When looking for legal materials, first determine the jurisdiction and branch of government. Who has jurisdiction (is it a Federal, state or local issue)? Then, decide if the answer can be found within a statute, court opinion (case) or regulation. Once you have determined the answers to these questions, you can look for the answer within the appropriate legal resource:
Primary Sources - the rules of law. Include the version of the Federal or state government's Constitution, statutes, court opinions (case law) or administrative regulations that those jurisdictions recognize as having what is known as "primary authority."
While there are a variety of types of laws that govern, there is a hierarchy to the U.S. legal system.
The legal pyramid is as follows:
I. Constitution
II. Statutes
III. Administrative Regulations (carry the same weight as statutes)
IV. Case law (court opinions)
Secondary Sources - these sources provide analysis and commentary about aforementioned primary sources. These are helpful in locating and explaining the law.
Specialized Databases available through NU Library. To see all NU Library Databases, go to the A-Z Database List.
Content: Multidisciplinary content in a number of different formats, from academic articles to magazines
Purpose: Provides users with a broad range of content about diverse topics in different source types
Special Features: Includes a visualization tool and browse-by-topic feature that aids in brainstorming topics, a Lexile feature that filters texts by difficulty, the ability to highlight and add notes to text, and a read-aloud feature.
Content: Traditional legal materials (reported cases, statutes, government regulations, academic law reviews, commercially produced law journals and magazines, and classic treatises), historical, governmental, and political documents, legislative debates, legislative and executive branch reports, world constitutions, international treaties, and reports and other documents of international organizations.
Purpose: Informs users about a broad range of legal and governmental topics.
Special Features: Users can narrow by topic and subject and may also search particular databases.
Content: Material from Federal, State, international, and private sources related to security policy, strategy, and management. The content is primarily current with some historical material.
Purpose: Informs users about current topics related to homeland security and national defense.
Special Features: Informs users about current topics related to homeland security and national defense
Content: Contains resources for research on national security. Topics include regional conflicts, civil liberties, criminal justice, disaster & recovery, public health threats, cyber security, risk management, bio-terrorism, and more.
Purpose: Provides users with information and resources relevant to many topics pertaining to international security and terrorism
Special Features: Includes a tool for discovering citing articles, a browsable index of subject terms, and text-to-speech feature for some articles.
Content: Database containing data and statistics on over 60,000 topics, including media, business, finance, politics, and much more.
Purpose: A key database for business and economics students.
Special Features: PDF/PNG downloadable content for easy insertion into papers or presentations, charts, graphs, reports, and dossiers.
To see all NU Library Databases, go to the A-Z Database List.
This link opens in a new windowContent: Ebooks with coverage across all academic disciplines. The collection offers a critical mass of more than 150,000 foundational scholarly ebooks with balanced quantity and quality to improve teaching, learning and research workflow and outcomes.
Purpose: Provides access to multidisciplinary ebooks for download or to be read online.
Special Features: Browse by subject option; highlight and take notes in text.
This link opens in a new windowContent: A multidisciplinary ebook collection downloadable for offline reading powered by EBSCO.
Purpose: Download or read ebooks online.
This link opens in a new windowContent: Books, chapters, and peer-reviewed content about a diverse range of topics.
Purpose: Users may access full text, and authoritative information about many topics.
Special Features: Users may explore topics and subjects.
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Content: Scholarly journals, e-books, videos and more.
Purpose: A key multidisciplinary database for most topics. It is one of the library’s main search engines and the most comprehensive single search.
Note: Certain library databases and publisher content are not searchable in NavigatorSearch, and individual databases may need to be searched to retrieve information due to unique content. NavigatorSearch can be found at https://resources.nu.edu.
This link opens in a new windowContent: Reference sources, primarily books but also videos and business cases.
Purpose: Use for finding reference sources like encyclopedias and handbooks that provide contextual or explanatory material.
Special Features: Includes Sage Navigator
Select titles providing background content available through NU Library.
Courts, Law, and Justice by 
Great American Court Cases Series by 
Encyclopedia of Religion and the Law in America by 
Supreme Decisions, Combined Volume by Dictionaries & Encyclopedias available through specialized legal resources.
Dictionaries & Encyclopedias databases and select titles available through NU Library.
This link opens in a new windowContent: A reference database useful for accessing scholarly definitions, background and contextual information. Subjects covered include art, biography, business, economics, education, history, literature, music, psychology, religion, and science and technology.
Purpose: An excellent starting point for brainstorming a research topic and building out your initial search terms list.
Special Features: Mindmap; related articles; image search
This link opens in a new windowContent: Reference sources, primarily books but also videos and business cases.
Purpose: Use for finding reference sources like encyclopedias and handbooks that provide contextual or explanatory material.
Special Features: Includes Sage Navigator
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This link opens in a new windowContent: Books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos on research methods and design.
Purpose: Use to learn more about qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research.
Special Features: Includes a methods map, project planner, and "which stats" test
Collins Dictionary of Law by 
Dictionary of Conflict Resolution by 
Dictionary of Law by 
Dictionary of Legal Terms by 
Gale Encyclopedia of Everyday Law by 
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law by 
Spanish Law Dictionary by 
Encyclopedia of Law and Society by Content: Repository of scholarly, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Covers science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Purpose: A single point of reference for finding high-quality open-access journals.
This link opens in a new windowContent: Repository of multi-disciplinary scholarly, open access, peer-reviewed books.
Purpose: A single point of reference for finding open access, scholarly books online.
Special Features: Researcher FAQ
Content: Open-access articles and book chapters covering arts, humanities, business, education, government, health, medicine, and psychology.
Purpose: Provides users with open-access content ranging from peer-reviewed literature to books.
Special Features: Features JSTOR Daily, which combines news trends with scholarly literature and includes links to open-access works.
This link opens in a new windowContent: Books in behavioral science, technology, education, and medicine.
Purpose: Informs readers about a wide range of topics from the social sciences to the hard sciences.
Special Features: Searchable by topic, such as autobiography or mathematics.
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Content: The most comprehensive video database covering more than 67,000 titles on anthropology, business, counseling, film health, history, music, and more.
Purpose: Curated for the educational experience of all types of library patrons.
Content: National University Library's collection of Films Media Group streaming videos.
Purpose: Access Films and videos from a wide range of academic disciplines
Special Features: Content ranges from major academic subjects to vocation and even life-skills categories
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowContent: Books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos on research methods and design.
Purpose: Use to learn more about qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research.
Special Features: Includes a methods map, project planner, and "which stats" test
