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Lorena O'English
Contact:
Terrell Library 120-D
Washington State University

Office Hours: (Spring, 2023): Click the "Schedule Appointment" link above to set up a Zoom appointment, or email me directly via the button (which I recommend).

In the News...

Terminology / Discourse

Trafficking Statistics

Locating State Laws

Understanding Legal Citation (for statutes, legal codes, and more) 

Any law, court case, rule or regulation has a legal citation.  Legal citations has 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.  This is how to read a legal citation:

  • Law Name:          Civil Rights Act of 1964           
  • Legal Citation:    78 Stat 241

78 is the volume number; Stat is the abbreviation for United States Statutes at Large, the publication; and 241 is the page number.

This format - volume, abbreviation for the publication, and page number - remains basically the same for all legal materials (including state law reporters) and it is used to cite law review articles as well as other legal sources.

State Agencies

Tertiary {Reference] Resources

Secondary Sources: Law Reviews and Legal Journals ; Databases with legal content

Legal Research: A Guide to Secondary Resources (Law Library of Congress) ; see also this guide from Harvard Law School Library Note: Both links may include publications that are not available at the WSU Libraries (but may be available at the U of I Law Library)

What's a "law review?"

Law Reviews.  Available via Nexis Uni. WSU Only Access.  Nexis Uni provides legal codes, court opinions, full-text law reviews and legal periodicals with extensive search options.  Dates of coverage vary by title.  

Law Review Commons.  Brings together a growing collection of law reviews and legal journals in an easily browsable and searchable format. It contains both current issues and archival content spanning over 100 years.  Currently provides over 300 open-access law reviews.

ABA Legal Technology Resource Center.  Search more than 400 online full-text law review and journals and related sources, including Congressional Research Service Reports.  Coverage varies.

Secondary Sources: Monographs (books) and Academic Article Databases

General: Think Tanks, Research Institutes, and NGOs

Note that think tanks and research institutes may have a (or multiple) specific policy perspective (i.e. centrist, liberal, conservative, feminist, libertarian, etc). 

About think tanks - On Think Tanks

Locating Relevant Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

 

Google/Bing syntax   site:.org human trafficking (or "human trafficking", or just trafficking, or "sex trafficking" or labor trafficking, etc.)

         (You can also do site:wa.gov:    or      site:.gov -- but they will give you governmental results ;-)

 

law review trafficking site:.edu - example for searching academic sites, but you have to be careful of what you find because you may get student personal pages, etc.

Note that these are largely U.S.-based because we are using default US web syntax. You can search the French, or Australian, or Malaysian or most any other country's instance of "the Web" by using country codes

 

Citing Your Sources (APA)

But what about regulations?

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