See also: University Libraries, Research Links, Research Guides
Please note that off-campus use for many of these resources requires that you enter your GMU email username and password. Some databases, such as LexisNexis & Westlaw, are available to GMU Law School students, faculty and staff only.
The Law Library shares a catalog with the other GMU libraries as well as access to hundreds of electronic journals, indexes, and databases.
Shortcuts to Frequently Used Databases
Below is a selective list of law-related databases and materials with brief descriptions of the content. If you would like to browse or search the complete list of databases offered through the university libraries, see the search tools below.
Provided by the GMU Law Library; access may be limited to GMU Law School students, faculty, and staff.
Provided by VIVA. 
Restricted access: Off-Campus use requires GMU e-mail username and password.Note about restricted access: Many of these databases are governed by license agreements which limit use to the George Mason University Community of students, faculty, staff, and on-site users of George Mason University Libraries facilities. Each user has the responsibility of using these resources only for individual, educational and non-commercial purposes. The systematic downloading, distribution, or permanent retention of significant portions of these databases may be a violation of said licenses or copyright law. Particular resources may have additional requirements for access or restrictions on use.
For questions, see the Law Library Reference Office, Room 141.
(BePress). This series began publication in late 2000 and includes full-text journals in law, economics, political science, health and medicine, and science and technology. Legal titles include Global Jurist and Issues in Legal Scholarship. This publisher also provides access to working papers, preprints, and newsletters. Provides access to Dockets, Company/Market Info, News, Legislative Watch, Regulatory Watch, DealMaker and Bloomberg Law Reports. For User Name and Password see the Reference Office. BNA databases cover a wide range of legal subjects, including: business law, criminal law, environmental law, labor law, intellectual property, professional ethics, and the U.S. Supreme Court. The Law Library subscribes to all BNA databases, many of which provide daily or weekly email alerts. View a list of all available databases. A collection of over one hundred interactive, computer-based lessons designed to augment traditional law school instruction. Access is limited to GMU Law School students, faculty and staff. To obtain the password to download CALI lessons, contact the Law Library Reference Office, Room 141. Contains tax news as well as federal and state tax information. Included are tax codes, regulations, court cases, rulings, legislative documents, treaties, IRS publications, as well as CCH explanations and analyses.
Note: You will be required to register in order to access the site. Contains the full text of the constitutions of 187 countries in English. To access, go to the Oceana site and click on the link on the left: "Connect via IP Access." Use from off-campus is available to GMU Law School students, faculty and staff only and requires that the user "Login Using Password." Please see the Reference Office for username and password. 1991-present. Offers in-depth analysis of major issues in the news. 1969-present. Provides summaries and analysis of more than four thousand major Supreme Court decisions. Includes biographies of the justices, analysis and statistics on the justices' voting records and opinion alignments, and institutional history. 1983-present. Provides comprehensive coverage of the U.S. Congress, including bill status, votes, and Committee and Floor action. 1473-1700. This collection contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War. Abstracts, 1969-present, Updated monthly. Indexes and abstracts 400 journals as well as working papers, dissertations and books. Produced by the Journal of Economic Literature. [FirstSearch] 1843-2006. The Economist Historical Archive is a searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2006. Full-color images, multiple search indexes, exportable financial tables and a gallery of front covers highlight a key topic of each week, all combine to offer a primary source of research covering the 19th and 20th centuries. 1701-1800. A digital collection of over 9,000 legal treatises published in the British Empire and covering a critical era in the development of Anglo-American law and legal practice. British common law, which served as the underlying basis for the laws of the British Colonies in the Americas and elsewhere, was undergoing a crucial transformation. Reflecting this change were the many works published that summarized the laws, explained the court system, dramatized past and pending cases, guided newly minted as well as old and wizened attorneys, and theorized and commented on the application of legal standards. Over 8,000 sources (coverage varies). Delivers articles from more than 4,000 Reuters and Dow Jones journalists worldwide - just minutes after the news appears in real-time services. Factiva provides access to more than 900 non-English sources. (Note: This service replaces Dow Jones Interactive) Online guide to current codes and legislation in 178 foreign jurisdictions. For each country there is a brief introduction to the legal system and legal history, a list of codifications and other legal documents, followed by a subject listing of sources of law. The guide identifies available English translations and is updated frequently. To access, click on Subscriber Login. Gartner is a daily resource for news and in-depth analysis on virtually all aspects of technology, including security solutions, storage, infrastructure support, mobile and wireless communications, IT management, network services, and regulatory compliance. Media featured on the site include Webcasts, podcasts, and blogs.
A constantly growing collection of legal periodicals that currently includes over 1600 full-text journals. Also includes the following collections: ALI Library, Bar Journals, CFR, English Reports, Federal Register, Foreign & International Law Resources, Intellectual Property Law Collection, Israel Law Reports, Legal Classics (more than 2500 legal treatises), National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, National Moot Court Competition, Philip C. Jessup Library, Selden Society Publications, State Session Laws, Treaties and Agreements, U.S. Attorney General Opinions, U.S. Congressional Documents, U.S. Federal Agency decisions, U.S. Federal Legislative Histories, Virginia Supreme Court Briefs and the United Nations Law Collection. 1985-. Provides access to legal literature worldwide, covering all forms of foreign (non-Anglo-American) law. This includes comparative law and legal systems, such as Islamic law; socialist law; public and private international law; and transnational commercial law. The types of documents covered include journal articles, congress reports, essay collections, yearbooks, and book reviews. Produced at the Berkeley Law Library, University of California Berkeley for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). 1981 - present. An international index that covers 850 legal journals, law reviews, yearbooks, institutes, bar association publications, university publications, and government publications from 1981 to the present. Also includes coverage of 1,400 monographs per year. Provides full-text for more than 400 periodicals as far back as 1994.
1908 - 1981. Indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand from 1908 to 1981. coverage varies. The complete text (full backruns) of core scholarly journals in Anthropology, Asian Studies, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, History, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies and Sociology. This service, which is updated daily, is a personnel contact database of the institutional leadership of the United States. It integrates 14 Yellow Book directories and enables subscribers to search for information on 400,000 individuals at 40,000 leading U.S. government, business, professional, and nonprofit organizations. 1965-present. Legal Collection from EBSCO is a collection of scholarly publications including law journals, documents, and case studies, including over 250 full-text journals. This database provides information centered on the discipline of law and legal topics such as criminal justice, international law, federal law, organized crime, and ethics. Indexing and abstracts are provided for all journals in the collection. A full-text online legal research system available to GMU Law School students, faculty and staff for educational research purposes. Includes the full text of judicial opinions, statutory material, administrative regulations and decisions, and other legal and nonlegal resource materials. For more information, contact the Law Library Reference Office, Room 141. Online access to the full text of the Law Library Microform Consortium collection of legal and government documents material. Collection includes historical U.S. primary documents from the executive, judicial and legislative branches. In addition there are selected Canadian legal materials. The historical collection is constantly growing. 1800-1926. Provides digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926. Full-text searching on more than 10 million pages provides researchers access to legal history. Series I: 1620-1926; Series II: 1763–1970. Series I contains a fully searchable digital archive of the published records of the American colonies, documents published by state constitutional conventions, state codes, city charters, law dictionaries, digests and more. The second series consists of United States state and territorial codes, municipal codes, and constitutional convention and compilations that researchers will find invaluable for tracing major legal topics across all states and territories. 1600-1926. This fully searchable digital collection is comprised primarily of holdings of the Harvard and Yale law libraries and includes unofficially published accounts of trials; official trial documents, briefs and arguments; and official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings and arbitrations. The overall archive — comprising more than 10,000 titles — also contains unique documents from the Library of the Bar of the City of New York. This online Encyclopedia is written by over 650 scholars and practitioners from around the world and edited by a team from the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. Includes more than 700 topics and is updated quarterly. In addition to extensive search functionality and cross references to other Encyclopedia entries, users have access to the Oxford Law Citator which offers easy access linking to related content available in all new Oxford online legal services Provides users with seamless capabilities for finding, filtering and organizing information about companies and industries. Comprehensive coverage is provided for all companies that are actively traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ--over 6,200 in total, with enhanced product-level detail for 3,700 companies in the Healthcare, Technology, Media and Finance sectors. Offers an integrated solution for private and public company information covering 10,000 public companies and their SEC filings and current and historical annual reports. Provides up to 4 years of key financial information on over 400,000 global private companies with integrated screening and searching for public and private companies. Full company reports in printable PDF file format and ability to view competitors on both private and public companies. ORIL integrates important decisions on public international law from international courts and tribunals, domestic courts and ad hoc tribunals. This service is a single point of reference for all international law jurisprudence, providing researchers access to the widest possible range of international law jurisprudence. Also includes access to Oxford Law Citator, a research tool which links related Oxford materials and provides additional information on all references within these materials. The Oxford Scholarship Online-Law Collection is a large portion of Oxford's legal treatise collection, including new titles from the series: Oxford Studies in European Law, Oxford Monographs in International Law, Oxford Monographs in Criminal Law and Justice, Clarendon Studies in Criminology, Oxford Monographs in Labour Law, Oxford Studies in Modern Legal History, Oxford Studies in International Economic Law, and the International Courts and Tribunals series, alongside many others.
[Formerly LexisNexis Congressional] Provides the full text of Congressional publications in searchable PDF format including Committee Prints (1830-present); Congressional Record (1789-1997); CRS Reports (1916-present); House and Senate Hearings (1824-present); House and Senate Documents and Reports (1817-present); Legislative Histories (1969-present); and the Serial Set (1789-2003). Full-text pdf of the Atlanta Constitution 1868-1945, Boston Globe 1872-1927, Chicago Tribune 1849-1987, Christian Science Monitor 1908-1997, Los Angeles Times 1881-1987, New York Times 1851-2007, Wall Street Journal 1889-1993 and Washington Post 1877-1994. A Federal legislative history service that will eventually provide approximately 18,000 legislative histories covering laws from 1929 to the present. The service includes bills (all versions), reports, documents, CRS reports, committee prints, speeches in the Congressional Record and presidential signing statements. The database is expected to be completed at the end of 2012.
Contains more than 4,500 titles - over 3,200 in full text - from 1971 forward, including newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals and trade publications. (Elsevier). Provides online access to over 600 journals published by Elsevier and its partners. Journals are available for most disciplines, including science, medicine, economics and the social sciences. Abstracts, 1980-present, over 2.8 million articles. A multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts for over 60% of the articles, covering the journal literature of the social sciences. [Web of Science - ISI] Access to state government information including state bills and laws, constitutions, proposed and enacted regulations, newspapers of record, articles about legislative issues affecting the states, and legislature membership. World’s largest collection of organized statistical data which offers interactive data visualization, including interactive maps, trends and rankings; the ability to compare data from different datasets and publishers; and instant access to more than 500 datasets. Options to export into MS Excel, XML, and PDF. Abstracts 1973 - present . Provides fast and easy access to statistical information produced by U.S. Federal agencies, States, private organizations, and major intergovernmental organizations. Includes the ability to search nearly a million tables, many are available as downloadable spreadsheets. Contains a substantial collection of primary tax materials, including tax legislation and IRS materials. In addition, Thomson Reuters Checkpoint provides full-text access to several journals from WG&L and Thomson Reuters, as well as current news about tax legislation and caselaw. Many GMU Law School faculty use TWEN (The West Education Network) to post class materials and to host web-based discussions in their classes. Access is limited to GMU Law School students, faculty and staff. For password information, contact the Reference Office, Room 141. 1832-1978. Features a fully searchable database of approximately 150,000 Supreme Court cases from the generation before the American Civil War to the decade of the Vietnam War and Watergate. Document types include Appellant's Brief, Appellee's Brief, Oral Transcript, Petition, Petition for Rehearing, Petition for Writ of Certiorari, among other sources Virginia Legal Forms contains several thousand legal forms, including business, personal, litigation and federal forms. VIVA is a consortium of state and private academic libraries in Virginia that provides online library resources to its students and faculty including access to almost 200 databases, 10,000 full-text journals and newspapers, and more than 750,000 additional full-text materials. A full-text online legal research system available to GMU Law School students, faculty and staff for educational research purposes. Includes the full text of judicial opinions, statutory material, administrative regulations and decisions, and other legal and nonlegal resource materials. For more information, contact the Law Library Reference Office, Room 141. Records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Includes manuscripts written as early as the 12th century.