Subject Specialist:
Law, Political Science, International Affairs
814-863-1347
e-mail: hms2@psu.edu
Helen Sheehy
Title: Head Social Sciences Library
Subject Specialist:
Law, Political Science, International Affairs
814-863-1347
e-mail: hms2@psu.edu
Copyright Law — Title 17 of the U.S. Code
Copyright Regulations — Title 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations
Federal Register Notices — first publication of announcements, proposed rules, and new rules
Note: [Penn State Libraries] indicates a Libraries' resource available to researchers with a Penn State Access Account.
Black's Law Dictionary — definitions and abbreviations to help you as you read cases.
American Jurisprudence — a legal encyclopedia designed to provide in-depth explanations about legal topics. Is heavily laced with citations to pertinent cases. Organized into more than 430 topics, arranged alphabetically. Available in LexisNexis Academic. Choose US Legal, then Legal Reference from the left-hand menu.
American Law Reports — in-depth analysis with a list of relevant cases about specific legal issues.
Index to Legal Periodicals and LegalTrac [Penn state Libraries] -- the two major indexes to law reviews and journals. Includes a lot of full text and will link out to resources in other databases including LexisNexis, and HeinOnline.
Congressional [ProQuest] [Penn State Libraries] — a complete guide to legislative materials. Track bills, find committee publications, follow debate on the floor, search the U.S. Statutes at Large
FDSys [Government Printing Office] — bill text back to 1993
THOMAS [Library of Congress] — full text of bills back to 1989. Summaries only 1974-1988
Public and Private Law of the United States [Government Printing Office] — full text of laws back to 1995
United States Code — the codified version of the U.S. Statutes at Large
United States Code in HeinOnline [Penn State Libraries] -- choose United States Code from the List of Subscribed Libraries in the left menu
United States Code in LexisNexis Academic [Penn State Libraries] — choose US Legal from the left-hand menu, then choose Federal Statutes, Codes, and Regulations to search for laws.
LoislawConnect [Penn State Libraries] — choose Statutes & Acts under Type of Law
United States Code [Government Printing Office] — choose a year to begin your search [includes editions back to 1994]
United States Code Annotated — includes annotations from federal and state courts.
Supreme Court Yearbook — excellent summaries of Supreme Court cases back to 1989
CQ Supreme Court Collection [Penn State Libraries — less detailed summaries but covers earlier cases
LexisNexis Academic [Penn State Libraries]
Shepard's is the best-known of the citators. Available in print for many years, it is available online in Lexis Nexis Academic [Penn State Libraries]. Tracing the citations using this service is called "Shepardizing". To Shepardize a case in LexisNexis Academic:
choose Sources from the left-hand menu
Choose Browse Sources
Choose Reference under Publication Type
Choose LexisNexis Information and Training Material to find Shepard's Citations
BNA Law Resources [Penn State Libraries] — a suite of legal databases including several on Intellectual Property. Databases include
