Legal Resources

Ramsey Library Research Guides

Web Directories & Search Engines

General

Law Library Resource Exchange (LLRX). Directory. Organizes a large number of general legal resources.

The Internet Legal Research Compass. Directory. Includes Law Related Sources on the Internet. Villanova University.

FindLaw. Index to legal research resources on the Web. Yahoo-style layout makes finding specific types of resources easy. Federal, state, and international law, law reviews, organizations, legal forms, news, etc.

LawCrawler. Search the Web for legal information. FindLaw has organized the search process for you with drop-down menus and clearly-defined search options.

For U.S. Government Web Sites

GPO Access. The Mother Lode of government databases for research.

GOVBOT Database of Government Web Sites. Indexes over a million government and military Web sites. Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst

Pathway Indexer. Search over 1,350 official government and military sites. Updated daily by an Internet robot. GPO Access

InfoMine Government Information. Directory and search engine. Comprehensive and well-organized. University of California at Riverside

Google Government Search. Search engine for government and military sites.

usgovsearch. Free edtion of Northern Light's government search. See also Northern Light Special Editions for coverage of current issues.

Yahoo! U.S. Government. Directory and Search Engine.

Indexes to Periodicals

LexisNexis Academic. News and wire services; company, industry and market information; resources for legal and political research, medical news; government information. Full-text.

For summaries of current issues, browse these printed periodicals in the Library:

Congressional Digest. 1921+ (Monthly) Latest issues in Current Periodicals JK1 .C65 View catalog record.

CQ Weekly Report. 1954+ Latest issues in REF JK1 .C15 View catalog record.

CQ Researcher. 1998+ (Monthly; annual cum.) in REF H35 .C672 View catalog record.

The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Other Documents

Constitution of the United States. Facsimiles and transcription. National Archives and Records Administration. See also the printed version of the Constitution of the United States of America in Ramsey Library Reference (REF KF4587 .K54 1987).

The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation. Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. See the 1998 Supplement: Cases Decided to June 26, 1998 (Senate Document 106-8) in text or PDF format. A sample annotation about the NEA v. Finley Supreme Court Decision is shown below.

Core Documents of U.S. Democracy. Full-text access to current and historical documents that define our democratic society. GPO Access

Supreme Court

The official print version of Supreme Court Decisions, called United States Reports or U.S. Reports, are available in Ramsey Library from 1966, v. 387- present. REF KF101 .U5. For decisions before 1966, see Supreme Court Reporter REF KF101 .U5.

Recent decisions are printed in United States Law Week. Ramsey Library has 1985- present. REFHD5503 .A78x.

Supreme Court of the United States. Home page. Links to opinions.

Guide to the Supreme Court. By Jurist, the Law Professor's Network. An introduction to the jurisprudence, structure, history and Justices of the Supreme Court. University of Pittsburgh.

Lexis-Nexis Academic. On the Case Law menu, select Federal Case Law.

Supreme Court Decisions. "Project Hermes" archive maintained by Cornell University Legal Information Institute contains nearly all opinions of the court issued since May of 1990. Also, over 600 important decisions are available as a searchable collection.

Judicial Branch Resources (GPO Access):

U.S. Supreme Court Opinions 1992-
U.S. Supreme Court Opinions 1937-1975

Medill School of Journalism Supreme Court Docket. Northwestern University site where you can search cases by title, citation, or subject. Digital audio (RealAudio) of Oral Arguments in some important cases. Links to written opinions since 1891, provided by the FindLaw project. Biographies of all 108 justices, and a virtual tour of the Court building.

Findlaw's Supreme Court Opinions. 1893-

Other Federal Courts

Federal Court Finder. Site maintained by Emory University. Decisions from the U. S. Court of Appeals, all circuits.

Internet Law Library. List of links to opinions and rules of federal courts. Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy

Federal Judiciary Home Page. All about our federal court system.

U. S. Sentencing Commission. Establishes sentencing policies for federal courts.

U. S. Congress

GPO Access. Text of bills & public laws, committee reports, and much more.

Thomas. House & Senate information, full text access to current bills, links to more congressional information. THOMAS is a service of the Library of Congress.

LexisNexis Academic. News and wire services; company, industry and market information; resources for legal and political research, medical news; government information. UNCA users only.

Tracing Legislation. Ramsey Research Guide that briefly describes the legislative process and where to find bills, laws, and related resources.

Laws

Federal

Public Laws (1995-) GPO Access.

THOMAS (1973-) Public Laws and tools for tracing legislation. Library of Congress.

United States Code. Search by citation, Statutes at Large citation, popular name. GPO Access

State

North Carolina General Statutes. North Carolina General Assembly.

LexisNexis Academic. On the Case Law menu select State Case Law.

Regulations

Federal Register. New rules and regulations. Presidential proclamations. Incorporated into the Code of Federal Regulations. GPO Access.

Code of Federal Regulations. April 1996- . GPO Access.

First Amendment and Freedom of Speech

Freedom of Expression at the National Endowment for the Arts. "An interdisciplinary education project partially funded by the American Bar Association, Commission on College and University Legal Studies through the ABA Fund for Justice and Education." A fine collection of resources, including examples of legal briefs. Julie Van Camp, California State University at Long Beach.

First Amendment Lawyers Association.

Freedom Forum.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

Yahoo Arts - Censorship Directory.

Conservative and Liberal Interest Groups

The Alliance for Justice.

American Civil Liberties Union.

American Enterprise Institute.

Cato Institute.

Center for Individual Rights.

Eagle Forum.

Citing Legal Resources

Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (1997-98 ed.). Peter W. Martin, Cornell Law School. Organized by type of material, such as cases, laws, constitutions, etc. Does not emphasize electronic materials, but guides for legal materials are rare enough to warrant including it anyway.

[Sample annotation about NEA v. Finley in The United States
Constitution: Analysis and Interpretation, 1998 Supplement:
Cases Decided to June 26, 1998.]

[P. 1113, add to text following n.236:]

     In National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, the 
Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a federal 
statute requiring the NEA, in awarding grants, to ``tak[e] 
into consideration general standards of decency and respect 
for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.'' 
\46\ The Court acknowledged that, if the statute were 
``applied in a manner that raises concern about the 
suppression of disfavored viewpoints,'' \47\ then such 
application might be unconstitutional. The statute on its 
face, however, is constitutional because it ``imposes no 
categorical requirement,'' being merely ``advisory.'' \48\ 
``Any content-based considerations that may be taken into 
account in the grant-making process are a consequence of the 
nature of arts funding. . . . The `very assumption' of the 
NEA is that grants will be awarded according to the 
`artistic worth of competing applications,' and absolute 
neutrality is simply `inconceivable.' '' \49\ The Court also 
found that the terms of the statute, ``if they appeared in a 
criminal statute or regulatory scheme, . . . could raise 
substantial vagueness concerns. . . . But when the 
Government is acting as patron rather than as sovereign, the 
consequences of imprecision are not constitutionally 
severe.'' \50\
------------------------------------------------------------

\46\ 118 S. Ct. 2168, 2171 (1998).
\47\ Id. at 2179.
\48\ Id. at 2176. Justice Scalia, in a concurring 
opinion joined by Justice Thomas, claimed that this 
interpretation of the statute ``gutt[ed] it.'' Id. at 2180. 
He believed that the statute ``establishes content- and 
viewpoint-based criteria upon which grant applications are 
to be evaluated. And that is perfectly constitutional.'' Id.
\49\ Id. at 2177, 2178.
\50\ Id. at 2179.