How to Find Legal and Non-Legal Journal Articles 

Because the law is always developing and changing, it is best to have the most up to date information.  Articles are a great way to start your research because they cover cutting edge issues, such as new legislation, recent important court decisions, and current legal theories and viewpoints.

While you are doing your research, keep in mind that not all articles are available online.  Hamline may have an electronic subscription to a journal or magazine, however, your article may not be within the scope of coverage of that subscription.  Sometimes only the abstract will be available in electronic form.  If the full text of your article is not available online, you may still be able to obtain a print copy at the Law Library or at Bush Library.  Be sure to check CLICnet to see Hamline subscribes to the journal in print.

If you find an article that would benefit your research, but it is one that Hamline does not have access to, consider requesting this article from our Interlibrary Loan Service.

Search Databases to Find Citations and/or Full Text of Law-Related Articles

This is an excellent option when you do not necessarily have a particular article in mind but would like to find articles on your topic by searching with keywords or subject headings. To help you get started, brief descriptions of the databases are provided.

Journals @ Hamline

This multifaceted tool includes a list of almost all journals accessible to the Hamline community. The list extends to journals housed in print format at either library as well as almost all journals accessible through our online databases. For example, use this option if you already know an article's citation and the journal title and you want to see if full text is available in electronic or print form. You will see a list of the available legal and nonlegal periodicals by title. The list also allows you to locate journals by broad subject category or by some of the words in the journal title.

360 Search (Preliminary and/or Interdisciplinary Search across Selected Databases)

The 360 Search may be an excellent place to start your research, especially in interdisciplinary areas, but it is probably not the only resource needed to complete your research. The technology used does not work in all of our databases at this time.  For example, 360 Search does not cover Westlaw or Lexis for Law Schools.  More specifically, the 360 Search is a process which allows the user to enter one query that will be searched across multiple databases. For example, entering a search query in the "Law Indexes and Abstracts" subject area will result in the query being searched in several legal index databases. Results are grouped together, and duplicate hits are eliminated. 

Search CLICnet (Catalog of Library Holdings)

CLICnet can be used to search for periodicals available both at Hamline and at other Consortium libraries. To locate a journal by title in CLICnet, click on Journal Title and enter the journal title (not an article’s title) in the search box. The pull down menu allows you to search by subject or keyword. If you use CLICnet to link to an electronic version of a journal, the article text may appear in a split screen rather than a full screen. However, you can adjust the size of the article window by dragging the border with your mouse.