Law Research Guide  

U.S. Supreme Court,
Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Librarian: Barbara Levergood

This guide's purpose is to help researchers find law cases and law reviews, and answer other legal questions, using the law resources of Bowdoin College Library.

Locating the Law, Fifth Edition 2011 

Spiral Staircase,
Collection of the Supreme Court
of the United States

Index to Legal Periodicals and books, 1982- (Online)
Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective, 1908-1981 (Online)

International coverage and access to law reviews, scholarly articles and more. Best place to begin research because the search engine is more efficient than LexisNexis or Westlaw Campus for locating articles on a specific topic or case. Although an index only, the "check availability" link connects to full text in most cases.

JSTOR

An online archive of scholarly journals, including a number of respected law reviews. This can be an especially useful database to search when lookng for law reviews for cases decided prior to 1982.

Lexis-Nexis Academic

Fulltext subscription database of federal and state cases, statutes, law reviews and news. For law cases, select the box titled 'Look up a Legal Case'; to select a case by jurisdiction, click on the 'cases' link within that box. For law reviews, from the left side column select 'U.S. Legal' and choose 'Law Reviews'. For Canadian law reviews, select 'International Legal', then 'Canadian Law Journals'.

Westlaw Campus

Fulltext subscription database of caselaw, statutes, law reviews and news. Includes the most recent Black's Law Dictionary. To find cases use the Law tab, not the News & Business tab. For law reviews, click on Law Reviews from the left-hand menu; see searching tips for Westlaw.

Many of the databases provide journal articles in full text or link to a full text service.

But some do not. Those databases are strictly bibliographic. That is, when you perform a keyword search, the database identifies articles without providing the article's text. The information describing the article is called a "citation."

When you have a citation, there are two ways to find the text of the actual article. Most citations in databases have a link that says "check availability," and clicking that link brings up a box, which lets you know whether: a) the article's in full text or b) the article's in print or microfilm or c) the article's not at Bowdoin but can be obtained through Interlibrary loan.

You can also select the "Journal Titles A-Z" tab on the Library Homepage and enter the name of the journal (not the article title) to find the same information.

Online Citation Help

Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (LII) by Peter W. Martin, from Cornell Law School.

CiteUS LegalUS -"the legal citation generator for lazy law students"
Creates Bluebook uniform citations for most legal sources except case law, which is covered by Lexis Nexis. Includes statutes, administrative and legislative materials.

CiteGenie  - A plug-in for Firefox that adds proper Bluebook citations to text copied from Westlaw and LexisNexis.

On Reserve at Bowdoin

The bluebook : a uniform system of citation
Main Libr Reserve 126 18th 2005