Basic Legal Research for University Students- Law Reviews and Journal Articles
Introduction
LexisNexis Academic
Wilson Index to Legal Periodicals
Heinonline
Journal Finder & Scholar
Introduction
Law develops constantly. Researchers want to read periodical articles when they need current information about the law on a particular topic, or about a significant court decision, for example.
Law schools publish one or several journals or law reviews, many published quarterly. Some, such as the Journal of Law and Health from C.S.U.'s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, concentrate on specific subjects, but many, such as the Cleveland State Law Review, contain articles on a wide range of topics. Sometimes there is a symposium issue, with articles from that event. Footnotes from law review articles can be an excellent method of obtaining citations to legislation, court cases, or other journal articles, enabling you to expand your research.
You can browse current issues of specific law school law reviews (print format) at the Law Library. Bring your C.S.U. ID (VikingCard) or other photo ID to the Information Services Desk and you may check out these issues for use in the Law Library for 2 hours. Volumes from earlier years (many bound volumes) are generally shelved on the Base Level of the Law Library, by call number, beginning with K 1. Titles with call numbers are listed on SCHOLAR.
See Finding Articles in Law Reviews, Journals and Other Legal Periodicals for an explanation of the legal periodical indexes and databases available to Cleveland-Marshall College of Law students and the C.S.U. community.
If you have a citation for the article, it is a good idea to try and locate sources for the publication using Journal Finder & Scholar.
If you do not have a citation, do a keyword search on LexisNexis Academic, Wilson Index to Legal Periodicals or Heinonline to find relevant citations.
LexisNexis Academic
To search for full-text articles of law reviews electronically, LexisNexis Academic is an OhioLINK research database available to CSU students, faculty, and staff on campus, and also off campus via authentication. It includes the contents of a very comprehensive collection of law school law reviews and many other law journals.
1. To get to LexisNexis Academic, start at the University Library's Home Page, http://www.ulib.csuohio.edu/ , click on Research Databases, then the alphabetical list J-L (for the letter L,) then click on LexisNexis Academic.
2. From the initial LexisNexis Academic screen, on the red tab, click on Legal. The default screen is the basic search screen for U.S. and Canadian Law Reviews Combined.
3. "Terms and Connectors" should be selected for your type of search. When constructing your search consider using connectors. (You can click from that screen for the details.) For tips on constructing your search, look at the Tips section lower down on the screen.
4. Type your search term or terms in the Keyword box: ohio lemon law
Lexis is searching for the exact phrase "ohio lemon law"
5. Note that the date drop-down menu defaults to "All years." That may be too long a time period, especially for some hot topics. On the other hand, selecting too short a time period to use for searching law reviews (such as 6 months) . (Sometimes the most recent issue of a title is delayed in publication, and would have an older date on it.) Select All available dates, or whichever time frame you require.
6. Click on the Search button.
Wilson Index to Legal Periodicals
The difference between using Wilson versus LexisNexis Academic is that while LexisNexis Academic searches the fulltext of the documents, the Wilson index usually searches only titles, abstracts, subject descriptors, etc. Thus, in LexisNexis Academic, you may pull up articles which only mention your keywords once and are not very relevant, unless you do a search in Lexis such as atleast5(your search terms).
1. For campus access (this database is NOT available off campus), begin with the Law Library's home page, click on the Quick Links drop-down menu, and click on ILP / ILP Retro which takes you to the WilsonWeb Advanced Search screen.
2. Click the boxes to select Legal Periodicals & Books and/or Legal Periodicals Retro.
- To identify recent law review articles, Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (ILP) covers 1981 - the present. Please note: The Law Library has a print run of ILP in the Reference Area KF 8 .I54
- For articles written from 1918 to 1981, consult the ILP Retro. ILP Retro is available on campus, and should be available at the Law Library's Legal Research workstations.
3. For our Ohio example, you want all three words to be searched, so in the first Search For: line type Ohio (and have the connector "and" in the drop-down menu); in the second box, lemon ( "and" in the drop-down menu), and in the third search box, law. You can indicate how you want the results sorted -- by relevance or by date. You can also limit by date. Click the Start button.
You should get a screen with at least 5 items.
To find the fulltext of the journal articles, try using Scholar or Journal Finder below, or ask a librarian for help.
Heinonline
Heinonline includes older law reviews not otherwise available electronically, and the ability to print a pdf version of the page. The most recent issues of a particular law review may not be contained in Heinonline. Heinonline is available off campus. A full text search on Heinonline is typically more difficult than a fulltext search on LexisNexis Academic.
Generally the footnotes will be at the bottom of each page. Charts (if any) will be available in this format whereas they are likely not to be in some of the other databases.
In HeinOnline, you can also search by author or title or subject, the full text of all of the journals, or a single journa's full text. The Tables of Contents for specific volumes can also provide helpful information.
Scholar and JournalFinder
Links to law journal titles available on HeinOnline, LexisNexis Academic and elsewhere are included in SCHOLAR and in the Journal Finder (on the home page of both the University and Law Libraries.)