Research Guides and Instruction

Research Guides and Instruction

Research Guides

Environmental Law Research Sources
VLS's Environmental Law Research Sources links to carefully selected Internet resources that inform the practice of environmental law. It has been developed for law students and professionals and is continually expanding, linking to both broad (Environmental News, Law Journals, and Organizations, etc.) and specific (Climate Change, Energy, Land Use, Science Sources, etc.) web sites.

Federal Legislative History
Legislative History is made up of the documents preceding and surrounding the enactment of a law. These documents generally include bills, public laws, floor debates and committee hearings and reports and are often used to determine the precise meaning of a statute.

International Law Resources
VLS's International Law Research Sources links to carefully selected resources that inform the practice of Foreign and International law.

Regulations Research
The work of creating specific rules and regulations that enforce statutes is left to the appropriate federal agencies. The agencies interpret and apply their governing statutes to create detailed regulations, which give specific content to statutory intent and provide procedures for implementation and enforcement.

Research Instruction

Course-related Research Instruction: The reference services librarians are available to teach specialized research resources in all areas of law, from administrative law to water resources law. Any professor, whether or not a research project is assigned for the course, may take advantage of this service.

First-year Legal Research: The first-year research course is combined with legal writing in the first semester of the first year. Taught by the reference services librarians, this course offers an overview of the legal bibliography and hands-on experience working with the leading online and print research tools and resources.

LexisNexis and Westlaw Instruction: The vendors offer introductions to LexisNexis and Westlaw, the two major online databases for legal research, early in the first semester of law school; passwords are distributed during orientation. The vendors employ students who are available in the computer lab during the week, and the vendors' representatives make frequent trips to the law school to offer training sessions.

MELP Research Instruction: New MELP students receive legal research instruction during orientation from the environmental law librarian, Christine Ryan, and during the academic year in the legal research and writing course.

Request Instruction: Any student, professor, staff member, or group can request research instruction, in addition to the occasional research sessions we offer during the school year and summer. Please contact any librarian to request research instruction or to recommend a topic for a session offered to the VLS community as a whole.