Secondary Sources
Books and journal articles are available at your school or public library. See the "Getting Help" section, below, for information on finding libraries. In law libraries books are known as "legal treatises." You can also find legal encyclopedias, such as Corpus Juris Secundum or American Jurisprudence and resources such as American Law Reports in a law library. Many major legal treatises may be found online on Lexis and Westlaw. Google Books may also be useful resource.
Although it is suggested to look first to secondary sources for general background explanation, free authoritative secondary sources are even scarcer on the web than the primary sources listed above. Law dictionaries can be found in many libraries, on Lexis and Westlaw, and free on the web. All law libraries and many general libraries have a copy of Black's Law Dictionary.
Many law reviews, other legal journals and magazines, and legal newspapers place content on the web. Not all law journals provide their text on the web, however. You may need to search Lexis or Westlaw, HeinOnline, or obtain the item in print from a library. You might also try Google Scholar, which searches general scholarly articles.
Read more about this topic: Legal Research In The United States
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