J181 Contemporary Legal Issues

Criminology, Law & Society C181 - Spring 2004
Contemporary Legal Issues
Library Presentation

Judy Ruttenberg
Langson Library 143
jruttenb@uci.edu
(949) 824-7021

This presentation will demonstrate how to:

Search Lexis-Nexis by keyword to find full-text law review articles
Search LegalTrac by keyword and subject to find citations to law review articles
Find journal titles in ANTPAC to locate articles in the UCI Libraries

= Available by subscription in the UCI Libraries or by connecting from home using the UCI Proxy Server or Virtual Private Network.
See "Connect from Off-Campus" for instructions

Lexis-Nexis
The UCI Libraries subscribe to some major law review journals in print. Lexis-Nexis Academic contains hundreds of full-text law review journals from law schools across the country.

Getting there:

From the library homepage http://www.lib.uci.edu click on Article Databases.
Click L for Lexis-Nexis Academic
Select "Legal Research" on the left navigation bar
Select "Law Reviews" and then "Guided Search"

Law reviews can be 40-50 pages in length (noted by word count in Lexis-Nexis) -- and when you search by keyword, you are searching the full-text of the articles.

Some tips to making searching more effective:

Choose unique keywords and search in "At Least 3." (this means the word or phrase appears at least three times in the article)
Lexis-Nexis interprets your phrases (e.g. capital punishment) as exact phrases
The default date is "previous six months" -- you can change this to include more years
! is the place holder for missing letters so constitution! also picks up constitutional or constitutionality
For this class, you want to find articles, not the (typically shorter) comments or research notes. Pay attention to the length of the article, and to these noted distinctions. You can also add the term article to your search -- in the title field.

Example: (capital punishment or death penalty) in At Least 3 and abolition! in At Least 3 and date is previous five years

Results are automatically sorted by title -- change this to sort by relevance for better ordered results
If the title is not enough to go on, choose the Expanded List tab to see your search word/s in context. This will allow you to browse your results with more information
You can reformat the article to print (in the library, printing is $0.12/page with a print card) or e-mail the article to yourself

LegalTrac
LegalTrac indexes all major law reviews, legal newspapers, specialty law publications, bar association journals and thousands of law-related articles from general interest publications. LegalTrac also includes selective full-text.

Getting there:

From the library homepage http://www.lib.uci.edu click on Article Databases.
Click L for LegalTrac
The default search is subject; you can change this to keyword. Your subject search will automatically be converted to a keyword search if no corresponding subject term is found in the database

Example: second amendment or gun rights or bear arms

Note the subject terms (e.g. Right to bear arms - Laws, regulations, etc.), other articles linked by subject, and the ability to e-mail the article citation (this will save you time later, when it comes time to prepare your bibliography)

If you do not find the full-text of the article you need in LegalTrac, you can either

Search ANTPAC by journal title (for example, "Duke Law Journal")
Search Lexis-Nexis SOURCES to see if the journal is included there in full-text. If it is, you can search that publication by article title and retrieve the full article.

Background research: Selective materials from the Reference Collection

Encyclopedia of crime & justice
New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002
Langson Lib. Reference: HV6017 .E52 2002 (4 vol.)

Encyclopedia of crime and punishment / David Levinson, editor
Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2002
Langson Lib. Reference: HV6017 .E524 2002 (4 vol.)

Capital punishment / Ann Chih Lin, editor ; Raphael Goldman, author
Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002
Langson Lib. Reference: HV8699.U5 G66 2002

Encyclopedia of capital punishment in the United States / by Louis J. Palmer, Jr
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001
Langson Lib. Reference: HV8694 .P35 2001

Bioethics, health care, and the law : a dictionary / Richard Hedges
Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1999
Science Lib. Reference: W 13 H453b 1999

Violence against women / Karin L. Swisher, Carol Wekesser, book editors, William Barbour, assistant editor
San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1994
Langson Lib. Reference: HV6250.4.W65 V553 1994

Guns in American society : an encyclopedia of history, politics, culture, and the law / edited by Gregg Lee Carter
Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2002
Langson Lib. Reference: HV7436 .G8783 2002 (2 vol.)

Legal citation & writing manuals

The Bluebook (a uniform system of citation)
Langson Lib. Reference Desk: KF 245 U55

California style manual : a handbook of legal style for California courts and lawyers
Langson Lib. Reference Desk: KFC75 .J47 2000

Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (2002-2003 ed.) by Peter W. Martin (Cornell Law School)

Other resources

UCI Libraries Tutorials: Tips on finding books, articles, and government information in general.

UCI Libraries Legal Research Tutorials

Library subject guide for Laws, Legislation and Regulations

Library subject guide for Criminology, Law & Society

Library research assistance and consultation

You have many options for getting research assistance from the UCI Libraries. You can:

Call or visit the Reference Desk at the Langson Library (949) 824-4976 (during weeks 3-9 of the quarter, you can sign-up for a 30 minute research consultation appointment)
Use Ask a Librarian EMAIL or LIVE
Follow up with Judy Ruttenberg directly (contact info above)