LibGuides: Law and Legal Studies: Legal News, Cases, Journal Articles & More

Key Resources for Legal Research: News, Cases, Law Reviews, and Journals

Advanced Search in WSU Libraries SmartSearch
WSU Search Discovery Service - use this to access resources across the breadth and depth of WSU Libraries. Also learn to utilize filters for date, subject terms, disciplines, and types of resources. See Using SmartSearch box in the left-hand column on this page for more and demonstration.

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
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NexisUni, formerly LexisNexis Academic, Includes access to over 5,600 news, business, legal, medical and reference publications (most full-text, the rest abstracted), primarily newspapers, magazines and journals. Covers local, regional and international newspapers (in English and non-English languages). Includes broadcast transcripts, case law, legal codes, regulations, Shepard's Citations to Supreme Court cases (back to 1789), company financial information, and SEC filings and reports.

Introduction to Legal Research | Nexis Uni
A terrific tutorial on the basics of legal research. "Legal research is the process of identifying and retrieving information necessary to support legal decision-making." A process both complex and specific and requiring as much completeness as possible.

HeinOnline: Government, Politics and Law This link opens in a new window
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HeinOnline’s Government, Politics & Law contains more than 100 million pages of content across 156,000 titles and 310,000 volumes. HeinOnline bridges the gap in history by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 2,500 periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of journals, the database also contains the Congressional Record bound volumes in entirety, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, constitutions for every country in the world, classic books from the 18th & 19th centuries, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register and CFR from inception, and much more!

Terms of Use
Trial ends October 2018. Purchased in Nov 2018
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Online access to core scholarly journals in business, education, health, arts & humanities, life sciences, literature, physical sciences, and social sciences. Coverage begins with the first issue of each journal.
Terms of Use
Includes: Arts & Sciences 1-15, Business 2-4, & Life Sciences
Philosopher's Index This link opens in a new window
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Indexes articles in all areas of philosophy such as aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic and metaphysics as well as the philosophy of various disciplines such as education, history, law, religion, and science. Coverage: 1940-present.
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Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
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How to Use Google Scholar off-campus Provides access to scholarly sources across many disciplines including articles, theses, books, etc. from a variety of publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Links to full-text when available.
Gale Onefile: LegalTrac This link opens in a new window
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Citations to articles in all major law reviews, law journals, specialty law and bar association journals, and legal newspapers.
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Congress.gov (formerly THOMAS Legislative) This link opens in a new window
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Provides Federal legislative information including summary and status information as well as full-text of House and Senate bills; full-text of daily edition of Congressional Record, Committee Reports; and historical documents.

Recommended Multidisciplinary Databases for Legal Issues and Topical Research Resources

General OneFile This link opens in a new window
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A source for news and periodical articles on a wide range of topics: business, computers, current events, economics, education, environmental issues, health care, hobbies, humanities, law, literature and art, politics, science, social science, sports, technology, and many general interest topics.
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Human Rights Studies Online This link opens in a new window
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Human Rights Studies Online is a research and learning database providing comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty additional subjects. Our editorial board includes Laetitia Atlani-Duault (IRD; Hunter College/CUNY), Olivier Bercault (University of San Francisco), Phillip Cantrell (Longwood University), Catherine Filloux (Playwright), Pamela Graham (Columbia University), Adam Jones (University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus), Laura McGrew (Consultant, Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation), David Scheffer (Northwestern University), and Ruti Teitel (New York Law School; London School of Economics.) Terms of Use
Global Issues Library This link opens in a new window
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The Global Issues Library will include at completion coverage of 180 issues, topics, and events from the late 1890s to the present that are key to understanding today’s world including border and migration, atrocities and human rights violations, peacekeeping, climate change, terrorism, revolutions, and human trafficking. Specific events explored include the U.S. and Mexico Border, the Rwandan Genocide, the Arab Spring, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and climate migrants in Asia Pacific. Curated by an international board of scholars, issues and events are presented through a variety of perspectives—personal, governmental, legal, contemporary and retrospective—that demonstrate the interactions and interconnectedness of global issues. Terms of Use
Homeland Security Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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This database contains over 150,000 full-text documents on topics such as gangs, immigration, climate change, earthquakes, terrorism, pandemic influenza, school violence, etc. The public collection includes items such as U.S. policy and strategy documents related to homeland security, congressional hearings and legislation, Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Reports, and other resources from federal government agencies. WSU students also have access to the full collection including reports, studies, videos, webcasts, and analyses.
Security Issues Online This link opens in a new window
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Security Issues Online delves into conflicts, policies, and relationships that have impacted the global arena throughout modern history. It is organized around more than forty events and areas and includes a wide array of themes such as terrorism and counterterrorism, insurgency and counterinsurgency, cybersecurity, ethnic conflicts and resolution, and nuclear threats. This collection will include at completion 150 hours of video and 100,000 pages of printed materials (personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, and speeches). Terms of Use
HeinOnline: Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This link opens in a new window Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law brings together, for the first time, all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, as well as materials on free African-Americans in the colonies and the U.S. before 1870. Included are every statute passed by every state and colony, all federal statutes, all reported state and federal cases on slavery, and hundreds of books and pamphlets on the subject. In total, the collection contains more than 1,000 titles and nearly 850,000 pages.
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HeinOnline: Air and Space Law This link opens in a new window HeinOnline's Air and Space Law database brings together documents on private-sector pioneers with government funded programs to create 29 unique subjects, that track technological advancements, reforms and new frontiers in aerospace history. Topics covered include: airline deregulation; air traffic control modernization; airline safety concerns in a post-9/11 world; drones; satellites and their essential function in modern life; the Space Shuttle Program, including investigation of the Columbia and Challenger disasters; the growing problem of space debris; and the increasing amount of private, commercial companies and their stake in space. Collection is organized by outerspace and suborbital space to support researchers concerned with celestial bodies and earthbound air travel.

Constitute: The World’s Constitutions to Read, Search, and Compare
You can search by topics, countries or words, and filter by country and by date. Also, browse by country.
World Constitutions | World Policy Center
The WORLD Policy Analysis Center has examined in detail the civil, political, social, economic, and equal rights in the constitutions of all 193 UN member states. WORLD has analyzed over 50 specific constitutional rights across a range of areas, performing a comprehensive analysis of constitutional protections of equality and non-discrimination, as well as other rights that matter to achieving equality, across race/ethnicity, citizenship status, statelessness, disability, language, religion, physical disability, intellectual disability or mental health condition, sex/gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and socio-economic status.
ConstitutionNet
Allows you to search and download thousands of official documents from selected constitution building processes in the Americas, Asia and Africa. This material covers all stages of the constitution building process: the preparatory phase, the drafting, adoption, and implementation of the new constitution. The collection includes constitutional laws, official reports, draft laws, stakeholder resolutions, minutes of key meetings, rules of proceedings in constituent assemblies and national conferences.
International Constitutional Law
English language translations of the constitutions of foreign countries.

Constitutions of the World by Robert L. Maddex
Call Number: Electronic book
ISBN: 9780872895560
Publication Date: 2007-08-22
Updated to include 16 new constitutions, Constitutions of the World, Third Edition offers alphabetized entries that survey constitutions from 100 nations around the world. Revisions and additions keep pace with the global constitutional events that have occurred since publication of the second edition of this work. New countries covered in this edition include: Afghanistan Angola Cameroon Estonia Guatemala Kyrgyzstan Lithuania Montenegro Slovenia Tajikistan Tunisia Uruguay
Constitutions of the World by Blaustein
Call Number: Electronic book
Publication Date: 1993

Congress.gov
The official website for U.S. federal legislative information and is presented by the Library of Congress. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. Find bills and track their progress, locate committee reports, the Congressional Record, committee schedules, calendars, committee information, Presidential Nominations, and Treaties. Freely available. No password required to access. Unlimited users.
Federal Register (Daily)
Published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Federal Register is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. Open access. No password needed. Unlimited users.
GovInfo
GovInfo provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.
GovTrack
Government transparency tool which tracks the status of federal legislation and the activities of senators and representatives. Find the legislators in your geographical area or search legislation by subject area.
Supreme Court of the United States
Official website of the US Supreme Court with news, cases, rulings, arguments and more.
Executive Orders
Access the full text of Executives Orders of the Presidents of the United States. Unlimited users. No user name or password required.

Shepard's United States citations : a compilation of citations to United States Supreme Court by Shepard's
Call Number: KF101.2 .S54 1994
The U. S. Supreme Court by Salem Press
Call Number: Electronic book
ISBN: 9781682171813
Publication Date: 2017-01-01
Encyclopedia of the US Supreme Court
American Law Yearbook 2020 : A Guide to the Year’s Major Legal Cases and Developments by Gale Research Inc (Other)
Call Number: Electronic book
ISBN: 9780028676500
Publication Date: 2021-02-05
Follow link to book to search other years. Annually updated.

State Legislative Websites Directory
This database contains information gleaned from the home pages and websites of the 50 state legislatures, the District of Columbia and the territories. You can select to view specific website content materials (such as, bills, press rooms, statutes) from one state at a time.
State Legislatures, State Laws, and State Regulations
Links to each state's legislature, state statutory code, and state administrative or regulatory code. Also provides telephone numbers to state government legislative assembly, legislative reference center, and state law library.
JUSTIA: Dockets & Filings
Docket and filings information for federal cases from U.S. District Courts and U.S. Courts of Appeal from 2004 to present.

Kansas Legislature
Kansas bills, session laws, House and Senate journals, legislative committees, directory of legislators, Kansas Register, Kansas Administrative Regulations, and the Kansas Statutes Annotated. Contains many other links to state legislative sources.
Kansas.gov
The official website of the State of Kansas. Kansas legislation; Kansas Statutes Annotated; Medical licenses. Kansas legislative multi-bill tracking; daily bill packets; lobbyist-in-a-box; Kansas Statues Annotated; Medical license verification. Years covered: Current.
Kansas Judicial Branch
Cases, rules, news, opinions, orders and more from the Kansas court system.

Kansas Annotated Statutes
Call Number: Electronic Journal
Publication Date: current

Kansas Constitution
Kansas Constitution and updated amendments - State Library of Kansas
Kansas Legal Research | FindLaw
Includes links and tracking to Statutes, Cases, Caselaw, Legislation, Federal and State Court Opinions in Kansas
Legislative Procedure in Kansas
publication by the Kansas Legislative Research Department

Shepard's Kansas citations: cases. A compilation of citations ... which include affirmances, reversals, and dismissals by the Supreme Court of Kansas and the United States Supreme Court by Shepard's
Call Number: KFK59 .S53
Publication Date: serial
Annotations and citations for Kansas laws and rulings

Library of Congress Guide to Law Online: Kansas
This guide, prepared by the Law Library of Congress, includes links to free online legal resources regarding Kansas, focusing on its constitution; executive, legislative, and judicial branches; legal guides; and general sources.

To search other states laws and regulations, etc., visit:

State Legislative Websites Directory
This database contains information gleaned from the home pages and websites of the 50 state legislatures, the District of Columbia and the territories. You can select to view specific website content materials (such as, bills, press rooms, statutes) from one state at a time.
State Legislatures, State Laws, and State Regulations
Links to each state's legislature, state statutory code, and state administrative or regulatory code. Also provides telephone numbers to state government legislative assembly, legislative reference center, and state law library.

USA.gov
City of Wichita
The City's homepage has a lot of information available and can be really helpful, depending on the topic of your proposal. Locate information on city offices and services, demographics, and other state and local resources.
City Budget
Municiple Code
A library of city codes and ordinances.
Wichita Open Data Portal
Wichita-Sedgwick County Planning
USD 259 WIchita Public Schools
Center for Economic Development and Business Research (CEDBR)
Wichita and Kansas focused economic research initiated by Wichita State University and the W. Frank Barton School of Business. Home of the Kansas Economic Outlook and the Wichita Economic Outlook.

State and County Resources:

Sedgwick County Website
Includes a section on "Doing Business" that can contain helpful information.
Sedgwick County Budget
State of Kansas Government
Helpful for finding out about state departments and organizational structure.
Kansas Statutes
Online listing of Kansas Statutes, courtesy of the Kansas State Legislature.
Kansas Business Center

Leading Federal & State Law Journals and Reviews

Harvard law review - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1326519
Yale law & policy review (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1336673
University of Chicago law review (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=2651151
Stanford Law Review Online (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=3091293
University of Pennsylvania law review (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1336001
Cornell law review (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1375743
Columbia law review (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=2653411
Michigan law review (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1331125
More leading law reviews here to browse – locate through WSU Libraries online catalog: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/bcnewell/meta-ranking/

Key Kansas Law Journals and Reviews

Kansas Reflector - https://kansasreflector.com/about/ - Kansas Reflector is a nonprofit news operation providing in-depth reporting, diverse opinions and daily coverage of state government and politics. This public service is free to readers and other news outlets.
Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy Online - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=3639903
Kansas law journal a weekly record of the law and the lawyers of Kansas - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=3090314
Washburn law journal (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=2668321
University of Kansas law review (Online) - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1335988
The journal of the Kansas Bar Association - https://libcat.wichita.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=273503

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Key Resources for Legal Research: News, Cases, Law Reviews, and Journals