legislation" because they cannot exist without statutory authority. 

It is also useful to read this chart from left to right.  The left 2 boxes are the chronological, historical record, while the 2 on the right are current, subject-arranged codes with obsolete matters dropped.   The left 2 are useful for legislative history and background information on regulations.  The right 2 are essential for practicing law today.  However, sometimes you have to consult the left 2 boxes for very recent laws, such as President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, because they haven't yet migrated to their codified versions on the right.

The chart above shows a familiar statute, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  This is the title that forbids discrimination in employment on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex or national origin."  But how do you find it?  A glance at the chart will tell you that Title VII is the original title in the 1964 session law--not the title in the current U.S. Code, i.e. 42.  The move from left to right quadrants is one that even Scottie Reynolds might miss because it is a change in both number (7 to 42) as well as form (Roman to arabic). 

Things can get even more complicated when you realize that the 50 titles of the U.S. Code are usually not the same as the 50 titles of the C.F.R.  Conversion tables in paper are readily available in any law library or online on Westlaw.

Reference librarians in Biddle love to help people navigate the legislative/regulatory maze.   If you have any questions, stop by the Reference Desk anytime or call 215-898-7853.

Given today's challenging economic climate, more attorneys are choosing to turn away from fee-based databases (e.g. Lexis and Westlaw) and are instead conducting basic legal research utilizing free (and reliable) internet resources. 

Although not appropriate for every situation, free legal research databases offer an an attractive and cost-effective alternative for many researchers who are simply searching for basic legislative, regulatory, and judicial information. 

One of the primary websites utilized by researchers and librarians alike for accessing free legal information is GPO Access.  Maintained by the Government Printing Office, GPO Access is a web portal that provides free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government, including judicial opinions, legislative materials and regulatory information.  Some of the more popular materials linked to from GPO Access include: U.S. Supreme Court Slip Opinions and Docket Information; the U.S. Code; the Congressional Record; the Code of Federal Regulations; and the Federal Register.

Another outstanding website for finding free and relaible legal information is the Legal Information Institute (LII).  Maintained by the Cornell Law School, the LII provides publishes a series of “topical” pages that serve as concise explanatory guides and Internet resource listings for roughly 100 areas of law.  Access to free State and International legal resources is also provided.

If you still cannot find the information you are looking for via GPO Access or LII, be sure to consult some of the excellent research guides produced by academic law libraries that delineate the myriad of free legal resources available.  Georgetown and Duke Law Library research guides on free and low cost legal research are two wonderful examples of these easy-to-use guides that are chock full of useful information.  

Penn Law students entering the workplace this summer would be well-served knowing the basics of finding and utilizing appropriate free and low cost research materials.  Good luck and happy researching!

There are also a number of blogs on animal law.  The ABA hosts one.  There is an interesting animal law blog focusing on Pennsylvania law.   A favorite of mine is the Pet Trust Law Blog. All of these resources can give you inspiration for unique research topics, as well as suggest new areas of legal practice for you to explore.

Dear Online Search Expert,

I am an experienced searcher. I use Google all the time, but I am new to Westlaw. When I searched the Westlaw databases ALLSTATES, ALLCASES with the terms "power of attorney" and "conservator," it turned up the maximum of ten thousand documents. I modified it as follows: "power of attorney," "conservator," "new york," and I still got the same maximum of ten thousand documents. Something went wrong. What happened?

Frustrated 2L
 

Dear Frustrated 2L,

There are a couple of factors at work here.  Let's explore them.

First, we need to look at which databases you selected. If you had chosen a more relevant database, you would have received fewer, but more appropriate results. In short, selecting the right jurisdictional databases limits your results to relevant authority.

Similarly in legal practice, selecting a multi-jurisdictional database, whether in Lexis or Westlaw, will cost more than selecting a limited jurisdictional database. Larger more all encompassing databases are more expensive than smaller more relevant jurisdictional databases, resulting in less cost and better results. This will allow you to spend more time with analysis and writing.

Second, your search query can be improved. Adding terms narrows a Google search, but adding additional terms does the opposite with Westlaw. This has to do with Boolean connectors, such as AND or OR. Where there is no express connector, Google implies an AND between terms. On the other hand, Westlaw implies an OR, increasing the number of results.

Westlaw limits search results at 10,000 to reduce unnecessary strain on its servers, caused by poorly constructed search queries. In your case, adding "new york" would have increased the actual number of results from the hundreds of thousands into the millions.

What would I have done? I would have chosen a New York cases database like NY-CS. I would also have wanted "power of attorney" and "conservator" to be near each other in the discussion.   To do this, I would have run a search with a proximity connector (such as "/p" to search terms within the same paragraph) instead of an implied OR. Therefore, one search would be: "power of attorney" /p conservator. Using this search, results in 24 manageable cases.

Thanks for asking,
Online Search Expert

 

Throughout their law school careers, Penn Law students must complete 70 hours of pro bono service. While fulfilling this requirement, many students may encounter an unfamiliar and somewhat arcane system – the Philadelphia courts. Other students end up involved in a Philadelphia court case through a clinic, or through a summer job. This first encounter tends to be fraught with uncertainty, awkwardness, and the unpleasant feeling that you simply do not know what you are doing. Although these feelings are a natural result of lack of experience, with some simple background on the workings of local courts, sheer terror is avoidable.

 

When you use an online catalog to find materials for a research and writing assignment, do you usually start with a keyword search? Many library patrons do!  

 

You find a reference to a book or an article that is on point for a seminar paper – but it isn’t at Biddle, on campus, or available as a pdf. Do you give up in defeat and look for a substitute resource that you can get on campus? Your topic is somewhat obscure and a search of LOLA and Franklin by subject or keyword just doesn’t give you the “right” hits. Are you resigned to look for a new topic?

Fascinated by the law and politics of stem cell research? Interested in exploring how public opinion on gay marriage relates to the recent Proposition 8 challenge in the federal district court in San Francisco? If you are considering  writing a seminar or independent study paper on a topic relating to religion and the law, there are a wide array of topics that fall under this heading.  The Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, hosted by the Pew Foundation, offers a great variety of resources to supplement your legal research.

Some of the topics include the religious dimensions in bioethics, gay marriage, and public schools. The Pew Forum website offers short articles, research reports, population surveys, books, and datasets. It is a great resource for starting your research on a variety of topics in law and religion.

The death penalty page, for instance, features the official statements of various religious groups on the death penalty.  In addition, this page includes reports reconsidering the death penalty in the United States, and poll results demonstrating support for the death penalty by a majority of Americans.  Some other interesting items found on the Pew Website include surveys on discrimination against Muslims, international restrictions on the practice of religion, and the conflict between religion and evolution.

 

 

 

Would you like to see the research that helps Congress frame issues?  If so, you will want to look the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports. 

As an agency of the Library of Congress, CRS functions as the "personal librarian" to congressional members, providing comprehensive research on timely issues.  Members of Congress "ask CRS to provide background information and analysis on issues and events so they can better understand the existing situation and then assess whether there is a problem requiring a legislative remedy . . . .  CRS [also] attempts to assess emerging issues and developing problems so that it will be prepared to assist the Congress if and when it becomes necessary" (The Congressional Research Service and the American Legislative Process, 2008). 

CRS reports provide in-depth, non-partisan analysis of topical policy issues – supplying background information, relevant laws, statistical data, research citations, and more.  The reports are succinct and focus on framing each issue within a legislative framework.  In some cases, the reports may even be foretelling.  For example, a 2006 version of the below report stated that "the threat of oil spills raises the question of whether US officials have the necessary resources at hand to respond to a major spill." 

 

Have a research project involving foreign or international law for your coursework or journal, clinic or public service-related activities? 

 

 

Eat Local – buy Local – much is made of these current popular movements for food and local businesses. But don’t forget to Research Locally also. City and county ordinances are important sources of law that may in fact be more relevant to your research needs than state and federal law. A recent article by a fellow law librarian, Mary Whisner at the Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law, points out some interesting and noteworthy facts, about the importance of city and county ordinances. 

 

Google Scholar is a free and popular online search engine, which links to full-text scholarly articles.  As is the case with most search engines, Google Scholar users may wonder whether they are using all of the features to its fullest.     

Google Scholar for Legal Research

Google scholar provides the full-text opinions from both federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts. To search for these legal materials, simply check the "Legal opinions and journals" button below the main Google Scholar search box. Coverage of case opinions is not comprehensive and varies by court. Currently, opinions are available for:

• U.S. state appellate and supreme courts (1950 - present)
• U.S. federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts (1923 - present)
• U.S. Supreme Court (1791 - present)

When looking at an opinion in Google Scholar, you can click on the "How Cited" tab to locate other cases that cite to the case you're currently reading. While this feature is not as robust as either Shepard's or KeyCite, it can assist with finding other relevant cases or provide a sense of how a case is used by other courts. You can limit your "How Cited" results, as well as any searches for case opinions, by jurisdiction or court using the Advanced Search features.

Looking for analysis and not case opinions? Google Scholar will also locate law review articles relevant to your search. Please note that Google Scholar only indexes a subset of academic literature available online; if you do not locate articles relevant to your research please consult a more robust database available through Penn Libraries or ask a reference librarian.

Full Text Articles through Google Scholar

When you find a relevant article, Google Scholar will often link you to the publisher's website to purchase the full-text version of that article. Many of these articles are available to you for free through various databases purchased by Penn Libraries. To see if you already have access to the full-text of an article, access Google Scholar through links provided by the Biddle Law Library on the library's Goat Page, the main A-Z electronic resources list, or here. Once you authenticate with your Penn card information you can see if full-text is available for any article by clicking on the provided "Penn Text" link. 

 

Google Scholar is a useful free resource to begin your research, but do not rely on Google Scholar to provide comprehensive research assistance for your research question. If you have questions about what resources to consult to dig deeper into your issue, please ask a reference librarian.

       

We all love HeinOnline’s easy access to law review and journal articles, but did you also know Hein is a great tool for foreign and international legal research?

HeinOnline is an especially user-friendly resource for treaty research. All of the major sources for finding treaties and executive agreements to which the United States is a party can be found in the . The Treaties and Agreements Library contains all of the official publications for U.S. treaties, including Statutes at Large, Treaties and International Agreements (TIAS) and United States Treaties (UST), as well as Treaties in Force, the U.S. State Department’s annual index of treaties and international agreements currently in effect. This library also provides access to the unofficial but very reliable KAV Agreements series and its finding tool, Kavass’s Current Treaty Index, for agreements too recent to have been published in official sources yet. Additional finding tools, guides and secondary sources on the law of treaties can be found in this library to assist your research. For treaties deposited with the United Nations Secretary-General, go instead to the United Nations Law Collection, where you can quickly retrieve a treaty using its United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS) citation, or search for treaties by keyword, name, or member states using the “Search for a Treaty” feature.

Decisions and documents of the major international tribunals, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (INTLOS) can also be found in the United Nations Law Collection. Documents from the post-World War II Nuremberg and Tokyo criminal tribunals are accessible in the World Trials Library, along with a wealth of historical trials material. For decisions of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), look in the Foreign & International Law Resources Database, which also offers access to many yearbooks and digests for research into specific areas of international law. 

HeinOnline’s newest library, World Constitutions Illustrated, is an excellent resource for comparative and historical constitutional research. In this library, you can readily find current and prior constitutions for every country of the world, with at least one English translation available for each non-English-speaking country. The World Constitutions Illustrated library also includes a variety of books, periodicals and other sources on the constitutional law of each country to enhance your research.

HeinOnline libraries provide even more resources for specialized questions. For example, if your research involves foreign policy questions, the Foreign Relations of the United States library incorporates Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), the State Department’s official documentary history of major foreign policy decisions, plus additional U.S. foreign policy documents. If your project focuses on historical English law, the English Reports library contains a full reprint of English Reports, comprising the important English cases from 1220-1867, and Statutes of the Realm, containing English legislation from 1235-1713.

If you would like pointers on how to use HeinOnline’s tools for foreign and international law research or help in developing a research strategy for your project, email Gabriela Femenia, Foreign and International Law Librarian, at gfemenia@law.upenn.edu, or stop by Tanenbaum 412.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is a modification of a 2009 legal research blog post that you may find useful)

Going to California to clerk for the summer or to begin a full-time practice? Given today’s challenging economic climate, you may want to consider eschewing traditional fee-based databases (e.g. Lexis and Westlaw) and instead take advantage of free (and reliable) internet resources to conduct basic California research.

For students doing clerkships in New Jersey or law graduates working for firms and other organizations in the state, there are a number of legal research resources freely available on the internet. Many of the websites listed below are maintained by the state government and other reputable information providers. Maximize your searching skills and minimize the expense of your legal research by making use of these tools before you use Westlaw or Lexis.

Animal Law is an emerging field of law which includes any and all legal matters relating to nonhuman animals. This includes companion animals like cats and dogs, wildlife, animals used in entertainment, animals raised for food, and animals used in research. Animal law encompasses a broad range of issues much like Environmental Law  and crosses the boundaries of many of the traditional fields of law including tort, contract, criminal, and constitutional law. Examples include:

The Biddle Law Library recently acquired ProQuest Legislative Insight, a new database to assist with your legislative history research.

Like Penn's subscription to ProQuest Congressional (formerly LexisNexis Congressional), ProQuest Legislative Insight provides full-text PDF scans of many legislative documents. Unlike ProQuest Congressional, Legislative Insight organizes these documents by their affiliation with a particular piece of (passed) legislation.

For example, if you want to research Public Law 90-209, the National Park Foundation Act, you can search Legislative Insight for this particular law by name or citation. Since this Act is included in Legislative Insight's database, all documents affiliated with this act are available as full-text PDF scans. In ProQuest Congressional, whether or not the full text of the same documents is available depends on the year the document was created and ProQuest Congressional's subscription coverage.

Try turning to Legislative Insight first if you are researching a bill that was passed into law. While not all laws are included in this database, if Legislative Insight covers that bill you will have the full text of that particular legislative history available to you. If it is not available, make sure to still consult ProQuest Congressional or ask a reference librarian for assistance.

You need to find books for a research paper on antitrust in baseball. Are you a Shelf Browser or a LOLA Browser? Do you find the area in the Biddle stacks where books on your topic are shelved and browse, making you a Shelf Browser? Or are you a LOLA Browser, searching for books using Biddle’s online catalog? While both methods will help you find relevant materials, if you only use the Shelf Browser method you may be missing important titles.

The ideal is to use both methods. There’s nothing wrong with browsing, and it can be rewarding to surreptitiously find a key resource. But not all books on your topic will be in the same shelf area due to either different subject content or to a shelving location. Biddle has several shelving locations – Biddle, Closed Reserve, Reserve Reading Room, and Lewis to name a few. In addition, a LOLA record will provide links to online pdfs and databases. 

 
 

 

You may already know and love HeinOnline for its collection of law reviews, administrative materials, Supreme Court decisions, treaties and more. Now you can enjoy the easy-to-read PDF format on the go (and without printing) by downloading the new HeinOnline app for iPhone and iPad. Users can browse the available titles, find sources by citation, or use Hein’s search features. Visit the iTunes app store to download. Penn Law community members should download the app on campus in order to authenticate under the University’s subscription. The authentication will be good for 30 days; afterwards users must return to campus to re-authenticate.

 

Reviewed by Tim Von Dulm, Head of Reference Services

Are you new to the law and confused about how to read legal citations and approach legal research problems? Maybe you would like to learn about how to conduct federal legislative histories?  Perhaps you are looking for credible and authoritative recommendations for legal self-help resources?  Or maybe you are already familiar with the basics of legal research but would appreciate ready access to a reliable legal research reference resource to serve as a refresher for any questions you might have.

 

If any of these situations apply to you, then consider yourself in luck.  The Public Access to Legal Information Committee of the Southern California Association of Law Libraries (SCALL) recently published a revised version of their wonderful legal reference resource Locating the Law: A Handbook for Non-Law Librarians, 5th ed. ("Handbook").

The Handbook includes twelve chapters and four appendices directly relevant to the most common issues faced by legal researchers.  Although a significant portion of the text is understandably devoted to California legal resources and agencies,  chapters within the Handbook on "Basic Legal Research Techniques," "How to Read a Legal Citation," "Federal Law" and bibliographies and appendices on "Self-Help Resources" and "Common Abbreviations in the Law" contain relevant advice and information to researchers across jurisdictions.   Conveniently, most of the chapters and appendices facilitate the research process by including direct hyperlinks to many of the resources and agencies discussed therein. 

So what's stopping you?  Get crackin' on the legal research.  And if you still come across some thorny research problem that the SCALL Handbook cannot assist you with, don't hesitate to stop by and talk with one of the knowledgeable and friendly Biddle reference librarians, who are familiar with numerous alternative resources and who are happy to assist with your research.