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Locating International and Foreign Law Journal Articles: Law Journal Indexes

Describes sources and methods for locating journal articles on foreign and international law subjects.

Getting Started

To find all the articles relevant to your research topic, use one or more of the journal indexes described below. You should not rely solely on a full text database, such as Lexis and Westlaw, to find articles, because full text databases inevitably contain only a selection of articles that might be relevant to your topic. Although they only provide citations, periodical indexes cover the breadth of journals in a given field. Moreover, by combining keyword and subject searching, you will be able to retrieve a comprehensive and precise list of relevant articles.

Described below are some of the major periodical indexes.  The first column focuses on law-specific indexes.  The middle column is for indexes with strong legal implications. The third column is for more general periodical indexes, which may contain legal information. Many of them provide complete or substantial full-text coverage of the titles they index. This is just a selection, and researchers should browse the Jerome Hall Law Library's list of resources for periodicals and the Wells Library List of Resources to find other indexes that might be relevant to their research.

Index to Legal Periodicals

The Index to Legal Periodicals indexes law journal articles from 1981 onward. It indexes more than 820 journals, including virtually all American law school journals, which contain many articles on foreign and international topics, as well as some academic journals from other English-language countries. It also provides access to the  Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective, which indexes law journal literature, 1908-1981. Although the Index to Legal Periodicals is primarily an index, some indexed articles are available in full-text.

Legal Journals Index

Legal Journals Index indexes approximately 485 English-language journals published in Great Britain and Europe, from 1986 onward. The Legal Journals Index is available on Westlaw.

Szladits' Bibliography on Foreign and Comparative Law

Szladits' Bibliography on Foreign and Comparative Law (Indexes K38 .S9) is an annotated index of articles in English on legal topics from 1790 onward. Originally it indexed articles and books dealing with non-common law legal systems and subjects bearing upon comparative law. In 1984 the index expanded its coverage to common law jurisdictions as well. Since 1990 the index has covered books but not articles.

Lexis and Westlaw

Lexis and Westlaw both have large databases of law review articles available in full-text. However, coverage is limited, both as to how many law reviews are included and as to dates of coverage. Periodical indexes provide a much more comprehensive overview of avaliable literature, but Lexis and Westlaw remain a good source of for the full text of many articles once they have been identified through an index search.

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals indexes more than 500 law journals from countries around the world. It provides in-depth coverage of public and private international law, comparative and foreign law, and the law of all jurisdictions. The index is multi-lingual, but it is possible to search in English using English-language subject headings. The online index covers 1985 onward, but there are also electronic versions of the print index going back to 1960 for those wishing to do more comprehensive research.

HeinOnline

The HeinOnline Law Journal Library is the most comprehensive full-text database of law review articles in English. It contains articles from more than 2,000 law and law-related periodicals. Coverage is from the first issue published for all periodicals and goes through the most-currently published issues allowed, based on contracts with publishers.

The Law Journal Library also has a search interface that allows the researcher to use it as an index to locate articles. The search syntax is described here. It is possible to do keyword searching of the title, author, and subject fields and to narrow by date.

PAIS International

PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) indexes materials related to public policy and social issues, including the fields of political science, government, international relations, economics, finance, law, environment, demography, sociology and business. It covers journal articles, books, government documents, pamphlets and the reports of public and private bodies. More than 1,100 journals and 8,000 monographs are indexed and abstracted each year. PAIS is international in scope and indexes publications in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

International Political Science Abstracts

International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA), produced by the International Political Science Association, includes current indexing and abstracts of the world's leading journals in political science. This database contains over 110,000 records from nearly 900 journals published from 1989 to the present.

Peace Research Abstracts

Peace Research Abstracts Journal (1964 -) is issued 6 times annually and contains summaries of the most vital literature published worldwide on conflict and its resolution. It includes both author and subject indexes. Subject areas include: Domestic Law, International Conflict, population and migration, military policy and organizations, and world economy and trade.

Proquest Social Sciences

ProQuest Social Sciences provides unified searching of 21 ProQuest social science databases, including EconLit (1969 -), International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (1951 -), ProQuest Criminal Justice‎ (1981 - ), ProQuest Political Science‎ (1985 - ), Sociological Abstracts‎ (1952 - ), and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts‎ (1975 - ).

JSTOR

JSTOR provides full-text access to hundreds of important journal titles in more than 30 arts, humanities, and social science disciplines, including ecology, economics, education, finance, history, mathematics, political science, and population studies. These scholarly journals can be browsed online and searched, and the page images can be printed for those available in full-text. Current content is available for only some of the journals. All journals in JSTOR start with the first volume. Many include content up to a "moving wall" of 3-5 years ago, although some journals have a fixed ending date for their content in JSTOR.

Academic Search Premier

Academic Search is a multi-disciplinary index providing full text coverage of more than 3,700 peer reviewed journals, as well as many newspapers and magazines. Coverage includes the social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.

ABI/INFORM Complete

ABI/INFORM Complete covers over 2,890 publication titles, with more than 1,920 available in full text. International in scope, this database offers articles on the latest business and financial information, management techniques, business trends, management practice and theory, corporate strategy and tactics, and the competition environment. The database features thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals such as the Economist, country-and industry-focused reports, and downloadable data. coverage is from 1991 onward.

Web of Science

Web of Science indexes scholarly journal literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Searching is available by cited reference, author, topic, publication name, and more. Results can be analyzed by document type, institution name, source title, and subject area. Web of Science includes a Core Collection of databases, comprising the following: Science Citation Index Expanded (1900-present), Social Sciences Citation Index (1900-present), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present), Conference Proceedings Citation Index (1990-Present), Book Citation Index (2005-present), Index Chemicus (1993-Present), Current Chemical Reactions (1986-Present)

Project Muse

Project MUSE provides the full text of nearly 250 quality journal titles from 40 scholarly publishers covering the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.

Finding the Full Text

Once you have article citations from one or more of the law journal indexes, search IUCAT by journal title to determine whether the full text is available, either in print or in electronic format. Many articles will be available in PDF in HeinOnline's Law Journal Library, which provides digital access to law journals going back in each case to volume one.

Lexis and Westlaw are also a good source for the full text of many law review articles.

If IU does not provide access to the journal you need, you can fill out an interlibrary loan request using the citation information. Our Circulation Department will find a copy of the article and deliver it to you in most cases as an email attachment.