Research Links for Constitutional Law
Last updated
You may find the following links useful in searching for primary and some secondary legal research materials. Examine them carefully, and be sure you have a good idea of what you are looking for when you start selecting items that are available at any of these. You may need to type in each URL or cut and paste it.
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitution/toc.html
This
URL may be invaluable to you. It is
a link to the U.S. Senate Document that provides the text of the Constitution
plus a tremendous amount of annotation, including court cases and
interpretations of the provisions. You can also search the Constitution for
words and phrases at this site. Thus, if you want to know what the Constitution
provides in connection with a term, a phrase, or a word, you can at least
locate where that item appears in the document itself.
Furthermore, the extensive annotation this
document contains allows the student to identify and explore supporting cases
(Court decisions and interpretations) and secondary discussion about provisions
in the Constitution. This will be quite useful in connection with undertaking
the Class Project for this course.
LEXIS-NEXIS
http://purl.lib.purdue.edu/db/db151
The Purdue Library System subscribes to Lexis Nexis Academic
which contains various court reports and limited law review materials. This “link”
will access this website, from a Purdue Computer. It contains both federal and
state materials, including statutory and case law. It is a comprehensive method
of looking up a case if you have the correct citation or the correct name. This
site has the most extensive set of legal materials, state as well as federal,
court opinions and statutory available electronically at Purdue.
This web site provides a general set of contacts with various legal materials. These range from Supreme Court opinions to practice forms, statutes, law school and law student resources, law reviews, and the like. It is a very useful site and students are encouraged to consult it frequently and often in the course of doing research for this course, preparing for class, and completing class assignments.
There are a variety of subsites within this one that are more specialized and therefore they may be more useful for specific searches. I think there are serious problems using this website to find court opinions, but some students insist on using it. Be warned!
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/
http://www.findlaw.com/lawreviews/
The following are a variety of additional sites that students might find useful. These should be explored during the course.
http://www.law.cornell.edu:80/uscode/
This subsite from Cornell provides a direct link to the United States Code. If you know the title and section of the federal law you can find it immediately. Otherwise, you can search the code for key phrases or particular subjects. If you have the name of the statute, you can also find it at this site.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
This is the . It is quite useable for a variety of purposes relating to past and present Court work -- cases, justices, court structure, rules, procedures, and opinions.
This is a web page for the federal courts. It provides a wide variety of general information about the organization and operation of the federal courts. It is good, general background.
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/frontpage
This site provides a link to a number of interesting and useful aspects of the U.S. Supreme Court, including the current docket, recent Court decisions, and recorded and transcribed oral argument of cases presented to the Supreme Court for decision.
http://www.lib.purdue.edu/govd/subjguides.html
The HSSE Library at Purdue provides this link which you might find useful and interesting. It contains extensive, subject matter connections to many different government documents and sources of information and data. Most of them are not related to Constitutional Law, but some connect to sources on environmental policy and law.