Research Guides: PLS 2000: Introduction to Legal Research & Writing: Home

Selected Legal Resources for Class Assignments

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
This is the new interface and design for LexisNexis Academic. The primary source for current and historical court cases and for State and United States' statutes, codes, and regulations. Also includes law review articles, legal reference sources, Shepards citations, as well as national news and company information.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Searches scholarly resources such as abstracts, journal articles, and reprints from many publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and other sources from a wide variety of disciplines. Links to resources available to current SLU students, faculty, and staff display next to the references when on campus.
GovInfo This link opens in a new window
Provides free online access to more than a million official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government, including the Congressional Record, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations and much more. Coverage years vary by title. Govinfo is the replacement system for FDSys, which will no longer be available as of December 2018.

Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School
The Legal Information Institute at Cornell University's Law School is a useful compendium of legal resources including the Wex Legal Encyclopedia, historical Supreme Court Cases, Annotated Constitution, Congressional information, U.S. Code, and more.
National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL)
This bipartisan organization that serves the legislators and staffs of the nation's 50 states, its commonwealths and territories. NCSL provides research, technical assistance and opportunities for policymakers to exchange ideas on the most pressing state issues. Use this source to help track laws on an issue across multiple states.
Search USA.gov
While not specifically a legal resource, the USA.gov search is the easiest way to search across all federal and state websites to find relevant resources. 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.

Admnistrative Codes & Registers Section of NASS (administrativerules.org)
Links to administrative rules for each state all in one place.
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.

Congress.gov This link opens in a new window
Congress.gov is the official site for federal legislative information from the U.S. Congress and related agencies.

Federal Register
1994-present. The Federal Register is a legal newspaper published every business day by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The Federal Register contains: Federal Agency Regulations. Proposed Rules and Public Notices.

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.
MERGENT Online This link opens in a new window
Contains 15 years of historical and financial information as reported by the companies for over 15,000 U.S. public companies traded on the NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX stock exchanges as well as historical and financial information for approximately 17,000 non-United States-based companies from over 100 countries.

Missouri Courts
Portal providing information to the public on all aspects of the Judicial Branch of the Missouri State Government including links to state courts, Supreme Court Rules, Casenet, forms, and how to represent oneself.
Missouri General Assembly
Freely available website of the Missouri General Assembly. Provides links to both houses of the Missouri legislature as well as bill searching and tracking.
Missouri Secretary of State
Website for the Missouri Secretary of State, with links to Missouri's Code of State Regulations, Voting and Elections information (including mail-in voting), and much more.
Municode Library
Municode Library allows you to easily find local municipal codes from across the U.S.

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window
Includes indexing and some full-text of Congressional hearings, bills and reports as well as the full-text of Congressional Research Service Reports from 2004-present.
ProQuest Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
1929-2016. 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)
ProQuest Regulatory Insight This link opens in a new window
1936-2016 when complete. Includes content from the Federal register and Code of Federal Regulations, along with regulatory histories associated with public laws, executive orders, and agencies.

Regulations.gov
On Regulations.gov, you can find and comment on proposed regulations and related documents published by the U.S. Federal government. You can also find final regs, notices, findings, guidance, adjudications and comments by others.