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SJD Research Tips

The Judge Ben C Green Law Library's reference librarians provide research tips, based on their decades of legal research experience.

Some Legal Research Tips from Judith Kaul

Some conventional wisdom for SJD Students

  • Types of Law:
    • ​The history and origin of the English common law system underlies the United States legal system:
      • ​Types of United States Law
        • ​Constitutional Law
        • Statutory Law
        • Administrative (Regulatory) Law
        • Treaties
        • Common Law (which is Case Law)
        • Actual Damages
        • Punitive Damages
        • Civil Law (Private Law)
        • Criminal Law
        • Equity Law
        • International Law
  • Keep track of resources that rely on via a citation management system.  (A link to the citation management systems will be added here). If you cannot access a citation management system in your language, at least keep a spreadsheet of sources you rely on or quote in your thesis. Some find it annoying to keep citation information as they write, but it is worth the effort and will help avoid problems of plagiarism.
  • However minimally: plan a research strategy. 
    • Identify relevant primary resources: constitutions, statutes, cases, regulations.  
    • If yours is an international law topic, you will want to identify foundational documents of the United Nations, League of Nations, European Union. 
    • Identify relevant secondary resources that can give you background information and links to primary resources.
  • Find out what electronic research tools are available to you. 
    • Meet with a reference librarian to go over basic research tools you can access through the law school, through other CWRU libraries or via OhioLINK.
      • OhioLINK is a consortium of Ohio university libraries which provide access to research databases, Ebook collections and eJournal collections. 
    • Research services that may help you identify what your dissertation topic will be:
    • Selected books on the dissertation process:
      • Lorrie Blair, WRITING A GRADUATE THESIS OR DISSERTATION (2016). OhioLINK Ebook.
      • Eugene Volokh, ACADEMIC LEGAL WRITING: LAW REVIEW ARTICLES, STUDENT NOTES, SEMINAR PAPERS AND GETTING ON LAW REVIEW (5th ed., 2016).  Law Library Course Reserve.
    • ​You can read dissertations from past CWRU Law SJD. They can be located in the 3rd floor stacks of the Law Library with the classification number beginning:  LB2371.
    • ​Lexis and Westlaw have databases of law from selected foreign countries. The coverage is not necessarily comprehensive.
    • There are many freely available databases that cover the law of other countries.  Selected examples:
    • ​The Law Library also subscribes to the following foreign law legal resources:
    • ​Foreign Language Dictionaries: The Law Library maintains a collection of foreign language dictionaries, instance Chinese to English and English to Chinese. Normally these are located in the Reference Shelves near the Reference Desk.
      • During final exams the Law Library provides foreign law dictionaries to the exam classroom where foreign students are taking exams.  
    • United States Legal Dictionaries.
    • Use the Case Western Reserve School of Law research guides because they can help you find useful resources in our collection. The Law Library and the Kelvin Smith Library both have books on Islamic law in Arabic.  They also have access to books on Chinese law materials in Chinese. Some of these are available as online Ebooks.  Some are also available via OhioLINK..  
    • Please note that Cleveland State University Law School Library has a collection of Islamic law books because they used to have a professor who specialized in Islamic law.  Some of these may be available via OhioLINK.
    • Research guides from other law libraries or universities' libraries may help to identify resources that may not exist in the CWRU or OhioLINK collections.  
    • The WorldCat research database can also identify other language resources available in United States libraries.  We may be able to borrow materials from WorldCat  libraries for you through our interlibrary loan service.
    • Use multidisciplinary resources. Don't restrict yourself to reliance on just legal research databases for resources.  Databases that focus on other resources, e.g., business, history, news, political science or religion may also include law related materials, for example, law and history.
    • If you identify the authors of books on topics of interest to your research, search to find articles they have also written.
    • Gather additional terms and phrases as you research to create additional searches.
    • If you  are advocating a particular point of view, do not just look for resources that support your viewpoint. Read the resources that conflict with your position.  You may want to counter their arguments or positions in your dissertation.
    • If your research strategies are not working, re-evaluate your topic or your position, or go back to your advisor or the reference librarians for more help.
    • The Cleveland State University Main Library has a reference copy of the Index Islamicus (1976-1985). It is a catalog of Islamic subjects in periodicals and other collective publications.
    • Ohio State University's libraries also own many Islamic Law books.  Some may circulate through OhioLINK. 
  • Subject Headings (examples)
    • Australian law
    • British law
    • Chinese law
    • EU law
    • German law
    • International law