- Ask Reference Librarians
Contact reference librarians, or see frequently asked questions.
This is a companion guide for a series of sessions where Reference Librarians introduce some foundational concepts and resources in legal research to students in Legal Skills. For those not attending these sessions the following pages may still be useful.
- The Legal Encyclopedias page and linked video
- The index to a legal encyclopedia is a place to begin all legal research, and this 12-minute video and page teach you how.
- The Restatements of the Law page
- This resource is discussed in some Legal Skills classes, and the page gives you a summary of how this resource works. Note that understanding the significance of this resource does depend on students already being able to explain the difference between common law and statutory law, and so you might check those concepts in Blacks Law Dictionary first.
- Case Citation page
- This page links to the Case Citations guide. It gives explanations and examples for basic citations to judicial opinions.
- For more involved tutorials on some resources there are the pages that begin with "Using..." At times these have been assigned in some Legal Skills classes.
- Black's Law Dictionary
Be able to explain the difference between common law and statutory law. Link to the Westlaw copy of Black's Law Dictionary. Once you log in you can link directly to the concepts of common law and statutory law here: common law and statutory law.