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Summer RA Workshop - 2023

Introduction: Beyond Westlaw and Lexis

Your research for faculty will probably require that you use Westlaw and Lexis. But you may need additional databases for specialized legal, historical, interdisciplinary, and international research. These databases in MacMillan Law Library’s subscriptions offer additional content, including primary materials, secondary sources, current awareness, case and statutory background, additional subject areas in law, historical materials, and foreign and international law.

You can find the complete list of law library databases by subject and alphabetically. Woodruff Library has its own extensive list of databases that you can search, or find by subject or alphabetically. 

Hein Online

Hein Online provides libraries of legal materials, including primary materials and law reviews, in PDF format, with most collections including older, historical documents.

Features include:

  • Libraries include law journals, the CFR and Federal Register, U.S. Supreme Court Reports, U.S. Statutes at Large, the Congressional Record, and state session laws
  • Foreign and international materials including U.S. treaties, U.N. treaties and other materials, constitutions of other countries, and the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
  • Current Index to Legal Periodicals for newly published law review articles arranged by subject and journal
  • Congress and the Courts Library includes Federal Court Management Statistics, publications of the Federal Judicial Center, and legislative histories related to the federal courts. 
  • Compiled federal legislative histories and congressional documents
  • Histories and documents of U.S. foreign policy in the Digest of U.S. Practice in International Law and Foreign Relations of the United States
  • Citation Navigator to retrieve known documents by citation, including law journals

Use for:

  • Retrieving PDF images of original documents, including primary resources and law journals
  • Historical research, with collections of older law journals, and historical Congressional Record volumes, U.S. statutes, and state session laws and codes
  • Foreign and international legal research
  • Legislative history research
  • Creating 50-state surveys and comparisons of state laws with session laws, National Survey of State Laws, and Subject Compilations of State Laws databases
  • Finding law review articles on foreign constitutions and international treaties

Guides to using Hein Online

Bloomberg Law

Bloomberg Law requires an individual password, which you can register for by clicking "Register an Academic Account" and use your @emory.edu email address to request an account.  Bloomberg will then validate you are indeed with Emory Law, then will send you an Emory Law-based Bloomberg Law password.  This verification process can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours.  Once you receive your Emory Law credentials, you will have access to Bloomberg Law so long as you remain at Emory Law.  

Bloomberg Law includes primary and secondary legal resources, company and market information and news, and legal newsletters and portfolios.

Features include:

  • Federal dockets with search features including keyword and nature of suit
  • Docket tracking
  • Practice centers by subject area with specialized searches, treatises, news and law reports
  • Books and treatises from BNA, ABA, ABI, Wiley, Federal Judicial Center, Getting the Deal Through
  • Legal news and current awareness by subject area from Bloomberg news and its legal newsletter publications, including U.S. Law Week for news on the federal courts, and for tracking Supreme Court filings, dockets, and cases in its Supreme Court Today newsletter
  • Sample documents and clauses and practical guidance for transactional law
  • Litigation analytics on companies, law firms, judges
  • An archive of older BNA topical news reports (most up to around 1997) is available

Use for:

  • Searching dockets and case filings and retrieving court documents
  • Research in bankruptcy, corporate, healthcare, intellectual property, labor, and tax law
  • Company research including EDGAR, litigation tracking, and financials

Guides to using Bloomberg Law

VitalLaw

VitalLaw (formerly CCH Cheetah) requires registration for an individual password. It includes libraries of primary and secondary legal publications and legal news for research in antitrust, banking, bankruptcy, healthcare, intellectual property, products liability, and securities. 

Features include:

  • Comparison and Smart Charts for comparing legislation in healthcare, antitrust, banking, securities, and corporation law
  • CCH Health Care Compliance Library of primary materials
  • Legal news by subject area, with some full-text documents
  • Toolkits of legal forms and practice guidelines

Use for:

  • Current awareness in specialized areas of the law, including tax, securities, and healthcare
  • Additional treatises published by CCH that may not be available in hard copy in the law library, or available in other databases
  • Specialized research in regulatory areas of the law, with regulations, guides, and forms

Guides to using VitalLaw

ProQuest Legislative History databases

ProQuest Legislative Insight and ProQuest Congressional provide compiled legislative histories and legislative history documents.

Features include:

  • U.S. Congressional publications including bills, Public Laws, the Congressional Record, hearings, and House and Senate Reports
  • Compiled legislative histories with all publications related to a Public Law
  • In ProQuest Legislative Insight, search terms within the legislative histories, search by bill or Public Law number, or use the Guided Search to search types of congressional documents. The Timeline Browse allows you to find major legislation by decade in categories like Immigration and Civil Rights. Browse the homepage by congress number to find all the compiled legislative histories for that congress.
  • In ProQuest Congressional, search by bill or Public Law number, or Advanced Search by field, full-text, date, Congress, or particular publication
  • PDF of original documents for reports, hearings, Congressional Record bound edition, Public Laws

Use for:

  • Compiling legislative histories of U.S. statutes
  • Researching congressional intent
  • Finding older Congressional documents
  • Finding CRS Reports for background information on federal legislative issues

Guides to using ProQuest Congressional

Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Databases

The law library has numerous foreign and international law databases to help you find the law of other countries, international law documents such as treaties, and secondary sources for background and citations.

Foreign Law Guide describes legal systems and resources for other countries and includes citations and some links to major foreign statutes by topic. Includes English language translations where available.

Getting the Deal Through: Q&A articles on the law of other countries in commercial subjects including intellectual property, corporate, banking, tax, and white collar crime, with citations to applicable statutes. Includes a Compare tool for comparing questions between jurisdictions. The most current version on Lexology is only available in the law school, but Getting the Deal Through is also available on Lexis and Bloomberg Law, although they offer fewer subject areas than the primary version on Lexology.

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law and Oxford Constitutions of the WorldConstitutions of other countries in English and original versions, including historical constitutions, plus articles on constitutional law of other countries and comparison of constitutions by topic.

vLex Justis includes primary and secondary legal materials, including official gazettes, codes, court judgments, and newspapers, from Latin America, many European countries (plus the European Union), Canada, and India. It has its own translation feature, including searching in English.

PKULaw (ChinaLawInfo), SCC Online (India), and ICLR (United Kingdom): Primary law of other countries. 

Oxford Reports on International Law includes caselaw on public international law from international and domestic courts.

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law is a secondary source on international law on the Oxford Law platform. It includes detailed articles on topics in international law, with citations to primary resources and related secondary material.

Transnational Dispute Management: Journal and primary documents on international alternative dispute management and commercial arbitration.

 

Databases of historical materials

Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records & Briefs 1832-1978Records and briefs of historical U.S. Supreme Court cases

Making of Modern Law: Landmark Records from the US Court of Appeals, 1890-1980.

Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926: Searchable historical treatises on U.S. and British law

Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources 1626-1926: Historical U.S. legal materials, early U.S. state codes, constitutional conventions, and city charters

Use all of the Making of Modern Law databases for historical research, in state, federal, and foreign law research. The entire list of Making of Modern Law databases is available in our list of Electronic Resources. You can also find the included titles, for treatises and other documents, in our online catalog: Emory Libraries Search.

LLMC DigitalOlder primary and secondary source materials from the U.S. and from other countries. 

Hein Online includes many historical resources, primary and secondary.

JSTOR includes many older journals in PDF format.

Interdisciplinary Journals

While working for professors, you may need to find articles in fields other than law. Use Emory A to Z Databases to find Emory's databases by subject or by type of database. Or try these databases for searching for articles in multiple subject areas. 

JSTOR: Full-text, pdf journals, including older volumes. Disciplines include Feminist & Women's Studies, International Relations, Public Health, Public Policy, Economics, Psychology, Criminology & Criminal Justice, History, and Statistics.

Academic Search Complete: Multi-disciplinary database of full-text scholarly journals, periodicals, and newspapers. Searchable by full-text and fields. You can limit your search by publication type, document type (article, interview), or limited to images. Many articles are available in PDF. 

Business Source Complete: Database of full-text business and scholarly journals in marketing, accounting, finance, and economics. Includes company profiles, industry profiles, and market research reports. You can limit your search by publication type, company, or ticker symbol.

PAIS International: Searchable index of articles, books, policy papers, and government documents in public policy, social policy, and social sciences. Results as citations and abstracts with Find it @ Emory links. 

Emory Library Search: The catalog for the Emory libraries is also a database for searching articles in multiple campus databases. Log in first as an Emory user to get access to journal databases. Use the link to Articles+, search, then refine your search results by resource type, subject, or collection. Results will include links to the articles in campus databases.

Newspapers

You may need newspapers in your research, for finding recent and unpublished trial-level cases, historical information, op-eds, and information on state and local legislation.

Databases with current and modern newspaper content:

Historical newspapers (1980s and earlier):

Other newspaper databases at Emory:

Woodruff Library has a Research Guide to finding newspapers in databases available at Emory.

Session Recording - 2023 Workshop

Session Slides - 2023 Workshop

This is the Way

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Questions?  Email Anna Sturgill, Law Librarian for Archives and Assessment Services