Services for Law Journal Students

• Library catalog.  Use the Advanced Search module of the Catalog to search for the article by Title and Author. ​
  

• Search Databases Individually: 
  • Heinonline  has a large collection of law review articles in PDF, and it is a good place to start looking up law review articles. 
  • JSTOR contains a large collection scholarly articles from many non-law disciplines.  The content is also in PDF.  
• Google Scholar. Alternatively, you can search for the title of the article in Google Scholar. If  Seton Hall subscribes to the article online (e.g. through Heinonline or JSTOR), Google Scholar will provide a link to that content. 
  • Note: Google Scholar may locate the article you need on SSRN or another online repository.  Online repositories are not journal databases, they are places for authors to store their work. Authors often upload to a repository the "author's final version" which is the last draft the author had before giving the journal a copyright license. The "author's final version" is usually NOT the version you want to use for cite-checking, so if you beware of using SSRN or other repositories for cite-checking.

Cases. You may find Bluebook-friendly “authenticated, official, or an exact copy of the printed source” cases in some internet databases. 

• First, Check T1 in the Bluebook for the approved case reporter for each court and jurisdiction.
• Keep in mind however that (1) most electronic versions of cases are not PDFs and (2) if you do find a PDF version of a case, many PDFs are from non-Bluebook-approved case reporters.
  • Heinonline and Westlaw are good resources for Bluebook-approved versions of cases. 
• Use the library.  If you cannot find Bluebook-approved versions online, you need to use the library. Make sure that you are accessing the Bluebook-approved reporter noted in Bluebook T1. Note, however, that our library no longer has a current subscription to many case reporters.  Therefore, you may find that you need a case for which there is no PDF and no copy in our library.  In those instances, you should place an ILL request for the case.   

Statutes: Codes.  "Official and unofficial codes arrange statutes currently in force by subject matter." (Bluebook Rule 12.1).

• Check T1 in the Bluebook for the approved statutory compilation ("code"). Be aware that there is often more than one published version of a jurisdiction's code, and that the Bluebook will tell you which version you need to cite. 
• The Bluebook rule for putting the date (the year) on a citation to a code section requires that you use the printed version of the code.  This is because the required date for a code section is neither the year the section was enacted, nor the current year in which it is in force, but rather: "the year that appears on the spine of the volume, the year that appears on the title page, or the latest copyright year—in that order of preference." (See Bluebook Rule 12.3.2)
• Because online databases tend not to provide PDF images of the spine, title page, or copyright page, the only way to determine the Bluebook-approved date is to pull the print volume from a shelf and view its spine, title page, and copyright page.
• One possible exception is the official US Code which is available with dates in PDF versions on Heinonline.
• Our library has a limited collection of State Codes in print.  They are located on the Fourth Floor in the Rodino Reading Room. If the library does not own a print copy of the Bluebook-approved code, you will have to ILL a copy from another library in order to find the correct year. 

Statutes: Session Laws.  "Official and privately published session laws report statutes in chronological order of enactment." (Bluebook Rule 12.1). Like codes, session laws are also statutes, but they refer to a law or act in its entirety as it was passed, rather than a section of that law or act as it was later codified.  A law typically starts as a bill, gets passed by a legislature, approved by a president or governor, published and bound first in a collection of “session laws” which are organized chronologically by order of passage, then published and bound later in “codes” or the familiar arrangement of subject matter topics (i.e. the 50 titles of the United States Code).  Bluebook Rule 12.2.2 explains the exceptions for when a Session Law would be cited instead of the current Code.

• Heinonline has PDF versions of session laws for federal, state, and US territories.
  • Locate federal session laws under "U.S. Statutes at Large". 
  • Locate state sessions laws under "Session Laws Library".

Websites.  Locating and pulling a website as a source seems simple.  However, one thing to keep in mind is the risk that links can break or the content therein can change.  Once you have verified a link in your cite check assignment, determine whether your journal is using Perma.cc to archive URLs and create permanent Perma links to insert in the article.  Learn more about Perma on their website: http://perma.cc/about

UN Documents. UN documents can be located using the UN document symbol in the citation.

Human Rights Council Res. 26/9, Rep. of Human Rights Council, 26th Sess., June 10-27, 2014, A/HRC/RES/26/9 (June 14, 2014);

• In the citation above, the UN document symbol is A/HRC/RES/26/9.  Each UN document has a unique symbol at the top right of the document or on the cover page. Symbols include both letters and numbers. Some elements of the symbol have meaning, while other elements do not. The first component indicates the organ to which the document is submitted or the organ that is issuing the document. (A/ = General Assembly).
  • If you have a United Nations Document Symbol, the easiest way to download a document is to add the symbol after the following URL:http://undocs.org/.  For example: http:undocs.org/A/HRC/RES/26/9
• Consult the United Nations Tab of our International Law Research Guide. 
• Another place to start is: http://documents.un.org/

Bluebook Rule 21.4.5 (page 204) requires determining whether the United States is a party to the treaty, and whether the treaty is bilateral or multilateral. 

Locating Treaties Where the U.S. IS a Party 

Locating Treaties  Where the U.S. is NOT a Party

For more detailed guidance consult the Treaties tab of our International Law Research Guide:  https://shlawlibrary.libguides.com/IntLaw/Treaties 

The University of Minnesota Law School has put together a helpful guide to frequently cited treaties: https://libguides.law.umn.edu/frequentlycitedtreaties 

Newspapers. The 20th Edition of the Bluebook contains a different rule than the 19th Edition regarding newspapers. The 20th Edition of the Bluebook states "Online newspapers may be used in place of print newspapers" (Rule 16.6(f)).

• When using an online version, the citation should be to the online version. It should not appear that you are citing to the print version if you have not checked the print version.

If you wish to try and locate a print version (or an equivalent PDF of the print):

• You can look up the name of the newspaper (NOT the title of the article) in the library’s online catalog e-Journals page. 

You will be taken to our eJournal/Magazine search box.  Type the name of the Journal title you want to search in the "Title" field.  Select the proper result from the Search list.  You will then be taken to a page that lists the databases where Full Text coverage is available and the years covered in each.