Starting Your Research - Secondary Sources
This guide provides sources and strategies for finding law and legal resources.
A good place to start legal research is with secondary sources.
Secondary sources analyze, explain, and critique the law. They are not law, but they provide information about the law. Legal periodicals, such as law reviews and law journals, are secondary sources that are accessible through the library databases. Often secondary sources will lead you to primary sources.
Primary sources include statutes, court decisions, and regulations. Primary sources are law.
Databases - Legal Periodicals
Law reviews or law journal articles are secondary sources for legal research. They are scholarly publications that contain articles focused on a particular topic or legal issue. These articles are a great way to find a case on a specific topic. In Bailey Library's collection, law reviews and journal articles are accessible in the following databases:
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new windowProvides access to full-text scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, reports, and book reviews in virtually every discipline.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowFull-text scholarly articles and books in a wide range of subject areas, primarily social sciences and humanities. Also features an image search using materials derived from ARTstor.
- Legal Collection This link opens in a new windowAn authoritative collection of respected, scholarly peer-reviewed publications including law journals, documents, and case studies.Full-text articles. Coverage from 1965.
- LegalTrac OneFile This link opens in a new windowLegalTrac OneFile is a subsection of Gale OneFile focusing on legal articles and periodicals.
- Political Science Complete This link opens in a new windowFocus on political science. Provides indexing and abstracts to scholarly and unique resources, full-text reference books, and conference papers.
- SAGE Premier This link opens in a new windowIt offers access to peer-reviewed journals in subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, sciences, technology, medicine, and more.
- Westlaw This link opens in a new windowWestlaw is a legal database that includes secondary and primary legal sources. It contains statutes, codes, and case law. Westlaw also includes the legal encyclopedias, journals, treatises, and law reviews, as well as public and private business information and coverage of news sources.
Databases - General Newspapers
Newspaper articles can be a good general source for finding background information or developments with significant court cases and legislation.
- Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Provides a multidisciplinary coverage of scholarly information, including podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN, and videos from BBC Worldwide Learning.
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new windowProvides access to full-text scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, reports, and book reviews in virtually every discipline.
- Newspaper Source This link opens in a new windowProvides cover-to-cover full text for selected regional, national (U.S.) & international newspapers.In addition, full-text television & radio news transcripts are also provided.
- New York Times This link opens in a new windowCurrent and past editions available. Registration Required. Click here to register via http://accessnyt.com. Choose Slippery Rock University.
- Wall Street Journal This link opens in a new windowAccess to the digital edition of the Wall Street Journal is available to all SRU faculty, staff, and students. Registration is required using an SRU email address. Click here to begin registering via https://wsj.com/sru.
Related Research Guides
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