Legal Research

Researching legal materials is different from much other types of research. Now only does the law have its own language but also it's own way of organizing that information. This guide is intended for non-lawyers and non-law students to navigate legal research with the resources available at CSUDH. 

Three key bits of information to keep in mind is that 1) much of the law depends on its jurisdiction; 2) none of the information here is intended as legal advice; and 3) there are biases and other discrimination that happens in the law and legal research. To find out more about biases and discrimination in legal research, here are a few resources to get your started: 

• We All Do It: How Bias Informs Legal Research and Teaching 
• Empirical Methods for the Law
• Causal diagrams for empirical legal research: a methodology for identifying causation, avoiding bias and interpreting results

• The Most-Cited Legal Scholars Revisited

There are many types of resources or literature that you can use for your legal research. Among the many types of resources, here are a few that might be relevant to your research: 

• Articles: Much like articles in other disciplines, legal articles are commonly published by law schools or bar associations
• Treatises: information on a single area of the law written by experts. Treatises can range from one- to multi-volume resources.
• Reports or reporters: Also known as "decisions" or "cases", these are opinions written by the courts on how/why a decision was reached. 

Read more about the different types of resources from the American Association of Law Libraries.