LibGuides: International and Area Studies: Law and Legal Studies

Law and Legal Studies

The Donald E. Pray Law Library is open to main campus students, and many (but not all) of their online resources are also available with a main campus OUNetID. See their Beginner's Guide to Law Library Resources, guide to the Supreme Court of the United States, and all their guides. Contact their Reference Desk at (405) 325-5268 or email them at Law-LibraryReference@ou.edu

See also this guide from Yale University, Locating Court Records, Briefs and Oral Arguments, and this page from the Library of Congress, How To Find Free Case Law Online.

Caselaw Access Project (Harvard)
The Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) expands public access to U.S. law. The goal is to make all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format.
CourtListener (Free Law Project)
Seeks to provide free access to primary legal materials, develop legal research tools, and support academic research on legal corpora.

Fastcase
Provides access to federal and state case law, statutes, regulation, constitutions, and court rules.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.
Google Scholar
Search the full-text of court opinions and legal journals available on the Internet. Choose to search case law rather than articles.
NOTE: You will need to use the “Library Links” feature to indicate that you are affiliated with OU:
- Click on the three horizontal lines in the upper left-hand corner
- Choose settings at the bottom of the list
- In the search bar, type “University of Oklahoma”
- Check the boxes next to both University of Oklahoma Libraries entries (Open WorldCat is selected by default and can remain checked)
- Save your settings
If you use Zotero, please use these instructions to prevent Zotero from applying the proxy:
- Open Zotero
- Enable Zotero Connector (if not already enabled)
- Right-click on the Zotero Connector GUI icon and select preferences
- Click on the “Proxies” tab
- Click on the OU Proxy - it should read “http://login.ezproxy.lib.ou.edu/login?qurl=%u”
- Another frame will open below the current one. Scroll through the hostnames list to find “scholar.google.com” and select and click on the minus (-) button.
HeinOnline
Provides access to a comprehensive, image-based collection of legal periodicals. Each journal in the database begins from its inception. Also includes access to code of federal regulations, legal classics, treaties and agreements, U.S. Attorney General opinions, U.S. Federal Legislative History, U.S. Presidential Library, U.S. statutes at large, and the U.S. Supreme Court Library.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.
Indian Claims Insight
Coverage: 1789-present
Indian Claims Insight allows researchers to understand and analyze Native American migration and forced resettlement throughout U.S. history, U.S. Government Indian removal policies, and subsequent actions to address Native American claims against the U.S. Government. This collection includes congressional publications, treaties, maps, and docket materials for all Indian Claims Commission cases, as well as cases that preceded and followed the existence of the commission.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.
Legal Collection
Offers information centered on the discipline of law and legal topics including criminal justice, ethics, federal law, international law, labor and human resource law, medical law, organized crime and the environment. Some full text is available.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online print or video tutorial.
Legal Information Source
Offers tools and how-to instructions covering a wide-range of legal issues. A majority of the full-text legal reference books available are provided through Nolo, a provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses. With the Legal Forms by U.S. State feature, users can search state-specific legal forms by top subject areas, including adoption, bankruptcy, name changes and more. Some full text is available.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.
LLMC Digital
Provides full text access to documents related to the U.S. Federal Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.
Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926
Coverage: 1800-1926
From one of the most important periods of legal development, this archive is a comprehensive full text collection of Anglo-American legal treatises. It allows for full text searching of more than 21,000 works from casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches and more - all separated into 99 subject areas.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.
Making Of Modern Law: Trials 1600-1926
Contains works pertaining to the United States, Britain, Ireland, Canada, as well as English-language titles about trials in other jurisdictions, such as France. Resources include published trial transcripts, popular printed accounts of sensational trials for murder, unofficially published trial documents, official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, arbitration sessions, and books and pamphlets about specific trials. Topics include adultery, commercial law, constitutional law, dueling, elections, impeachment, international law, land, military offenses, murder, sexuality, slavery, torts, treason, and wills.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.

PACER (U.S. Government)
The official case location system for the federal government. NOTE: PACER requires an individual registration, and once you register you must search quarterly to keep your account active. PACER charges you for each search run and each document retrieved, but no fee is owed for electronic access to court data or audio files until an account holder accrues charges of more than $30.00 in a quarterly billing cycle.
Session Laws Library (HeinOnline)
Contains the session laws of all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as well as governmental session laws from the United States, Australia, Canada, and the Bahamas. Full text available.

Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law
A collection of legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, including more than 1,000 books, pamphlets, and article reviews.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.
Treaties and Agreements Library
Provides access to all U.S. treaties, whether currently in force, expired, or not yet officially published.
For more information about using this resource, view the publisher's online tutorial.

United States Code (current; U.S. House of Representatives)
Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives.
United States Code (to 2018; HeinOnline)
Full-text of the United States Code (official version) and the Statutes at Large in PDF page image format going back to the start of these publications. This database should be your source for locating official Acts of Congress or references to the official code.