Law Students

Linking the Law

Linking the Law

The Legal Encyclopedia has been, to some degree, developed to ascertain if hypertext links to legal Home Pages on the Internet could be a useful and cost-effective research tool for students of Law Schools and other students. The Internet can be extremely useful for research. However, many of the materials are embedded deep within the Internet so that finding them is time-consuming. For instance, some resources contain U.S. Federal laws but not many U.S. Federal regulations. To help overcome this problem, the Encyclopedia of Law has assembled a select group of references of particular use to those students of law doing legal research and which can be accessed directly through cross-references (some of them withouth “point and click” hypertext connections because of the changing landscape of urls in Internet today).

How to use Students Encyclopedia of Law

First look over the initial page to get an idea of the scope of materials contained in the Legal Encyclopedia. Many of the individual entries contain a browse capability which can help you, such as searching for Presidential Executive Orders, or have a well structured layout to help you narrow your search, such as Supreme Court cases since 1990. Not everything that is needed is now available on the Internet, particularly past cases, decisions, and rulings.

In some instances, more than one source is listed; this is in case one format is preferable or if one site is temporarily slow or down. A site that is down one day may be up the next; a site that is slow in the afternoon will usually be much faster early in the morning.

For best use, in the structure of this research tool we create several sections. For example in relation to U.S. Federal legal issues:

  • Federal Laws and Regulations, including Presidential Executive Orders and OMB Circulars and Bulletins
  • Federal Judiciary (Supreme Court, Circuit Courts, District Courts, and Bankruptcy Courts)
    Legislative Branch (General Accounting Office and Comptroller General decisions; Library of Congress Law Library, and Congress’ Thomas bill search)
  • State and territorial laws
  • Arbitration and mediation
  • General research and reference sites
  • Professional associations and organizations
  • How-to legal-related sources