New E-resources Page
Electronic Resources
The Massey Law Library provides access to many research databases to support the research needs of the Law School's faculty and students. Most of these databases may be accessed remotely with a valid Vanderbilt University ID and password. Printing is not available from library terminals.
Additional Research Assistance
The following key explains access restrictions to the indexes and databases below:
Vanderbilt Community:  |
Law School Only:  |
Open to All (Free):  |
| DATABASE | DESCRIPTION | ACCESS |
|---|---|---|
| BePress Publications | Various publications from the Berkeley Electronic Press (BePress) |
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| Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) |
BNA publishes 350+ news services covering legal, legislative, regulatory, and economic developments. Speciality areas include corporate law, employment & labor law, environmental law, tax & accounting, and more. Research guides are available. BNA titles can be browsed by title or by subject. |
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| CALI (Computer Assisted Legal Instruction) |
CALI is a collection of interactive lessons to accompany almost every class offered in law school. They provide a question-and-answer format to discrete topics, and provide immediate feedback. Registration is required using an authorization code. Please contact Jason Sowards for more information. |
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| CasemakerX | CasemakerX is the law student version of a low-cost legal research system made available to members of select state bar associations. Requires registration with a valid vanderbilt.edu email address. |
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| CCH Intelliconnect | Intelliconnect is a comprehensive research platform for access to tax, accounting, finance and business information. A Quick Reference Card is available to help you get started with your research. |
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| Constitutions of the Countries of the World | This database offers access to 180+ country constitutions with extensive scholarly commentary. It provides accurage, original English translations, as well as the ability to search by topic across all nations. Access is temporarily available only while in the law school building. |
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| Directory of Open Access Journals | The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. |
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| EconLit | EconLit, published by the American Economic Association, indexes economic literature from over 400 mostly English-language journals as well as books, dissertations, conference proceedings, Cambridge University Press Abstracts of Working Papers in English, and the full text of Journal of Economic Literature book reviews. |
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| EDGAR | EDGAR is a database maintained by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in which users may find documents required to be filed in accordance with U.S. securities laws. The SEC offers a quick tutorial to EDGAR. |
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| EENews.net | This database provides comprehensive coverage of environmental and energy policy and markets. Titles included are ClimateWire, Environment & Energy Daily, GreenWire, and Land Letter. |
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| Eighteenth Century Collections Online | This database offers full-text access to books published during the 18th Century and is useful for research in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more. |
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| Environmental Law Reporter (ELR) | ELR is an environmental, natural resources, toxic tort, energy, health/safety, and land use law research tool containing original source documents, editorial summaries, and expert analysis on state, federal, and international issues. |
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| Fastcase | Fastcase is a low-cost legal research system made available to members of select state bar associations (such as Tennessee). It provides access to case law, statutes, regulations, court rules and constitutions. |
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| FDSys | Government Printing Office's electronic access to publications of the Federal Government. Formerly GPO Access. GPO Access will remain actively purely for archival research only. |
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| Foreign Law Guide | This resource endeavors to provide relevant information on sources of foreign law, including complete citations to legislation, the existence of Englih translations, whenever possible, indications of currentness of the legal materials listed, and, finally, selected references to secondary sources in English. It is not a guide to journal literature. |
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| HathiTrust | HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. While full-text may not be available for some materials due to copyright restrictions, the HathiTrust allows you to search the work for keywords as well as help you locate the work in a library. |
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| Health Affairs | Health Affairs is the leading journal of health policy, thought, and research. It explores health policy issues of current concern in both domestic and international spheres. It is a peer-reviewed journal. |
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| HeinOnline | Hein Online is a comprehensive legal research database. It is known for its extensive coverage of law reviews (in PDF format) and historical access to resources such as the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions. It is also helpful for legislative history research and accessing select foreign and international materials. Hein Online also has specialized libraries, such as for intellectual property and taxation and economic reform. Training videos are available to show you how to use select Hein Online libraries. |
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| Homeland Security Digital Library | This database contains over 87,000 documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and organizational management from a wide variety of sources including federal, state, and local governments; international governments and institutions; nonprofit organizations; and private entities. | On-Campus Only |
| IBFD Global Tax Explorer | IBFD is an international provider of cross-border tax expertise and indepdent tax research. The database includes access to global Tax Analyses, Global Tax Surveys, International Tax Glossary, Tax News Service, Tax Treaties Database, and Tax Treaty Case Law. |
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| Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals | This Index provides access to legal literature covering foreign (non-Anglo-American) law, and comparative law and legal systems. Documents covered include journal articles, congress reports, essay collections, yearbooks, and book reviews. Coverage begins in 1985. |
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| Index to Legal Periodicals (including Retrospective) | This index assists you in locatng legal periodial articles. Coverage is from 1982; Retrospective coverage is from 1908-1981. Full text is available for some articles. |
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| International Encyclopaedia of Laws | This resource provides a comprehensive report for countries on the topics of civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, environmental law, family and succession law, intellectual property, labour law, and social security. |
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| JSTOR | JSTOR includes over 1,000 academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select books and other materials. Free to search, but must be affiliated with Vanderbilt to retrieve documents. |
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| Justis | Justis is a full-text online legal library of UK, Irish, and European Union case law dating back to 1163 and legislation from 1235. It also provides a citator, JustCite (similar to KeyCite and Shepard's), to expand your research. | Access limited to within the law school building. |
| Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) | LSN is a component of SSRN that provides access to accepted and working papers. Searching is free and most documents are available for download in PDF format for free. For SSRN email alert services, please contact Jason Sowards. |
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| LegalTrac | LegalTrac provides indexing for more than 1,400 periodicals including major law reviews, legal newspapers, bar association journals, and international legal journals. It also contains law-related articles from over 1,000 additional business and general interest titles. |
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| LexisNexis (including Shepard's) | Limited content legal research system for Vanderbilt University community and provides access to Shepard's Citations for case validation. Access is limited to public terminals and computers within the law school. | Access limited to within the law school building. |
| LexisNexis for Law Schools | Legal research system for Vanderbilt Law School faculty, students and staff. Please see a reference librarian for assistance. |
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| LexisNexis Academic | This database provides access to news, US and international legal materials, and information about companies, including SEC filings, and industries. |
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| LLMC-Digital | LLMC provides PDF reproduction of predominantly historical legal information from the federal government, US states and territories, foreign jurisdictions, and international organizations. LLMC also provides access to broad collections, such as the Anglo-American and Multi-Jurisdictional subject collections. |
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| Making of Modern Law |
This resource consists of 2 databases:
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| Making of the Modern World | This database provides digital images of every page of 61,000 works of literature on economics and business published from 1450 through 1850. It provides researchers access to material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade, and transport. |
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| Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law | This resource provides article-level treatment on over 1,500 international law topics. Links to primary documents, such as treaties, are also available for some entries. |
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| Morningstar Document Research | Morningstar Document Research site provides access to financial data and filings available from the SEC. It also provides the user with the ability to download this data into popular applications. Morningstar provides training documents and pre- formulated search strategies are available through the Knowledge Base. |
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| National Wetlands Newsletter (NWN) | The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) established NWN as a clearinghouse for information regarding inland and coastal wetland and floodplains for scientists, planners, managers, attorneys, government agencies, conservation organizations, and other interested groups and individuals. |
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| NBER Working Papers (National Bureau of Economic Research) | NBER Working Papers have not undergone the review accorded official NBER publications; in particular, they have not been submitted for approval by the Board of Directors. They are intended to make results of NBER reserch available to other economists in preliminary form to encourage discussion and suggestsions for revision before publication. |
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| Nineteenth Century Masterfile | An "index of indexes," this resource is excellent for historical scholarly research prior to 1930. The Masterfile aggregates indexes to books, periodicals, newspapers, government documents and patents into a single resource. |
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| Oxford Reports on International Law | This database is intended to be a single point of reference for all international law jurisprudence, providing researchers access to the widest possible range of international law jurisprudence. All reported decisions have a headnote, the full text of the decision, and are linked to the Oxford Law Citator. |
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| PACER | Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is a service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts, and the PACER Case Locator via the Internet. A password is required. Please contact a reference librarian for assistance. |
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| ProQuest Congressional | This database provides access to U.S. Congressional materials (hearings, bills, Congressional Record and compiled legislative histories. This product was formerly known as LexisNexis Congressional. Training videos are available. |
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| ProQuest Statistical Insight & Data Sets |
This resource provides access to national income and production statistics, retail and wholesale trade data, interest rates, economic indicators, and social and demographic statistics, plus data on energy, environmental protection, agriculture and fisheries, crime, and much more. Insight is available to the Vanderbilt community. Insight has training videos. Datasets provides access to updated data on various topics and allows for exporting of data for manipulation. Datasets is available only to the Law School community and must be accessed from the drop-down menu within Statistical Insight. There are training videos available for Datasets. |
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| RIA Checkpoint | RIA's Checkpoint is a web-based tax and accounting research tool. Through Checkpoint, you can access the federal tax code and regulations, Treasury Department decisions and federal court decisions, and IRS Revenue Rulings. State, local, and international materials are also available. Individual passwords are available for long-term research projects. Contact Jason Sowards for more information. |
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| SSRN (Social Science Research Network) | SSRN is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences. Searching is free, and a substantial number of documents are available for free download in PDF format. |
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| THOMAS | THOMAS was launched in January of 1995 to make federal legislative information freely available to the public. Information you may find on THOMAS includes bills and resolutions, the Congressional Record, Congressional committee information, and presidential nominations, among other information. |
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| United Nations Treaty Collection | This database provides access to all multilateral treaties deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations and those formerly deposited with the League of Nations.. It includes the latest status of the treaty as well as links to their full text. It also provides access to bilateral and multilateral treaties registered with and published by the UN Secretariat to a certain date. Detailed treaty references and full texts are available in all authentic languages. |
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| United States Supreme Court Database | The Supreme Court Database is the definitive source for researchers interested in the U.S. Supreme Court. The database contains over 200 pieces of information abut each case decided by the Court between 1953 and 2008 terms. It is an ideal first stop for any empirical research project relating to the Supreme Court. |
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US Congressional Serial Set |
This collection facilitates research of U.S. political, social, cultural, military and ethnic history, as well as international relations, exploration expeditions across the country and throughout the world, commerce, industrial development, and much more. Its contents come not only from the U.S. Congress, but also include key Executive Department publications. The Vanderbilt community has access to Volume 1 in the first session of the 15th Congress (1817) through the 96th Congress (1980). Access to information from 1995 to the present is available to everyone. Access to the Serial Set from 1981-1994 is available in print volumes on the ground floor of the Law Library. |
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| U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs (1832-1978) | Containing nearly 11 million pages of records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978, this product provides an essential primary source tool for the study of all aspects of American history as well as the U.S. judicial system. |
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| Vlex | vLex is a legal research site providing thousands of primary and secondary law sources (including foreign and international legislation and case law) from dozens of publishers around the world. |
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| Wall Street Journal (1889-1993) | Historical access to the Wall Street Journal. |
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| Westlaw | Legal research system for Vanderbilt Law School faculty, students and staff. Please see a reference librarian for assistance. |
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| World Bank E-Library | The World Bank e-Library provides access to a growing collection of more than 6,000 ebooks, journal articles, and working papers from the world's most authoritative source on international development as they are published. |
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| WorldCat (OCLC) | WorldCat is a catalog of books, journals and other resources available at libraries throughout the world. |
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| Yearbook of International Organizations | The Yearbook of International Organizations Online is a database containing descriptions of over 64,000 active and dormant/inactive organizations. |
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If you need research assistance, please email a reference librarian.
If you encounter any broken links or have questions about access to any of these resources, please contact Jason Sowards.