Some of the most difficult and labor-intensive research is legal and policy research. This guide is designed to help you by making the research easier and hopefully interesting and fun! Use the links below to navigate this page and focus on different types of legal and policy research!
The first step in doing this kind of research is to make sure you know if the policy or law is at the Federal (national) or state level. After figuring that out, you can choose a section below.
If you want to find:
Guide to Law Online
Published by the Library of Congress, this guide includes selected links to useful and reliable Web sites for state, national and international legal information. Whereever possible, the Library of Congress has tried to include sites with the full text of laws, regulations and court decisions.
Thomas
This is a publicly available database from the Library of Congress. It allows you to search for bills and other legislative information such as committee reports, treaties, the congressional record and public laws. You need to search by the congress number. The default is for the current congress. If you don't know which congress coresponded to the year you are looking up, click on the "Search Bills and Resolutions" link and it will tell you. Thomas also allows for browsing and keyword searches. Thomas also provides good HELP for searching the database.
Office of the Federal Register (OFR)
In collaboration with the U.S. Government Printing Office, the OFR's job is to disseminate official text of Federal laws; Presidential documents; administrative regulations and notices; and descriptions of Federal organizations, programs and activities. There are links to the full text of the sources listed including the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)and the Federal Register (which is updated daily!).
FindLaw - Federal
This site is so awesome. It is meant for lawyers, but those doing legal research are eternally grateful for it. In this specific section for Federal government, it provides links to the U.S.Code, the Constitution, CFR, Supreme Court Opinions and so much more!
California Bills
The official site to search for full text of bills, resolutions, and constitutional amendments, and their status, history, votes, analyses, and veto messages. If you don't know the bill, there is an index that lists all bills introduced in the Assembly and Senate!
FindLaw - California
This amazing site has everything you need in one place. It has links to the California Code, the Statutes, Municipal codes (broken down by city!), even a site for all official state forms!
California Ballot Propositions
From the Los Angeles County Law Library, this is all of the California ballot propositions dating back to 1884. Not only does the site give you the text of the proposition, but it also gives you the pro and con arguments, and much more!
California Ballot Pamphlets Online
This site is a smaller piece of the whole Elections & Voter Information section from the California Secretary of State's official site. There is a wealth of information on all things related to elections and voter information.
National Center for State Courts
This page provides judicial branch links for each state, focusing on the administrative office of the courts, the court of last resort, any intermediate appellate courts, and each trial court level.
Academic Search Complete. Use this to search for news and magazine articles on bills, laws, and court cases. It is better for finding federal laws and court cases, but does include articles on California policies and laws. To access the articles found, read "How to get an article".
California Journal. Ref JK 8701 C33 for the print version or online in Lexis Nexis Academic. This magazine contains articles on major California political issues, especially proposition and initiatives.
California Policy Review. An online journal published by SPHERE Institute and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, each issues deals with a single subject of social policy and growth or employment policy. It distills key research and gives trade-offs among policy options
CQ Public Affairs Collection Use this to find articles, documents, court cases, and laws at the federal level. The subjects include Advocacy and Public Service, Education, Energy, the Environment, Health, and Transportation, etc. Use CQ Weeklyto find more on legislative policy by bill or law number.
Newspaper Abstracts. Use this to search for news on policies, advocacy or bills by associations or legislators.
Social Work Abstracts A print index that is the foundation for literature in social work & social welfare. Articles are grouped by category & indexed by both author & subject. See the guide to how to use Social Work Abstracts for more information. To access the articles found, read "How to get an article".
Public Policy (PAIS). Search for news, articles, or web sites on policies or laws from both California and the federal government. To access the articles found, read "How to get an article".
Criminal Justice Abstracts. Search for articles on law and policy in criminology, its' related disciplines, including abuse, welfare, etc. To access the articles found, read "How to get an article".
Lexis Nexis Academic. Search for articles from legal journals in both federal and state legislation, laws, court cases and regulations. Choose legal research from the left-hand column to get the best articles. Social Sciences Abstracts. Search for articles on policy or crime related issues. To access the articles found, read "How to get an article".
Federal and State Adoption Law Provides an overview of adoption law and links to relevant federal and state laws, court decisions, regulations and other key adoption web sites.
FirstGov.gov Official website for searching the United States Government information.
Google.com/unclesam Search for information only on government webpages, both state & federal, with this subset of Google.
LA County Online Links to procedural information if working with Los Angeles County.
Public Technology Links A "portal" to government web sites.
Social Work Speaks A book that provides policy statements adopted by the Delegate Assembly, the key policy making-body of the National Association of Social Workers.
Sphere Institute Publications Reports for policy makers concerned with welfare, health, education, & labor programs.
Student's Guide to Landmark Congressional Laws. This series of books provide not only the text of legislation but also background & context for such laws as relating to youth, welfare measures and first amendment rights.
U.S. State & Local Employees. This site is for finding with federal government agency dealing with public safety and various other laws.
California Senate Health & Human Services Committee Text of hearings & summaries of bills heard by this committee during the current legislative year.
California Research Bureau Reports provides reports by nonpartisan research, to provide policy assistance for the Governor & the legislature of California.
EPI Issues Guides by Economic Policy Institute has links to statistics, opinions and other information on topics like living wage, offshoring jobs, family budgets, welfare to name a few.
Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. This site contains policy briefs, mainly on social services in Illinois but also has working papers that provide issues and policy and how it is working.
Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty from the Weingart Center in LA has links to reports that influence policy dealing with homeless, poverty, housing and food insecurity.
Institute for Women's Policy Research from IWPR and Georgetown University links to reports and book you can purchase dealing with policy issues of importance to women and their families for example employment, earnings, and proverty.
National Issues Forums is a nonpartisan, nationwide network of locally sponsored public forums for the consideration of public policy issues. It has talks about issues of interest to social work, like children, civil rights, government, etc. There are also timely reports on topics like racial and ethnic tension.
Office of Child Support Enforcement is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They maintain a policy page of bills in congress that deal with child support. There is also a State Links at the top of the page allowing you to see state initatives on child support issues.
Poly-Cy Public Policy and Policy Issues Area is by the Faculty at West Virginia University. Page down to see a very large list links to associations interested in specific policy areas. These areas include children's issues, family values, abortion rights, etc.
Public Policy Institute of California is a nonpartisan, California based research on economics, social, and political issues of California. Use the publications or policy areas for studies and reports.
StateLine is a news service that scans state newspapers for policy news and headlines. It can be search by state or issues like welfare and social policy, health care or crime and courts to name a few.
Urban Institute: A Nonpartisan Economic & Social Policy Research Organization Reports for policy makers concerned with homelessness, medicare, welfare reform, etc.
California Department of Social Services Manual of Policies & Procedures. A guide of laws and regulations for social workers who deal with the California Department of Social Services.
Encyclopedia of American Public Policy by Byron M. Jackson. This book provides entries on major policy issues but contains no reference to the law, just the issues.
Failed Century of the Child by Judith Sealander. This book provides the history of various welfare policies and programs dealing with Children.
Social Experimentation and Public Policymaking by David Greenberg This book provides 5 case studies (two in health care and three in income security) on how experiment worked and how the policy-making was created.
Student's Guide to Landmark Congressional Laws. This series of books provide not only the text of legislation but also background & context for such laws as relating to youth, welfare measures and first amendment rights.
Public Policy Making: Process and Principles by Larry N. Gerston. This book explains the the policy making process. There are chapters on implementation of policy, evaluation of policy and the public agenda. Each chapter has lengthy references for more information.
Introduction to basic legal citation (LII) by Peter W. Martin is a real legal poverty for working with understanding how to cite regulations, laws, and cases.
UncleSam by Government Printing Office (GPO) this helps in citing federal government information, whether electronic or in paper.
California Style Manual (4th edition) by Edward W. Jessen. In paper at the library, Ref. KFC 75 .F67 2000. This title is specific to citing California legal materials.
Using the California Style Manual and the Bluebook: A Practitioner's Guide by Susan Heinrich-Wells. In paper at the library, Ref. KFC 75 .H45 2000. This title helps explain how to cite california legal materials.
Content maintained by Carol Perruso, Social Work Librarian
