"Law, in its generic sense, is a body of rules or action or conduct prescribed by controlling authority, and having binding legal force."  Black's Law Dictionary.

To do any legal research a knowledge of the four forms of law: Constitutional law, Statute law, Administrative law, and Case law, is essential.  "Legal research" consists of tracing the history of constitutions, statutes, court cases, and administrative regulations - looking for connections between them, and making interpretations and judgments of them.

1. Constitutional Law: Constitutions provide the framework for the functioning of governments. They also create the “legislative body” that governs a country or state. The United States Constitution created the United States Congress, and the Washington Constitution created the Washington State Legislature.
2. Statute Law: Statute laws, or acts, are passed by the legislative body: Congress or the State Legislature and signed by the executive: the President or the Governor.
3. Administrative Law: The rules, regulations, licenses and decisions made by administrative agencies that operate under the executive.
4. Case Law: When two parties disagree about what a law means, they ask a court to make a decision as to what is the proper interpretation of the law.

JSTOR  - we have continuing access to ALL of JSTOR's journal content (including the Security Studies and Sustainability thematic collections)! This was originally set to end in June 2023, but has been extended as an ongoing subscription. 

An interface provided by the company Third Iron, BrowZine allows patrons to browse and stay current with the electronic journals in their academic fields. BrowZine provides multiple entry points to connect with scholarly materials, including: via the BrowZine web and mobile applications and from within Search It. Learn more at https://libraries.wsu.edu/browzine/.

Any law, court case, rule or regulation has a legal citation.  Legal citations have a specific format and it is different from the citation format used in other academic disciplines.  To do legal research you need to be able to understand a legal citation. 

Legal citations usually follow a format described by The Bluebook, although there are other style guides and particular jurisdictions may use a specific-to-them format. For example, the Washington State Supreme Court uses Bluebook style with a few differences, mostly dealing with specific Washington State publication abbreviations. The most current edition of The Bluebook is the 21st edition, which was published in 2020. The WSU Libraries has it in print. The following links are to sites that cover the basics of legal citation, and in most cases you will probably not need to refer to the official Bluebook.