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Law Library


Legal History: Books & Journals

A very brief introduction to Anglo-American legal history resources.

Locating Books

The Law Library’s books and treatises relating to Anglo-American legal history are located in various places in the library. A bulk of the resources can be found on Ground floor in the KD 500 to 700 range. Use InfoHawk, the Law Library's online catalog, to search for legal history related materials (see tutorial below).

Helpful overviews on Anglo-American legal history include:

Locating General Journal Articles

Law journal articles may be found using an index to legal periodical literature. Three of the most widely used law journal indexes are the Index to Legal Periodicals, the Legal Scholarship Network, and LegalTrac. Each database provides multiple fields to search, including title, author, subject and keyword.

Once you have identified potentially relevant articles, use the print journal, Hein Online, JSTOR or another full-text database to retrieve the article(s). HeinOnline and JSTOR provide access to legal and non-legal journal literature, respectively.  Both provide .PDF versions of articles, as well as search functionality.  They are particularly useful for retrieving items with specific citations.

Locating Journal Articles

Key legal history journals include:

Searching InfoHawk+

You can use InfoHawk+, the University of Iowa's discovery tool, to search for relevant materials. For help using InfoHawk+ or locating items in the Law Library or other University of Iowa Libraries, try any of these resources: