Module 3: Law Reviews

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Module 1
Steps of Research

Module 2
Research Strategies

Finding Law Reviews

Law review articles are the equivalent of scholarly, academic journals for the law.
The articles are generally very long and research-intensive, and will provide many footnotes to follow up for additional research including links to cases.
Notice info about the author - professor / researcher / student
Be sure to look at the database help screens / search tips.

Steps for locating law review articles using the Nexis Uni Links to an external site. (formerly LexisNexis Academic) database:

Step 1. Click on All Content Types

Screenshot of Nexis Uni search with All Content Types Selected.


Step 2. Select Legal then Law Reviews and Journals


Screenshot of Nexis Uni that shows Law Reviews under content types

 Step 3: After selecting Law Review and Journals, click on Previous Two Years to select which years should be included in your search. If you are not sure when something was published, choose All Available Dates

Screenshot of Nexis Uni that shows the drop down menu for selecting the dates to search

 

 Step 4: Now type in your search words in the search bar

 Screenshot with law reviews and all available dates selected with a red circle around the search bar

Step 5: Search tips:

  • Start broad and narrow your search using the filters from the search results.
  • If you get get too many results where your words are not close together, you can use the w/# to tell the database how close the words should be together. "peanut butter" w/2 Jelly = jelly needs to be within two words of "peanut butter"
    • w/p = words have to be in the same paragraph
    • "roadless rule" w/5 policy
    • "roadless rule" w/p nepa
    • "abortion clinic*" w/5 regulation*
  • Using the - and - connector without limiting to the title or same sentence or same paragraph is usually too broad since you will be searching the fulltext of the article (usually very long!)

Place phrases in quotes

"roadless rule" "medical marijuana" "right to carry"
"lily ledbetter fair pay act" "safe drinking water act" "permit to carry"
"citizens  united" "hydraulic fracturing" "internet privacy"

 

Use * for truncation

pesticide* = pesticide or pesticides
regulation* = regulation or regulations
immigrant* = immigrant or immigrants
"gray wol*" = gray wolf or gray wolve or gray wolves



 

 

 

questions.jpg

Questions?

For assistance developing your research strategies, or finding resources for your topic, or any other questions, please contact Public Policy & Government and Politics specialist:

Celina Nichols (cnichol5@umd.edu