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US Supreme Court Research: Articles

This guide provides resources to assist with conducting US Supreme Court research. This is not an exhaustive list of resources, but rather, a selected list of quality resources.

Finding Articles


The following are a list of databases you can use to find legal articles about a specific US Supreme Court research topic:

LegalTrac- This electronic index to legal journal articles provides a comprehensive listing of "more than 1,400 titles, including major law reviews, legal newspapers, bar association journals, and international legal journals." Coverage begins with 1980. Legal Trac doesn't contain the full-text of articles, but rather, bibliographic records of articles (listing the title, author, etc.), sometimes with accompanying abstracts briefly summarizing the article's contents. Legal Trac is the best resource to use if you want to be very thorough in your research because it has such a comprehensive list of journal articles. LegalTrac is accessible to GGU students and faculty through GGU law library's website.

Once you have located an article of interest on Legal Trac, look up the title of the journal containing the article on GGU's library catalog (search by "title"); the search results should indicate whether GGU has the journal, either in print or online. If the article is not available through GGU, try to locate the journal (searching by journal title) on WorldCat and request the appropriate volume of the journal through inter-library loan.

Westlaw - Westlaw's Journals and Law Reviews (JLR) database contains the full-text of law review and journal articles, searchable with terms and connectors or natural language. Westlaw's Legal Resource Index (LRI) database is an index of articles (which doesn't contain the full-text of articles, but is more comprehensive in scope than the JLR database). You can search Westlaw's index and full-text databases simultaneously by typing both database identifiers (LRI; JLR) into "Search for a database" on Westlaw Classic.

Lexis - Lexis's Journals and Law Reviews database (listed under "Secondary Legal") contains the full-text of law review and journal articles, searchable with terms and connectors or natural language.

Hein Online- HeinOnline's Law Journal Library is particularly useful for accessing journal articles in pdf format, which include images and graphs that are often omitted on Westlaw or Lexis. Hein Online is not the best place to start your research (because it is not as easy to search as the resources listed above), but it is the best place to locate a particular article that you know exists. Additionally, Hein Online is useful if you are looking for an article that was published prior to 1980 (which will not be available on Westlaw or Lexis).