Legal Research Using the Internet
| Autor | Lyonette Louis-Jacques |
| Cargo | Foreign and International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law. D'Angelo Law Library. University of Chicago Law School. (USA) |
Why Use the Internet for Legal Research?
The Internet is a cheap alternative to the use of commercial databases such as LEXIS and WESTLAW for finding primary legal materials such as U.S. federal and state statutes, bills, cases, and regulations. Sometimes these materials are available more quickly on the Internet than on LEXIS and WESTLAW (especially if they relate to the Law of Cyberspace/The Internet, Computer Law, Immigration Law, the First Amendment and censorship, Communications Law,Intellectual Property, major criminal trials, Antitrust Law, elections, or other hot topics). And sometimes, the Internet is the only place where you will find some primary materials, for instance, legislation and case law from foreign countries, treaties involving non-U.S. countries, e-mail addresses and other directory information for legal professionals worldwide, and materials in areas of law that have been traditionally underrepresented in print and electronic legal publications (women and the law, human rights, the rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people, law and literature (for instance, e-texts of Jane Austen's writings), Roman law, law and popular culture, etc.), and non-legal materials that are important to law work or interdisciplinary research.
The Internet can augment an average law library's resources by providing alternate copies of print materials, and information that cannot be found in the law library in print or electronic format. For instance, here are some examples of the types of resources that are on the Internet: census information, uniform and model acts; news; publishers' catalogs; worldwide library catalogs; indexes/tables of contents of journals; full text of articles from electronic law and non-law journals; books (such as the Classics); bookstores (Law Stuff USA (academic textbooks), Amazon, etc.), poetry; Shakespeare's works; Classical music; Bartlett's Quotations; song lyrics; comic strips; tax forms; sports information (such as professional baseball and basketball players salaries); travel information; legal documents (transcripts of hearings, reports, memoranda, complaints, indictments, oral arguments, etc.). The Internet is strongest for non-legal materials, and for legal materials that are usually not found or will not be available as quickly on LEXIS and WESTLAW and print publications in your law library.
Where to Start Your Internet Legal Research
If this is your first time on the Internet, it is good to hunt down a legal research guide. The guides below are good to check before embarking on legal research on the Internet. They describe and link to legal resources generally available on the Internet such as web, gopher, ftp sites, and listservs, or list existing Internet legal research guides.
Jim Milles
"Law on the Web" (this is one of the best places to start as it is a well-organized list of U.S. legal resources on the Internet - statutes, cases, etc., with links)
"An Introduction to Using the Internet at Saint Louis University"
"A Clearinghouse of Internet Training Guides for Law"
G. Burgess Allison
"List of Law-Related Internet Books and Newsletters"(includes most of the key guides to legal resources on the Internet)
Diana Botluk (previous author was Erik J. Heels)
_The Legal List_(covers all types of Net resources - webs, gophers, ftp sites, etc.)
Lyonette Louis-Jacques
Lyo's "Law Lists" (browsable text)(has instructions for subscribing to about 400 law-related e-mail lists and about 150 Usenet newsgroups)
Lyo's "Law Lists" (keyword search feature)
Argus Clearinghouse (was called "Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides"; includes research guides on all sorts of topics, including law, many with hypertext links)
http://www.clearinghouse.net/
Or you can browse through some of the major Internet sites for law. If you become familiar with the sites below, you can do research on the Internet for legal questions more effectively. These web sites normally arrange information by legal subject (Antitrust Law, Civil Rights, Immigration Law, etc.), by type of document (Constitutions, Court Cases, Statutes, Treaties, etc.), by source (Governmental agency, International Organization, Law Firm, Law School, Publisher), and/or by intended audience (Law Students, Law Librarians, etc.).
U.S. House of Representatives Internet Law Library (one of the most comprehensive sites for...
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