LibGuides: SOCW 5014: Law & Ethics in Social Work: Home

Legal Research Sites

Most complete / designed for lawyers and legal scholars:

Westlaw This link opens in a new window
Online legal research database that provides access to case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, treatises, legal forms and other information resources.

Easiest to use - Court Cases and Law Review Articles:

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Google's index of scholarly research in selected journal articles and books also includes an option to search Case Law.

In Google Scholar, choose "Case Law" to search for court opinions by name. For example: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

To search for law reviews, type "L Rev" into the search box (including the quotation marks). For example:

"Social Work" and "L Rev" to find law review articles mentioning social work.

Easiest to use - California Codes, Statutes, and Bills:

LegInfo
California Legislature Official Site. Search for bills (AB or S) or parts of the California Codes (Welfare & Institutions, Penal, etc.).
LegInfo: Code Search
Browse or search the official California Codes from the state legislature

Easiest to Use - Federal Codes and Statutes:

U.S. Code (House of Representatives)
Browse by title or enter a title and section number into the search form.
Congress.GOV
Full-text of statutes (bills passed into law), pending bills, and the US Code.

Easy to use - State Codes and Cases around the nation:

FindLaw
"Professional" side of FindLaw site provides free access to case law (court opinions) and statutes.

For court opinions in FindLaw, the main search (opinion summaries) covers 2000 - present.
Use the Cases and Codes --> California Caselaw to find older California cases.

Social Services Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Social Services Abstracts provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. The database abstracts and indexes serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews.
PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
APA PsycInfo provides access to abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations. It is provides peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health, and contains citations and summaries dating as far back as the 1600s.
APA PsycInfo is indexed with controlled vocabulary from APA's Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®. Included is information on the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, technology, linguistics, anthropology, business, law and others. Journal coverage, which spans from the 1800s to the present, includes international material selected from periodicals in dozens of languages.

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