Finding and Understanding American Law

• Black's Law Dictionary
• Findlaw Legal Dictionary

Features & Research Tips

Many of the terms used in legal sources are legal "terms of art" that have special meanings. Legal dictionaries will help you define those terms and how they are used.

• American Jurisprudence (Am. Jur.) (select Directory, All American Jurisprudence 2d; in Law Library only)
• Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S.)

Features & Research Tips

Legal encyclopedias are a good place to begin researching an unfamiliar legal subject because they provide a brief explanation of the subject along with some cases and other sources with which you can begin your research. Legal encyclopedias give you a basic understanding of the issue, some terminology you can use to research it, and an idea of the kind of law you are looking for.

Features & Research Tips

Law reviews are academic and professional journals. They are particularly good legal research sources if you are writing a paper. Law reviews contain significant discussion and analysis of a legal issue, a law, or a even specific case. Often they focus on new or controversial issues. Law review articles are particularly useful research tools because they contain many footnotes and provide researchers with many other sources to look at.

There are two ways to find law review articles. You can use an index, which will allow you to search the author, title and subject of the article, or you can use a database that contains the full-text of the article so that you can search the full article. If you are looking for historical information, use an index. Most full-text databases have only relatively recent coverage.

Features & Research Tips

Treatises are books that provide comprehensive and detailed discussions of legal subjects. A treatise will provide you with a very good understanding of an area of law as well as with citations to other research sources.

• Use the online library catalog to find a treatise on your subject.
• Think broadly when determining what your subject it. For example, instead of looking for a treatise on the law of coaching, you should look for a treatise about sports law.