Legal Research

"Law Library of Congress Web Page Highlights"

Posted by Mark Giangrande: "I hadn't been to the web site for the Law Library of Congress in quite some time, but I found myself visiting yesterday looking for some primary constitutional law documents.  They were there, in a newly reorganized form that brought all of LOC's constitutional materials together in two places (linked from one to the other).  The pages focus on the text and analysis of the Constitution, and the application to various topics, such as interpretation, executive privilege, military tribunals, presidential powers, etc.  They include links to PDF pages from law reviews, legal magazines, and other references.  This was great for what I was seeking. 

As with any site with substantial resources, I took a short tour and found a few other items I didn't expect to find.  There is the Sonia Sotomayor page, with links to her writings, cases, her past two confirmation hearings, and web resources.  Under legislation I found links to three subject areas, census, freedom of information/privacy, and immigration.  The subsequent pages had links to the full text (PDF) of selected hearings.  The census hearings went as far back as 1908 (60th Congress); the FOIA hearings back to 1975 (94th Congress); and immigration hearings back to 1923 (68th Congress).  These are test products from the LOC/Google partnership to digitize the entire collection.  I note that the publication of older Congressional materials on Google Books still tends to be spotty.  Searching for in that database brought up an even older hearing from 1918 (digitized from Harvard), but those listed at the LLOC site didn't make it in the initial pages.  In fact, hearings from the 1980s still showed up as restricted items for some reason.  Anyone who hasn't visited the page in awhile are likely to be surprised at the depth of material that is available online, particularly with international materials.  These short paragraphs hardly scratch the surface for describing them."

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Law Librarian Blog, 10 June 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).