Research Tools
Research Guides
Secondary Sources: Encyclopedias, ALR, and Dictionaries
Legal Encyclopedias
General Characteristics
- considered neither authoritative nor scholarly
- helpful in gaining background information on legal topics
- case finder
- alphabetically arranged multi-volume subject index
- broad legal topics similar to those found in digests
- the discussion in the main body of the text is supported by extensive footnotes covering hundreds of citations
- written by editorial writer—not independent legal scholars
- supplemented with pocket parts and complete index revision annually
- lack careful analysis of issues
American Jurisprudence (AmJur)
- selective casenotes
- Desk Book contains information for the practitioner including financial tables, reprints of historical documents
- Table of statutes volume
- Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS)
- exhaustive casenotes
- dictionary-like definitions
Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS)
- exhaustive casenotes
- dictionary-like definitions
American Law Reports (ALR)
- case reporter and annotations thoroughly researched survey of narrow legal issues
- exhaustive analysis of decisions from all jurisdictions
- serves as research aid and case finder
Legal Dictionaries
- Terms defined as with standard dictionary
- Often include judicially defined terms with reference to cited authority
- Black’s Law Dictionary and Ballentine’s Law Dictionary are the best known.
- Words and Phrases is a multi-volume dictionary of judicially defined terms.
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