Research Databases

Looking for more databases? Try the University Library's Online Research Resources (ORR) for a complete list, or use Easy Search or the Journals tab on the Library's Gateway to find articles.

Most of the databases below are restricted for use by UIUC faculty, staff, students or by patrons in the library. You will be prompted for your NetID and password if you are off campus.

New database added Winter, 2009: Foreign Law Guide!!

    • Academic Universe is a LexisNexis product available to the UIUC Community. Provides access to nearly all U.S. Federal and state caselaw, Federal and state current statutes, and U.S. law journals, as well as other legal information for the undergraduate or graduate student. Law students should use LexisNexis for Law students.

    • Access UN searches indexed documents from the United Nations (1945-date), including official records, committee documents, and conference documents. Some full-text documents are included, but most entries provide basic information including a UN Document number.

    • BNA-All (use this link if off-campus or on campus wireless). Our subscription provides access to a large number of online versions of BNA's print looseleaf reporters and newsletters, such as the Labor Relations Reporter and the Family Law Reporter. These materials bring cases, current statutes and regulations, agency decisions and articles together in one place.

    • CCH Internet Research NetWork provides online access to many CCH looseleaf titles dealing with business and securities law.

    • CCH Tax Research provides online access to CCH's tax law research publications.

    • Congressional Universe is one of a group of LexisNexis databases for legal research, this one focusing on U.S. Congressional materials. Provides abstracts and some full-text of bills, Committee reports, prepared testimony from hearings, and public laws, as well as legislative histories.

    • Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America, plus works in English printed anywhere, from 1473-1700.

    • Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a Gale database containing page images of every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the 18th century, plus thousands of important works from the Americas.

    • English Reports Full Reprint (on Hein Online) Images of cases from the English Reports, 1220-1865. (note: from off-campus, start here, and choose English Reports).

    • Foreign Law Guide: current sources of codes and basic legislation in jurisdictions of the world.

    • Hein Online - Law Journals provides page images of law journals, starting with volume 1 and continuing to within a couple years of the current year (depending on the agreement with the publisher). Also includes a significant treaties collection (including TIAS, UST and Treaties in Force), the Federal Register (v. 1 through current), the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, a large selection of books designated "legal classics", U.S. Attorney General opinions, a growing legislative history library, and the U.S. Reports, all presented as images which can be saved and/or printed as pdf files.

    • Hein Online - Code of Federal Regulations Page images of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the official source for Federal adminisrative agency rules, 1938-present. (note: from off-campus, start here, and choose Code of Federal Regulations)

    • Hein Online - Federal Register Provides images for volume 1-72 (2007) of the Federal Register, the daily source for Federal administrative agency rulemaking and Executive orders. (note: from off-campus, start here, and choose Federal Register).

    • Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

    • Index Master provides indexes and tables of contents for hundreds of treatises and looseleafs, allowing you to determine whether a resource is going to be useful for your project. Especially useful for books the library does not own, as you can browse the table of contents before requesting an interlibrary loan.

    • new!! Justis - Justis is the full-text, online library of UK case law and legislation dating back to 1163. Documentation is available for both caselaw and legislation (pdf). Now also includes the Industrial Case Reports and the International Law Reports. The Industrial Case Reports database contains the complete text of the printed publication Industrial Cases Reports from its origin in 1972, Reports of Restrictive Practices Cases, and cases of special interest heard in Industrial Tribunals. The International Law Reports database contains the full text of the printed publication International Law Reports from Cambridge University Press. The database is updated 4 times each year. It is the only publication in the world that is wholly devoted to the regular and systematic reporting in English of decisions of international courts and arbitrators as well as judgments of national courts. International Law Reports covers all significant cases of public international law from 1919 to the present day, including international boundaries, state and diplomatic immunity, treaties between states, war, terrorism and refugee law.

    • LLMC Digital Collection - The Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC) online library, which includes many Presidential papers and other executive documents, Supreme Court materials (including Federal Cases), Statutes at Large, and many military and state publications. The collection is best used when looking for a specific document, rather than for searching collections, as search capabilities are limited.

    • LegalTrac provides basic indexing information for law journal, bar journal and legal newspaper articles, including title and the legal subjects that the article is about. Coverage begins with 1980 and continues to current (with a few months' delay after publication of new articles. Because it indexes more journals than most of our full-text electronic journals collections, and includes older issues of journals than the full-text collections that provide advanced search capabilities, it should be your first stop when you want to find law journal articles on your issue. Locating a copy of the article can then be done using Hein Online or searching for the journal title in the ORR.

    • The Making of Modern Law contains legal treatises (secondary sources on the law, written by experts) published from 1800-1926, from the Nineteenth-Century Legal Treatises and Twentieth-Century Legal Treatises microfilm collections.

    • Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law

    • Business & Economics library databases

    • Oxford International Encyclopedia of International Legal History This is the first encyclopedia of law to provide both historical and contemporary comparisons of the world legal systems. A truly international and interdisciplinary reference work, the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History covers legal history from ancient to modern times. Approximately 1,000 articles explore the traditions of Ancient Greek Law, Ancient Roman Law, Medieval Roman Law, Chinese Law, English Common Law, Islamic Law, United States Law, and the laws of such other regions as Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Major categories of law explained in detail include private law (contract, tort, civil procedure), public law (statutory, criminal, etc.), and higher or constitutional law.

    • RIA Checkpoint (obtain password here for customized features) for RIA tax materials, including Tax Watch, forms, and the USTR.

    • Selden Society Publications The Selden Society Publications and English Legal History library contains access to the Selden Society Annual Series, Selden Society Supplementary Series and the Centenary Guide to the Publications of the Selden Society published in 1987. In addition to the Selden publications, you can also find more than 100 English Legal History Classics including abridgements, digests and dictionaries. Moreover, you will be able to access early English case law and link to other online publications in early English history. Links to law review articles connect the scholarly commentary, thus making this library essential to researchers studying the historical record of English Law.

    • SSRN open access to legal scholarship; includes papers in law and the social sciences currently being workshopped, submitted for publication, and previously-published articles.

    • Statistical Universe, aka LexisNexis Statistical. Contains online versions of Statistical Abstracts and other statistical tables. Use the Bureau of Labor Statistics site for labor-related statistics, and American Fact Finder or census.gov for census-related statistics.

    • Treaties Collection on HeinOnline contains US Treaties (UST), Statutes at Large, TIAS, and KAV publications of Treaties. (note: from off-campus, start here, and choose Treaties)

    • UN Treaty Collection Consists of several databases, including the Status of Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General; the UN Treaty Series from 1946-2003, the League of Nations Treaty Series (1920-1944), Photographs of Signature Ceremonies, the Treaty Handbook, the UN Treaty Series Cumulative Index, and more.

    • Worldcat contains library catalog records from libraries all over the world. Use this catalog to verify holdings information for materials you want to borrow through Interlibrary Loan.

      Limited Availability

      • IICLE, an Illinois Continuing Legal Education materials, published to support practitioners and others working on legal issues in Illinois such as Real Estate, Wills, and Trial practice. The online access is to the IICLE "SmartBooks" version of the materials, which are searchable and have downloadable forms. Access is available from the College of Law building Ethernet connections only.

      • Lexis-Nexis is for law students and faculty only (individually passworded). Other UIUC affiliates should use LexisNexis' Academic Universe, which provides approximately the same coverage of state and Federal primary law. Passwords can not be granted to personnel outside the law school. For more information, contact the library's vendor liaison.

      • Westlaw is for law students and faculty only (individually-passworded). Other UIUC affiliates should use LexisNexis Academic Universe for caselaw. Passwords can not be granted to personnel outside the law school. For more information, contact the library's vendor liaison.