Graduate students in law must search for academic literature such as books, book chapters, and law journal articles pertaining to their research topic.
To locate scholarly literature on your topic, consult the databases and resources offered by Queen's University Library. Using a combination of research tools will yield the most complete results.
Depending on the nature of your research topic, you may need to expand your litature search to other disciplines. For further guidance, see Finding Literature from Other Disciplines in the law library's Legal Research Manual.
The research tools and databases on this page can be used to locate scholarly literature on legal topics.
On this page:
The following general search engines can be used to identify and locate scholarly literature on topics from all academic disciplines, including law.
Omni is an easy-to-use academic search tool that gives you access to high-quality resources from Queen's and 17 other Ontario university libraries. Omni contains records for books and e-books, journal articles, government documents, and much more.
To locate scholarly law journal articles, try using the "peer-reviewed journals" filter on the left side of the search results page.
Watch this video for helpful tips on how to search for secondary legal sources in Omni.
Google Scholar indexes a vast number of articles, books, and theses from all academic disciplines, including law. Although, not as detailed as a law specific database, it can be a great place to start or to use at the end of your project to check your citations. Access to Queen's resources is available via Google Scholar from on-campus.
If you are located off-campus, you will need to configure your Google Scholar preferences to allow automatic access to our Library subscriptions to journals and databases. To do this, go to Settings > Library Links. Under 'Show library access links', type in Queen's University.
Legal periodical indexes include references to (and sometimes the full-text of) journal articles and other types of legal literature including books, conference proceedings, collections of essays, and book reviews.
One major advantage of indexes is their comprehensiveness - they point to the existence of materials to which they provide access to in full-text as well as to materials they do not have in full-text. Another advantages of indexes is their subject headings, which are controlled terms that describe the key topics of each article and make the process of finding articles on a specific topic more efficient.
Once you have identified articles that interest you, you may need to go to a different database to find the full-text. Most of the time this will be a simple matter of clicking on the "Get it @ Queen's" button, which will take you to the database that contains the full-text of that article.
Here are the major periodical indexes for legal literature. Choose one or more based upon your research needs:
Index to Canadian Legal Literature
The ICLL is the only comprehensive index to Canadian journal articles, books, conference proceedings, collections of essays, and book reviews in the field of law and law-related topics. It is available on WestlawNext Canada, (or Westlaw Edge Canada for law students), Lexis Advance Quicklaw Plus (or Lexis+ for law students).
For further guidance, see ICLL Search Tips.
Index to Legal Periodicals
The Index to Legal Periodicals indexes over 1000 legal journals, yearbooks, institutes, bar association journals, university publications and law reviews, and government publications from the United States, Puerto Rico, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The database also indexes approximately 1,400 monographs per year.
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals is produced by the American Association of Law Libraries and indexes articles published in hundreds of legal journals emanating from countries around the world. Articles about the legal systems and practices of all countries are indexed EXCEPT for those pertaining to the common law systems of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
The IFLP provides in-depth coverage of international, comparative and foreign law in many languages. Also indexed are individually-published collections of legal essays, festschriften, and congress reports. Updated several times a year.
LegalTrac
Index to 1,200+ law journals and other legal publications from U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia and other common law jurisdictions. Contains selective full-text.
Scott's Index to Canadian Legal Periodical Literature/Index Scott des périodiques juridiques canadiens
This is the oldest continuously published index to Canadian legal literature. In addition to journal articles, essays, case comments and book reviews are also indexed. Provided open access from the Centre d'accès à l'information juridique (CAIJ), It contains more than 30,000 entries.
Queen's holds older editions of the index in print, under the name "Index to Canadian Legal Periodical Literature" (1961/70 - 1981/85 ; 1986-2003).
Canadian Law Symposia Index (CLSI)
CLSI, available on Lexis Advance Quicklaw Plus (or Lexis+ for law students and faculty) is an index to papers presented at legal seminars and continuing legal education conferences since 1986.
Searching WestlawNext Canada, Lexis Advance Quicklaw, HeinOnline, and/or a subject-specific database is an additional way of uncovering law journal articles.
If the Library does not subscribe to the journal you require, you can try searching for your article in WestlawNext Canada. Here is a list of all journals included in WestlawNext Canada. Law students can also search Westlaw Edge Canada.
If the Library does not subscribe to the journal you require, you can try searching for your article in Lexis Advance Quicklaw Plus. Law students can also search Lexis+.
HeinOnline Law Journal Library
Contains more than 1,200 law and law-related periodicals. Coverage is from the first issue published for all periodicals and goes up to the most current issue allowed based on contracts with publishers.
See our guide Online Sources by Legal Subject for a full list of subject-specific databases to which the Library subscribes.