Law Review articles are often a good research source. They are scholarly articles written by students, professors or practitioners and often delve deep into a particular topic. This guide is geared toward helping you find law review articles of interest to you. The first section addresses how to find a law review article when you have a topic in mind, and the second section looks at how to find an article once you have a citation.
When you have a topic in mind, you can find relevant articles either by using a print index, which organizes journal citations by subject, or you can use an online database.
Using a Print Index - An index is a compilation of article citations organized by subject matter. Most indices do not include the full text of the articles they index. For any given topic, you will see a list of article titles (and their citations) often with an abstract of the article's contents. To find the full text of an article, you will need to look up the article by its citation either in a book or online.
Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (1909 - present; books included from 1994 - present). The Index to Legal Periodicals covers legal publications of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. This is not a full text resource. It will provide you with the citation to relevant articles and may also provide an abstract of an individual article.
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (1966 - present). The Index to Foreign Periodicals is a multi-lingual, worldwide index to law reviews, articles and other legal publications. It covers all jurisdictions except those covered byt he Index to Legal Peridicals (the coverage does not overlap). It also does not provide full text.
Index to Periodical Articles Related to Law (1958 - present). This index includes English language articles worldwide that are law related. It covers articles and publications that are not in either the Index to Legal Periodicals or the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals. It is available in print and on Hein Online.
Current Index to Legal Periodicals. This is a weekly publication that indexes law journals, articles and other law publications by topic.
Using an Online Index - Online indices provide you with the same content as the print options - article citation, title, and some abstracts - but you can search for relevant citations using your own search terms rather than looking through a fixed topic index.
Legal Resource Index (LRI) & LegalTrac. LRI is available on Lexis from 1977 and available on Westlaw from 1980. LegalTrac's coverage starts in 1980 and is available as a law library electronic resource.
Legal Journals Index. This includes articles from the United Kingdom and other European countries pertaining to European Union Law and policy. Coverage begins in 1986 on Westlaw.
Current Index to Legal Periodicals. The most recent eight issues are available on Westlaw.
Hein Online offers search capabilities across their Law Journal Library. Articles retrieved through Hein Online are PDF versions of the articles as they appeared in the journal. Any charts, graphs or pictures that appeared in the original publication will also appear on Hein Online.
When you have a law review citation, you can get the full text of the article by looking the citation up in a book or online.
Articles in Print
Once you have the citation of an article you want to read, you need to decipher the citation to make sure you understand what journal this article is published in. If you do not recognize the journal title, look up the abbreviated name in Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations or in the Bluebook's Legal Abbreviations periodical index.
To read the article, you can first check our online catalog to see if we own that journal.
For example, if I want to read an article whose citation is 3 Golden Gate U.L.Rev. 1, check the catalog to see if we have this title and volume 3 of this title. (We do.) Then, go to the periodicals section of the law library to pull this issue from the shelf and read the full article text.
If the library does not own the journal, you can request a copy through interlibrary loan.
Articles Online
Hein Online - Select the Law Journal Library. You can then type the citation in on the left side, or find the publication in the main box, then find the volume and page number you are looking for.
Lexis - Type the citation in the "Get a Document" box.
Westlaw - Type the citation in the "Find by Citation" box.
GOLPAC - online catalog - When looking a journal title up in our online catalog, there may be a listing for the journal that says "Electronic Resource" instead of providing you with a location int he library where the material may be found. By clicking on the "Electronic Resource" link, you will be redirected to an onine site that offers you the text of the journal.