**Finding legal information: The absolute basics.

A guide to finding out more about legal topics, written by a Lloyd Sealy Librarian.

**How to Find Free Case Law Online

Guide by the Library of Congress on how to find case law on Google Scholar, CourtListener, Caselaw Access Project, Findlaw and Justia.

Annual Reviews

Collection of Annual Review Journals featuring literature reviews in the fields of Social Science.

CQ Press Electronic Library

Provides access to CQ publications available online including CQ Almanac, CQ Researcher Plus Archive, CQ Magazine (formerly CQ Weekly), Political Handbook of the World, Politics in America and Supreme Court Yearbook. Also provides access to these CQ resources now available on the Sage Knowledge Platform: Congress and the Nation, Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, Historic Document Series, Vital Statistics on American Politics and the Washington Information Directory. For more about how to use CQ publications go to: https://sagepub.libguides.com/CQPress

Crime, Punishment and Popular Culture,1790-1920 (go to Learning Center for research help)

Archive containing manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals from 1790 - 1920. The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes.  Includes raw data about crime, its solutions, and the popular response.  To learn more about how to use this archive and refine your research question go to the Learning Center.

Guide to Law Online (LOC)

An annotated guide to national and international sources of government and legal information prepared by the Law Library of Congress; includes links to treaties, constitutions, and codes.

Gun Regulation and Legislation in America

Brings together over 500 relevant titles including periodicals, federal legislative histories, congressional hearings, Congressional Research Study (CRS) Reports and Supreme Court Briefs.

Hein Online

Several historical American and international law collections incuding law reviews and journals from their first volume of publication, the Federal Register, Presidential Documents, U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Attorney Generals Opinions, World Constitutions, legal classics, and the newest collection, Slavery in America and the World; History, Culture and Law. A comprehensive user's guide to this database is available at  https://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/HOLUserGuide.pdf.

Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (see Legal Source)

Now part of Legal Source, the Ebsco database providing articles on current issues, studies, thoughts and trends of the legal world with coverage dating back to 1908.

Legal Source

Articles on current issues, studies, thoughts and trends of the legal world with coverage dating back to 1908. Content from Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (formerly owned by Wilson) is now part of this database.

LGBTQ+ Rights

LLMC - Digital

An archival collection of legal materials with historical federal legislative, executive and judicial papers (including temp. commisions like the Wickersham Comm.), selected state documents, and historically significant international documents. For infomation on how to search this database see this brief video  (click Tutorial).

New York City Charter, Code, and Rules

Searchable and browsable public portal to the laws of New York City including:  New York City Charter,  New York City Administrative Code and the Rules of the City of New York.

New York City Crime Map

Interactive crime map created by the NYPD showing date and location for  the seven major NYS penal law felonies (murder, rape, robbery, felonious assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny motor vehicle). Data available for current and previous calendar year and by month within each period.

New York Code, Rules, and Regulations - NYCRR

Click on title to access in LexisNexis Academic and then click on TOC - Table of Contents -- in upper left hand side of screen Or arrows to browse.  See subject guide on Finding Legal Information for more information.

New York Law Journal

New York’s daily legal newspaper. 

(Ignore the Sign In button, it never goes away.)

New York State Penal Law

Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic)

Nexis Uni features more than 15,000 news, business, and legal sources formerly found through the LexisNexisAcademic platform - including federal and state laws and cases, constitutions, municipal codes, and law review articles. The interface is designed to offer quick discovery across all content types. Register for a personal NexisUni id to use personalization features such as Alerts, saved searches, and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents. Watch this video to learn about the latest enhancements to the Nexis Uni interface.

Oxford Reference

Over 200 reference books from Oxford University Press, including language dictionaries, and reference works in art, science, classics, business, history, law, literature, medicine, geography, performing arts, philosophy, and social science.

Public Library of Law

A collection of free law materials including case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, and federal and state constitutions.

Shepard's Citations

Search for cited cases and check the validity of a citation.

Available only through NexisUni. Go to case to find Shepherd's Citations.

Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law

Brings together all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Much of the non-legal material in this collection is based on the holdings of the Buffalo Public Library. Its rare book collection contains hundreds of nineteenth century pamphlets and books on slavery.  A quick reference guide on how to ue this collection can be found at  https://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/SlaveryQRG.pdf

Social Sciences Full Text

Provides accesses to journals in anthropology, criminology, economics, law, geography, policy studies, psychology, sociology, social work, and urban studies from 1983 to the present and indexes material from 1929 to 1983.

Sociological Abstracts

Scholarly articles, books, and dissertations in sociology and subdisciplines. Coverage from 1952 to the present.

State Legislation Aggregator Search Sites

These freely available websites aggregate state legislative information, providing a more uniform and user-friendly search experience and the ability to compare legislative activities across the states.

1. Openstates.org
2. Legiscan.com  
3. BillTrack50.com (must register, but it is free)

Supreme Court Database (NSF)

Provides legal scholars with extensive data, like background issues, reasons for acceptance, chronology, outcome impacts, and judge's opinions, for Supreme Court Cases since 1953. Funded by the National Science Foundation.

TRACFED

Data about federal enforcement activities -- criminal, civil, and administrative -- including detailed information about federal staffing, federal enforcement agencies, and income and demographic statistics.

VictimLaw

Information on victims rights and protections including Constitutional provisions, statutes, court rules, administrative code provisions, case summaries, and attorney general opinions. Includes overviews of the justice system and a glossary.

World Constitutions Illustrated (HeinOnLline)

Provides access to the current constitution of every country in its native language (English translations for most), and links to related scholarly articles, books, bibliographies, and web sites. More information on how to search this database can be found at https://help.heinonline.org/kb/how-to-search-in-world-constitutions-illustrated/

World Legal Information Institute

A free, independent and non-profit global legal research facility providing access to over 1230 databases from 123 jurisdictions developed collaboratively by 14 Legal Information Institutes including the Cornell Legal Information Institute.  A good resource for finding contemporary legal materials from foreign countries.