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Constitutional Law

This guide will assist classes PLS 3011, PLS 3021, and PLS 3031

Different types of scholarly sources

Primary v. Secondary Sources

Primary sources (case law, statutes, regulations) state the law, whereas secondary sources help you understand the law. These materials discuss and analyze the law, but are not the law itself. Secondary sources come in the following forms:

  • law journals and reviews
  • legal encyclopedias
  • treatises
  • American Law Reports (ALR)

Scholarly Sources

For your assignment(s), you will want to focus on finding articles from law journals and reviews. These sources are also known as scholarly sources and most are peer-reviewed by other scholars in the field. Scholarly sources can have several characteristics. Please see this helpful handout from CSU Chico to help you find scholarly articles.

In starting your research, I always recommend that you use OneSearch which can be found here: 

 

Searching for legal scholarly sources can be more challenging that searching for other sources, but here are a few tips I have: 

  • Develop keywords for your searches. Most of the time, typing in the full case name isn't going to give you a great results list (unless you are using Westlaw or if you are researching a famous case).
    • Example: Miranda v. Arizona
      • sample keywords: Supreme Court, fifth amendment, constitutional rights, etc. 
  • Use OneSearch or GoogleScholar to do your initial searches. If you still need more resources, then I would recommend going through individual databases to see if there is anything else available.

​​​​​​​Databases 

Journals

Legal Dictionaries