Penn State University Libraries - Law -- Research Effectively with Secondary Sources

Using secondary sources — legal encyclopedia, treatise (book), law review article, etc. — is often the most efficient way to do legal research. They provide analysis by legal scholars and citations to the most important court cases you should read. Below are a few of the secondary sources available in the University Libraries. Contact the Social Sciences Library for more assistance.

Note: [Penn State Libraries] indicates a resource available to researchers with a Penn State Access Account.

Legal encyclopedias provide discussions of legal topics. Annotations included with each entry refer to court case reporters, statutes and digests of court cases. These encyclopedias are kept up to date with pocket supplements in the back of each volume.

• Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS)
  "A contemporary statement of American law as derived from reported cases and legislation." Organized into more than 400 topics, arranged alphabetically.

• American Jurisprudence
  Discussions of points of law that are supported by cases that interpret and construe the law. Organized into more than 430 topics, arranged alphabetically. Available in LexisNexis Academic [Penn State Libraries].

• Pennsylvania Law Encyclopedia
  Much like Corpus Juris Secundum for Pennsylvania law

• West's Encyclopedia of American Law
  Written for those who are not familiar with legal jargon, providing about 5000 articles in non-technical language; arranged alphabetically.
  Available online via Gale Virtual Reference Library [Penn State Libraries].

• Oxford Reference Online [Penn State Libraries]
  Contains a number of legal encyclopedias and dictionaries, including the Oxford Companion to American Law, Oxford Dictionary of Law, Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions.