Research Guides: CCJ 6400: Issues in Jurisprudence: Home

This course page was created for CCJ 6400: Issues in Jurisprudence with Dr. Dyan McGuire, Spring 2024. This is just a selection of sources that may be useful to you in this course. Please explore the full Criminology & Criminal Justice Library Research Guide and/or one of the other relevant guides linked below. Contact your CCJ Librarian (Rebecca Hyde) with a question or to make an appointment for an in-depth research consultation. For quick and/or general questions you can contact Rebecca or use our 24/5 chat assistance to get help with your research!

Citation Management Options

Before you start research for your paper (or as soon as possible after you have started!) identify a citation management tool to use. This will help you keep track of your research, and will also help you organize and format your citations when writing.

EndNote Online
Considering EndNote but not ready for the time commitment of setting up & learning a new software? This free online resource allows you to easily save citations from a variety of databases and link back to the full-text. You can also use the cite while you write feature and import your citations into the EndNote software if you decide you need a more powerful citation manager.
SLU EndNote Downlod
This software is free to all SLU students, faculty, and staff. You will need to log in to download it. If needed, please contact IT service desk at 314-977-4000 or helpdesk@slu.edu
Zotero
A free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. Includes features for inserting citations as you write in both Google Docs and MS Word.
EndNote Tips
Guide with detailed EndNote tips maintained by Donghua Tao, SLU Libraries.
Style Guides and Manuals
This SLU Library Guide provides links to books and web sites for many citation styles. You will need to examine the author instructions of your selected journal for details, but they will often use a standard style, even if they modify it in some way.

Finding Scholarly Journal Articles

Some databases will include the full-text of articles, but others will include the button which links to full-text when available, or gives you the option to request articles for free through Interlibrary Loan's Illiad service.

Criminal Justice Abstracts This link opens in a new window
1910-present. Search for topics such as criminal justice, criminal law, corrections, prisons, police, policing, and more from important criminal justice magazines and journals.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
1952-present. Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related social and behavioral science disciplines.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni provides access to law review articles; legal sources for state and federal levels; full-text of local, national, and international news sources; business, financial, and company information.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
This is a comprehensive collection in pdf format of U.S. law journals and other legal materials that are completely searchable. Collections available are listed on the "landing page" of the database. Courtesy of the Courtesy of the Immel Law Library.

Social Services Abstracts This link opens in a new window
1980-present. Covers over 1400 journals in social services. Includes most journals indexed in Social Work Abstracts, plus more international coverage.
APA PsycINFO (1987 - Present) This link opens in a new window
Produced by the American Psychological Assn. Covers professional and academic literature in Psychology and other behavioral and social sciences. Especially useful for clinical social work research topics.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
1809-present. Produced by the National Library of Medicine. The major database for the medical literature. The database is freely available but using this link enables access to subscription-based journal content.
Global Health This link opens in a new window
1973-present. This international public health database brings together content from several sources to cover developed and developing countries on topics of concern to public health. Courtesy of the Medical Center Library.
Homeland Security Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Primarily 2002-present with some earlier. "Over 114,800 documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and organizational management from a wide variety of sources including federal, state and local governments; international governments and institutions; nonprofit organizations and private entities." -HSDL Collection description
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
1915-present. This database indexes journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and more on political science, public administration, economics, law, and topics that are or may become subjects of legislation.
SLUth - Search Plus This link opens in a new window
Find journal articles across all disciplines, plus newspaper articles, books, ebooks and more! Databases searched in SLUth include: Academic Search Complete, Ageline, CINHAL, Criminal Justice Abstracts, Education Source, ERIC, and more. Some major databases such as ABI/INFORM Complete, Biological Abstracts, PsycINFO, and Sociological Abstracts are not included.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
1990-present. WOS consists of three databases: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Science Citation Index Expanded, all of which are citation indexes. Together these index thousands of scholarly research journals from hundreds of disciplines. Do a Cited Reference search or a Topic search.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Some 1788-present. Search one of the largest abstract and citation databases for scholarly materials on science, engineering, technology, and medicine along with some social sciences and humanities. Similar to Web of Science.
Google Scholar @ SLU This link opens in a new window
Searches resources such as abstracts, journal articles, and reprints from many publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and other sources in a wide variety of disciplines.

If you know the name of the article and/or journal you're looking for, you can use one of the options below.

E-Journal Portal
Definitive list of SLU Libraries online journals; search by journal title.

SLUth - Search Plus This link opens in a new window
Not as comprehensive as the e-journal search, but often quicker! Search for the title of the article you're looking for. (Sometimes quotation marks help)

Legislative, Legal, and other Government Sources

CRS Reports
The Congressional Research Service is a nonpartisan agency that produces research reports and briefs on major policy issues and any topic requested by a member of Congress. This official site is publicly available and includes recent reports. SLU database ProQuest Congressional includes historical reports going back to 1914.

ProQuest Supreme Court Insight This link opens in a new window
Supreme Court Insight, 1975-present, is a complete online collection of full opinions from Supreme Court argued cases, including per curiam decisions, dockets, oral arguments, joint appendices and amicus briefs.
ProQuest Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
1929 (and before) - present. Provides comprehensive legislative histories consisting of "fully searchable PDFs of full-text publications generated in the course of congressional lawmaking. Each history includes the full text of the public law itself, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, committee hearings, reports, and prints." (text from site 4/25/2016) In addition, there may be presidential signing statements, Congressional Research Service Reports, and other congressional publications that provide background material to help in the understanding of issues related to the making of each individual law.
NCJRS Abstracts Database This link opens in a new window
Early 1970s-present. National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) indexes and abstracts more than 200,000 books, articles, reports and non-print media dealing with a broad spectrum of criminal justice issues. Academic Content is no longer added to this database as of 2014.
Homeland Security Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Primarily 2002-present with some earlier. "Over 114,800 documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and organizational management from a wide variety of sources including federal, state and local governments; international governments and institutions; nonprofit organizations and private entities." -HSDL Collection description

Search USA.gov
Search USA.gov searches .gov, .mil, .us and selected other domains that include official local, regional, state and federal government agencies as well as quasi governmental agencies such as the Smithsonian.

Statistical Sources

ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States This link opens in a new window
2013-present. The Statistical Abstract of the U.S. includes brief statistics on almost every topic. The focus is on the U.S. but some international statistics are included. This is a great source to start with to find which agency or organization has collected more in-depth statistics.

Bureau of Justice Statistics
The mission of the BJS is to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
Part of the ICPSR data repository, this includes raw data files from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency prevention,and other government and private research funders.

ICPSR This link opens in a new window
Repository of social science data sets for research and instruction. Disciplines represented include political science, sociology, economics, history, education, gerontology, criminal justice, public health, foreign policy, and law.

Criminology & Criminal Justice Research Guide: Statistics Page
See this page on the CCJ Research Guide for additional statistical sources and tools.

Selecting a Journal for Article Submission

In addition to the suggestions below, look at the journals you are considering citing in your own article for ideas. Depending on your concentration and topic, you might look at the journal lists on the Emergency Management and Social Work guides for ideas.

When considering a journal, take a close look at the author instructions/submission guidelines, as well as the articles from recent issues. Remember, if we don't subscribe to the journal you're considering, you can request recent articles through Interlibrary loan. There is no limit to how many articles you may request!

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) This link opens in a new window
2005-current. JCR allows evaluation and comparison of over 11,500 journals in science, technology, and the social sciences with respect to their importance in specific disciplines. Look especially at the "Criminology & Penology" and "Law" categories.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Criminal Justice Abstracts Title List
List of all journals indexed in the Criminal Justice Abstracts database. You can find title lists for similar databases through a web search.

CCJ 6400: Issues in Jurisprudence

Your Librarian

Additional Guides

20 Minute Rule

Background Information

Citation Management Options

Finding Scholarly Journal Articles

Legislative, Legal, and other Government Sources

Statistical Sources

Selecting a Journal for Article Submission