Georgetown Law Library

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Using Articles for Legal & Non-Legal Research

Introduction

Scholarly research should include the consultation of articles in law journals and/or law reviews. The collection at the Georgetown Law Library includes all major law journals and reviews as well as many non-legal journals, in a combination of print and electronic formats. Additionally, on-campus access is provided for many articles in electronic format from the main campus and medical center libraries.

A law journal or law review is a legal periodical or magazine containing scholarly articles, essays, and other commentary on legal topics by professors, judges, law students, and practitioners. Articles in periodicals describe, often in depth, the current state of the law, and offer analysis of legal policies, rules and history. Journal articles offer extensive footnotes, citing primary and secondary sources relevant to the article's topic. Non-legal journals contain articles that cover other academic and general areas of study.

Finding Articles by Topic - Using Indexes

A search for articles should always begin with a search of relevant journal indexes. Similar to a library catalog's listing of books, a journal index is a listing of articles that appear in journals, newsletters, and magazines. Some legal journal indexes also include tables that list articles by statute or case name. The index listing includes bibliographic information about the article, including journal name, article title, author, volume, issue, page number and date, as well as one or more subject descriptors.

Searching journal indexes is more effective than searching full-text databases because the search is done only on the bibliographic information and the subject descriptors(ie: securities and disclosure), therefore yielding more relevant results. The subject descriptors for an article are very important for research, for once a useful article is identified, similar articles can be found by searching the same subject terms found in the first article.

The Law Center Library subscribes to the major legal journal indexes, and many that are non-legal. Additionally, access to the majority of indexes available at the main university library, Lauinger Library, is available via the Law Center network.

Law Review and Journal Indexes

For Non-Legal Mega Indexes, try these resources:

For additional Subject Specific Mega Indexes, try these:

For a description of the contents of these databases, please review the database list at the Lauinger Library.

Finding Articles by Topic in Full Text Databases

Articles research may also be conducted by searching full-text databases. A full-text database contains the entire texts of articles, and also generally (but not always) includes the bibliographic information. The full-text articles databases in Lexis and Westlaw are the most popular for full text searching of law articles.

Although full-text databases can yield useful and relevant information for research, there are certain disadvantages to searching the full text of articles.

• Searching for a particular key word or phrase in full text databases will retrieve articles that contain the key word(s) or phrase anywhere in the articles that are retrieved. The search results are likely to include lots of hits that are not particularly relevant to your topic.
• Full-text databases tend to have more limited date coverage. Lexis and Westlaw both hold full-text articles mostly from the early 1990s, although coverage of limited titles goes back to the late 1970s.
• Lexis and Westlaw full-text databases cover only a percentage of the journals that are indexed in journal indexes. Relying solely on these databases will limit the sources you find.

The advantages to using full-text databases are obvious. If you are looking for a specific article, finding it in a full-text database is very rewarding. For this reason, however, full-text databases are much more useful for retrieval than for research.

Finding Articles by Citation

Let's look at how you can find an article if you have a citation, such as

• What Makes the D.C. Circuit Different? A Historical View. John G. Roberts Jr. Virginia Law Review 92.3 (May 2006): p375-389

Start with the E-Journal Finder. Enter the name of the journal (in this case, it's Virginia Law Review) to find links to the full-text of the journal's articles.

To maximize E-Journal Finder's use, select "All" in the "Choose to view per Library" drop-down box.

If you are not able to find the article through E-Journal Finder, you can also search GULLiver by the journal title to check the library's print and electronic holdings. Articles that are not available online or in print may be requested through our Interlibrary Loan service.

Revised 01/09 (MK)
Updated 05/07(BM)

Page last saved 27-Apr-2009