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Databases are listed A-Z under each tab.

Legal Research Databases

This is a curated list of law-related databases as well as popular interdisciplinary and news resources. Additional research databases and library resources can be found at the Duke University Libraries A-Z Database list or through the Duke Libraries Catalog. Access to the legal research services Bloomberg LawLexis, and Westlaw is available only by individual password for current Duke Law students, faculty and staff, under the terms of the Library's contracts with each vendor. Other sources for legal information, including a campus-wide version of Lexis, can be found on the list below.

Consult the Reference Desk for assistance with these or other research databases.

Legend: L Law School Community D Duke University Community P Password (non-NetID) Required

New & Noteworthy

  • ABI/INFORM Complete D
    Provides access to full text popular and scholarly business, management, accounting, and law journals, as well as market and industry reports.
  • AILALink D
    Immigration-related primary and secondary resources from the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Includes the full text of Kurzban's Immigration Law Sourcebook and other AILA publications, as well as access to statutes, regulations, court opinions, forms, and additional materials for immigration practitioners.
  • Almanac of the Federal Judiciary D
    A biographical database for all active federal district and appellate court judges. In addition to standard biographical information, entries include noteworthy rulings, media coverage, publications, lawyers' comments on the judge's behavior and demeanor, judge's special guidelines, and case management statistics.
  • America's News D
    Electronic edition of more than 1,500 U.S. newspapers, including many smaller-market local papers.
  • American Civil Liberties Union Papers 1912-1990 D
    Includes legal case files, news clippings, and project files from the ACLU in the twentieth century.
  • Aspen Learning Library (formerly Wolters Kluwer Study Aid Library) D
    Full-text access to nearly 200 study aids published by Aspen Publishing. Available series include Examples & Explanations, Glannon Guides, Emanuel Law Outlines, and more. Users may search or read online, or create an individual account that allows for offline reading and annotation.
  • bepress Legal Repository
    Free access to thousands of working papers and pre-publication prints on a variety of legal topics.
  • Bloomberg Law L P
    Premium legal research service which includes state and federal case law, statutes, regulations, and analysis; features expansive access to federal and state court dockets, and BNA publications such as the Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct and United States Law Week. Available by individual password to current Law School students, faculty and staff. 
  • Bloomsbury Collections (Hart Publishing e-book collection) D
    Collection of e-book titles published by Hart Publishing, available through Duke University. NetID login required for off-campus access.
  • Business Source Complete D
    Full text articles from scholarly, trade, and popular journals on business, law, finance, and other disciplines, as well as public and private company reports.
  • CALI L P
    Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction is a consortium of law schools that offers online tutorials for more than 900 legal topics. Duke Law students may access the registration code at the bottom of this page with their NetID and password.
  • Cambridge Core e-Book Collection D
    Access to e-books from Cambridge University Press available through Duke University. NetID login required for off-campus access.
  • Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations
    Provides source information for citations by title or by abbreviation; includes Bluebook abbreviations as well as international citation guides.
  • Casetext L P
    Unique legal research service which provides access to federal and state case law, federal statutes and selected state codes, and analytical articles. The CARA feature (Case Analysis Research Assistant) provides suggestions for potential additional citations when a legal document is uploaded. Current Law School students, faculty, and staff may register for Casetext's free Law School Access.
  • Checkpoint (formerly RIA Checkpoint) D
    Web-based research database from Thomson Reuters that includes important RIA tax products, including the US Tax Reporter, the Federal Tax Coordinator 2d, a citator service, tax journals and a tax news e-mail alerting service.
  • Cheetah (now VitalLaw) D
    Platform for online versions of Wolters Kluwer primary and secondary titles.
  • Chronicle of Higher Education D
    Campus-wide premium access to news articles related to college and university operations.
  • Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) D
    Comprehensive source for international affairs research; its contents include working papers, conference proceedings, case studies, policy briefs, etc.
  • Courtroom View Network (CVN) L P
    Provides MP3 recordings of cases from law school casebooks, as well as video from trials in a variety of practice areas. Duke Law students and faculty may register with their Law School e-mail address.
  • Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) D
    From the Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, CILP provides a weekly subject index and table of contents service for recent scholarly legal publications. 
  • DailyChatter D
    A curated international daily newsletter that provides context and global perspective on the most important stories of the day from around the world. Free subscriptions are available for current university students and faculty who register with a duke.edu email address.
  • Derwent Innovations Index D
    Patent searches and citation indexes of inventions in chemical, electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering for more than 40 jurisdictions, from 1963 to present. Combines information from Derwent World Patents Index and Derwent Patent Citation Index, via the Web of Science platform.
  • The Economist D
    Full-text access to The Economist daily news articles and weekly print edition, back to 1997. Historical materials (1843-2010) can be found in the separate Economist Historical Archive database.
  • ElgarOnline e-Book Collection D
    Collection of electronic book titles from Edward Elgar Publishing. NetID login required for off-campus access.
  • Elgar Advanced Introductions to Law D
    Collection of accessible yet comprehensive overviews of more than two dozen legal topics, particularly strong in comparative and international areas of law.
  • Environmental Law Reporter L
    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.
  • Fastcase D
    Research service offering primary law from the federal system, all 50 states, and tribal law jurisdictions, including case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions, as well as treatises from Wolters Kluwer. This is a campus-wide version of the service provided as a free membership benefit in the bar associations of more than 25 states.
  • Foreign Law Guide D
    Provides information about the legal systems of countries around the world and citations to their legal publications; best first stop for researching the law of other countries.
  • FT.com (Financial Times) L P
    Current Law School students, faculty, and staff may join the Duke Law Library "group subscription" by registering an account at the Duke Law site for the Financial Times using their Duke email address.
  • Global Investigations Review D
    News, journals, and market intelligence on the topic of agency investigations and internal corporate investigations of issues relating to international anti-bribery and corruption, financial services misconduct, antitrust, fraud, money laundering, tax controversy and more. Content is available from Duke University IP addresses or via the "Library Resources" VPN. Register for email alerts with a Duke.edu email.
  • Global-Regulation D
    Contains more than 4.3 million laws and regulations from 110 countries, providing access to machine-translated documents.
  • GlobaLex
    An electronic legal publication dedicated to international, foreign, and comparative law research, collecting articles published by scholars around the world who are well known in their respective fields. This compilation is hosted by the Hauser Global Law School Program at NYU.
  • Google Scholar
    Contains opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court since 1791, federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923, and state appellate courts since 1950. Also includes full text or links to full text of articles from law reviews and legal journals.
  • HeinOnline D
    Database with full text and page images of thousands of law review articles, treatises and primary sources of law, focusing on retrospective historical coverage unavailable in other digital databases.
  • Human Rights Studies Online D
    Database of documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide. Includes books, primary documents, audio, maps, images, and video, from 1900-2010. 
  • IBFD Tax Research Platform D
    A comprehensive collection of world-wide taxation laws and information from the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD). Includes tax treaties, individual and corporate taxation information, tax caselaw, and commentary on taxation and investment issues. E-books and journals are also included.
  • ICLR Online D
    Case law from the Superior and Appellate Courts in England and Wales, including ICLR's Law Reports and Weekly Law Reports. Also includes case summaries, a citator service, access to legislation, and individual profiles in order to manage complex research.
  • Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals D
    Indexes articles from more than 450 legal periodicals published worldwide, including journals, essay collections, festschrifts, and congress reports.
  • Index to Legal Periodicals D
    Index to scholarly law journals and books from 1981 forward, full-text from 1995 forward.
  • Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective L
    Index to scholarly law journals and books from 1918 to 1981.
  • Intelligize L
    Securities, company, finance, and trade data, allowing for advanced searching and comparison of EDGAR filings and other SEC materials. Available to current members of the Law School community via their LexisNexis sign-on. From Lexis+ research service, access to Intelligize is also available via the "Product Switcher" grid in the top left corner.
  • JournalsTOC L P
    Free service (registration required) providing emailed table of contents alerts for more than 20,000 journals, including many legal titles.
  • JSTOR D
    Fully-searchable database containing back issues of scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics and other fields. 
  • Jus Mundi D
    Research platform containing the full text of treaties, case law, rules, and publications related to international law and arbitration, on the topics of investment arbitration, commercial arbitration, public international law, law of the sea, and international trade. Decisions from more than 100 commissions and organizations are included. Duke's subscription also includes access to the ICC Dispute Resolution Library and Juris Arbitration Library.
  • Kluwer Arbitration D
    News, analysis, primary documents, books and journals related to international commercial and investment arbitration. 
  • Law Technology Today Law Review & Journal Search
  • Searches the full text of more than 300 online law reviews and journals, as well as open-access document repositories. Free service of Law Technology Today.
  • Law.com L
    Electronic full-text access to American Lawyer Media (ALM) publications, including National Law Journal, American Lawyer, Legal Intelligencer, and Law Technology News. Access above is restricted to within the Law School IP range. Current Law School students, faculty, and staff may also access Law.com stories from off-campus on Lexis+ via the path Legal News > ALM Media. 
  • Law360 L
    News, commentary and analysis in more than 35 practice areas. Available within the Law School IP range, as well as to Law community via the News carousel within Lexis.
  • LAWnB Legal Information Service D
    A Korean-language legal portal, indexing Korean legal materials such as statutes, precedents, administrative documents, and news articles.
  • Leadership Connect D
    Online version of the Leadership Directories' "Yellow Book" series; allows searching and browsing within for people and organizations using a variety of criteria including name, job title, industry and geographical location. Contains profiles for decision makers and organizations in eight communities: Congress, Federal Government, State & Local Government, News Media, Law & Lobbying Firms, Companies, Nonprofits & Associations, and Courts.
  • Legal Blogs
    Links to law blog directories, search engines, and hosting sites.
  • Legal Profession Links
    Annotated list of links to bar associations, legal education and scholarship portals, lawyer directories, e-mail discussion groups for attorneys and legal ethics web sites.
  • LegalTrac D
    Contains article abstracts or references from more than 800 legal publications; law journals, law reviews, bar association journals, and legal newspapers.
  • Legifrance
    Government site offering French-language access (some translations also available), to laws and decrees, important court rulings, collective labor agreements, standards issued by European institutions, and international treaties and agreements to which France is a party. Links to parliamentary assemblies, jurisdictions, independent administrative authorities, and more.
  • Lexis+ L P
    A comprehensive, full text research system for legal materials, including cases, statutes, regulations and especially strong for news resources. Available by individual password to current Law School students, faculty and staff.
  • LLMC Digital D
    Features administrative, legislative and judicial materials digitized from microfiche collections of Law Library Microform Consortium. Includes strong collections from U.S. federal and state jurisdictions, the United Kingdom, Canada and international organizations; selected materials from other countries of the world.
  • The Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers 1912-1990 D
    Includes legal case files, news clippings, and project files from the ACLU in the twentieth century.
  • The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative, and International Law D
    Collection of treatises on international, foreign and comparative law, dating from 1600-1926.
  • The Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources 1600-1970 D
    Historical legal codes, statutes, regulations, and commentaries on codes from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other countries in northern Europe.
  • The Making of Modern Law: Landmark Records and Briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1891-1980 D
    More than two million pages of briefs and other filings from the various circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, from the 1890s to the 1980s.
  • The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926 D
    A searchable full-text collection of American and British legal treatises from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1800-1926). 
  • The Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources D
    A searchable full-text collection of early American and British primary sources including: early state codes, state constitutional conventions, city charters, law dictionaries, case digests, records of the American colonies. 
  • The Making of Modern Law: Trials 1600-1926 D
    Trial transcripts, popular printed accounts, briefs, and arguments for Anglo-American trials from 1600 to 1926.
  • The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records & Briefs, 1832-1978 D
    Provides the full text (in PDF) of records and briefs from approximately 150,000 historical U.S. Supreme Court cases.
  • Manupatra D
    A full-text English-language database of Indian law materials, including case law and statutes. Current Duke University students, faculty, and staff may request login information from the Law Library Reference Desk.
  • Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law D
    Contains analytic coverage of more than 100 constitutional law sub-topics in a comparative context.
  • Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law D
    Online edition of the seminal encyclopedia features completely updated scholarly articles on international law topics.
  • MEMSO: Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online D
    Digitized texts covering Britain and its place in the world during the medieval and early modern period (c. 1100-1800). Includes key printed sources for English, Irish, Scottish and Colonial history with original manuscripts concerning economic, political, legal, and ecclesiastical history. Legal content includes Statutes of the Realm; selected Year Books; Ancient Laws for Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; and Pitcairn's Criminal Trials in Scotland.
  • Municode D
    Local government codes of municipal ordinances from around the United States. Also includes links to related organizations. A premium search feature is available after IP authenticated sign-in; "Library Resources Only" VPN connection needed for off-campus access. Once connected to the Duke network, click "Sign in" in header area of website and select "Log in with site-wide subscription."
  • NCLC Digital Library D
    Full-text access to more than 20 treatises published by the National Consumer Law Center, integrating online updates and supplemental materials such as sample pleadings and practice tools. Topics include debtor rights, mortgages & foreclosures, credit & banking, deception & warranties, and consumer litigation.
  • Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) D
    Campus-wide version of Law School's LexisNexis database, with selected legal, news, and government materials.
  • The New York Times (NYTimes.com) L P
    Current members of the Duke Law community may join the Law School group account to receive complimentary access to NYTimes.com content on the web and selected smartphone apps. Student accounts will last until December of their graduation year; faculty and staff accounts require renewals annually. To register or renew an account, follow the above link while connected to the Law School’s VPN (Library Resources option); type "Duke" under "Find School" and select "Duke University School of Law." 
  • Nineteenth Century Masterfile D
    Combined search of historical periodical indexes, including Jones & Chipman's Index to Legal Periodical Literature 1786-1937, Poole's Index to Periodical Literature 1802-1906, and Index to Legal Periodicals 1908-1935. Full text is provided to many results via HathiTrust and Cornell's digital library Making of America 1815-1901.
  • OECD iLibrary
    Provides the full text of all journals and books published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 1998.
  • Oxford Academic e-Book Collection D
    Collection of e-book titles published by Oxford Academic, available through Duke University. NetID login required for off-campus access.
  • Oxford Bibliographies in International Law D
    Encyclopedic articles on more than 150 international law topics, with extensive research references to sources like textbooks, treaties, case law, and commentaries.
  • Oxford Constitutions of the World D
    Current and historical constitutions for the U.S. government and the 50 states, as well as worldwide.
  • Oxford Historical Treaties D
    Contains the full text of treaties from 1648-1919 from Clive Parry's Consolidated Treaty Series; also regularly updated with additional expert commentaries on treaty-related research topics.
  • Oxford Legal Research Library D
  • Provides integrated access across collections of key Oxford University Press law titles in four collections: International Commercial Arbitration, International Commercial Law, Financial and Banking Law, and Private International Law.
  • Oxford Reports on International Law D
    Provides English translations of international law cases from over 65 jurisdictions, covering 2000 to the present. Duke Law has full access to modules for International Law in Domestic Courts, International Courts of General Jurisdiction, and International Human Rights Law. All judgments are also available full-text in their original languages. Scholarly commentary and analysis is also included.
  • Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law D
    Provides full text of Oxford University Press international law treatises and commentaries, along with the Oxford Law Citator for links to cases, articles, and additional materials related to each article.
  • PitchBook D
    Search thousands of private equity and venture capital deals by hundreds of criteria, establish benchmarks, find real time data on deals, identify and analyze comparables, and search investor details. All current Duke University students, faculty, and staff are eligible for Academic User accounts that permit restricted amounts of data exporting and printing; faculty members at Law and Fuqua may inquire about options for a premium upgrade that allows increased downloads.
  • Pkulaw (Chinalawinfo) D
    Provides full text of cases, statutes, and regulations in English and Chinese.
  • PLI Plus D
    Full text of Practising Law Institute (PLI) publications, including treatises, course handbooks, answer books, forms, and journals. Full-text library dates back to 1980.
  • Proceedings First D
  • Index of published proceedings of meetings, conferences, symposia, and workshops, in all subjects from 1993-present. 
  • ProQuest Congressional D
    Formerly LexisNexis Congressional; indexes key federal legislative history materials, including the U.S. Serial Set and the CIS Index. Selected full text includes committee reports from 1817-1969/1995-present, and committee hearings from 1824-present.
  • ProQuest Dissertations & Theses D
    Indexes more than 2 million dissertations (1637-present) on all subject areas, including law; full text in PDF provided where available.
  • ProQuest History Vault D
    Primary sources on historical topics, particularly related to politics, foreign policy, civil rights, and legal history. Law-related content includes Law and Society since the Civil War: American Legal Manuscripts from the Harvard Law School Library (which includes the personal papers of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter); Slavery and the Law; and Immigration: Records of the INS, 1880-1930.
  • ProQuest Legislative Insight D
    Compiled legislative history materials for federal laws, mostly from 1929 to the present but with selected additional documents dating back to the 1890s.
  • ProQuest Regulatory Insight D
    Compiled regulatory history materials for enacted federal laws from 1936-present.
  • ProQuest Statistical Insight D
    Index and full-text of statistical reports from federal and state governments, as well as private organizations.
  • ProQuest Supreme Court Insight D
    Contains records and briefs from U.S. Supreme Court cases, dating from 1898-2019.
  • Social Science Research Network
    SSRN provides early distribution of abstracts of scholarly writing and full-text publication of working papers and journal articles with email update service.
  • Statista D
    A portal which provides access to studies and statistics for U.S. and international market sectors such as law, business, finance, and politics. Law-related topics include crime, judicial systems, the legal services industry, legal education, and public opinion on major court decisions. 
  • Tables of Contents for Canadian Law Journals
    Maintained by the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto, this monthly service provides access to recent tables of contents for legal journals in Canada.
  • Tax Analysts (Tax Notes) D P
    Source for tax-related news and commentary. Duke's access includes the Federal (Tax Notes, Tax Notes Today, FATCA Expert, Exempt Organizations Expert, and Tax Practice Expert), State (Tax Notes State, Tax Notes Today State, and Tax Notes Research State), and International (Tax Notes International, Worldwide Tax Treaties, and BEPS Expert) subscriptions. Current members of the Duke University community may register with their Duke.edu email address for access; initial registration requires connection to the Duke network through physical location, remote desktop, or VPN (Library Resources Group).
  • Taylor & Francis e-Book Collection D
    Collection of e-books published by Taylor & Francis and Routledge, available through Duke University. NetID login required for off-campus access.
  • Thomson Reuters Checkpoint (formerly RIA Checkpoint) D
    Web-based research database that includes important RIA tax products, including the US Tax Reporter, the Federal Tax Coordinator 2d, a citator service, tax journals and a tax news e-mail alerting service.
  • TRACfed L
    Access to comprehensive, independent, and nonpartisan data about United States federal law enforcement, staffing, and spending. Some reports are freely accessible; subscriber-only data is restricted to the Duke Law School community via library proxy server with valid NetID and within Law School network.
  • Trade Law Guide D
    Database for searching World Trade Organization (WTO) materials, including WTO agreements, instruments, jurisprudence, and Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) minutes; also includes article and jurisprudence citators for WTO materials, and a Subject Navigator index.
  • UN Treaty Collections
  • Database that includes the full text of the UNTS, with over 40,000 international agreements plus the status of multilateral treaties deposited with the UN. 
  • U.S. Congressional Serial Set Digital Collection D
    Full-text of all the reports, documents and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in PDF, from 1817-1994. Produced by READEX from the U.S. Serial Set.
  • U.S. Supreme Court Records & Briefs, 1832-1978 D
    Provides the full text (in PDF) of records and briefs from approximately 150,000 historical U.S. Supreme Court cases.
  • VitalLaw (formerly Cheetah) D
    Platform for online versions of Wolters Kluwer primary and secondary titles.
  • vLexJustis L
    Online research service offering case law, legislation, and other legal materials for more than 100 countries, with a particular focus on jurisdictions in Central America, South America, and Europe.
  • Wall Street Journal Online D
    Individual account access to WSJ.com is available to all current Duke University students, faculty, and staff who register with a duke.edu email address.
  • Washington Post L
    Provides the Law School community with unlimited digital access to articles at WashingtonPost.com when connected to a Law School networked computer, the VPN, or by proxy access for current Law School students, faculty, and staff. Individual accounts are not required to access articles, but faculty and staff with a law.duke.edu email address can create one at the sign-up page; follow the steps to create an account, then select My Post > Manage Account > Send Verification Email > (once verified) Subscription & Billing > Activate Free Digital Access.
  • West Academic Library Study Aids D
    Provides full-text access to hundreds of study aids, treatises, audio lectures, and flash card sets published by West Academic. Series available include Acing, Concepts and Insights, Hornbooks, Nutshells, Black Letter Outlines, Legalines, Sum and Substance, Law Stories, and many more. Users may search or read in a browser view, or create an individual account that allows annotation, highlighting, and offline download.
  • Westlaw L P
    A comprehensive legal research system including cases, statutes, regulations, news, treatises and articles, and access to Practical Law Company transactional materials. Available by individual password to current Law School students, faculty and staff.
  • Wolters Kluwer Study Aid Library (now Aspen Learning Library) D
    Full-text access to nearly 200 study aids published by Aspen Publishing. Available series include Examples & Explanations, Glannon Guides, Emanuel Law Outlines, and more. Users may search or read online, or create an individual account that allows for offline reading and annotation.
  • World Trade Online D
    Online news and current awareness service for international trade topics, including access to weekly Inside U.S. Trade newsletter as well as breaking and archived news stories.
  • WorldTradeLaw.net L
    News and analysis for international trade, including access to Dispute Settlement Commentaries (DSC) for arbitration disputes, an index to WTO case law, and dispute settlement statistics. Users must be on a computer physically connected to the Law School network.
  • Zhongguo ren min da xue fu yin bao kan zi liao (中国人民大学复印报刊资料) D
    Full-text access to Chinese-language legal materials. Library subscribes to the modules Zhōngguó lìfǎ yánjiū (Research on Chinese Legislation) and Zhōngguó sīfǎ yánjiū (Chinese Judicial Studies).
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