Library: Criminal Justice &amp; Public Safety Resource Guide: Legal Research

Legal Research

Congress.gov (from the Library of Congress)
This site tracks current legislation in the U.S. Congress. You may search by keyword, bill #, representative or senator. You may also search for past legislation and laws that were passed in each Congress. This is the successor to Thomas.gov and will eventually incorporate all of its material by 2014.
Federal Government Bill Tracking
This is an interesting site which tracks all Federal legislation from the US Congress. You can search by bill#, status, etc, but you can also search by broad subject category and keyword.
U.S. Code
This site from Cornell University lists the U.S. Code, which contains all federal laws grouped into 50 subject areas called Titles. We also have this in print in the Law Library (conference room).

Westlaw Campus Research This link opens in a new window
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Westlaw Campus Research includes analytical sources like American Jurisprudence 2d, American Law Reports, 800+ law reviews and journals, and primary law sources like USCA, CFR, Federal Register, and all federal, state, and Supreme Court cases.

Westlaw Campus Research contains the full text of court opinions, statutes, and regulations from state and federal government.

The suggested web links below are law-related resources to assist you in your legal research.

Cornell Legal Information Institute
This site from the Cornell Law Library is a series of excellent databases, including the Supreme Court Opnions, U.S. Code and a collaborative legal dictionary & encyclopedia (Wex). Includes federal/state cases, federal/state law, basic legal citation.
FindLaw
Google Scholar (Legal opinions)
Google Scholar has added a button to do searches on legal opinions (full-text) and law journals (not full text). You must click on this button before searching. You can also click on advanced search for limiting by state and by other criteria. It has gotten favorable reviews and seems to retrieve many useful cases. Try it out!
Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Case Summaries, Oral Arguments
The OYEZ Project offers over 2000 hours of U.S. Supreme Court audio files, as well as a virtual tour of the Supreme Court and profiles of justices, past and present, made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Northwes
Supreme Court Collection
This site from Cornell University Law School provides searches by topic, author, parties for Supreme Court cases back to 1990. Gives highlights, briefs, oral argument recordings, description of present and past justices.