Category: Library Resources

The W&L Law Library is pleased to announce University-wide access to over 120 full-text ebooks from leading academic publisher Edward Elgar, through the ElgarOnline platform.

The new collection includes electronic versions of 94 titles that the Law Library also owns in print, plus 30 additional open-access titles that are available to all internet users. Books and chapters are viewable online and downloadable in PDF.

The selection includes works on legal, public policy, political, business, and international affairs topics, with several highlights from the W&L Law faculty:

• Mark Drumbl, Research Handbook on Child Soldiers (ed. with Jastine C. Barrett, 2019)
• Lyman Johnson, Corporate Law and the History of Corporate Social Responsibility, in Research Handbook on the History of Corporate and Company Law (Harwell Wells ed., 2018)
• Christopher Seaman, Presumption of Validity, in Research Handbook on the Economics of Intellectual Property Law (Ben Depoorter et al. eds, 2019)

Access to ElgarOnline off campus requires log-in with valid WLU credentials. For an extensive list of ebook collections and other legal research platforms available from the W&L Law Library, see our Databases and Online Resources page.

The W&L Law Library is pleased to announce a new online research guide on World Correctional Institutions in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In April 2020, W&L Law professor Nora Demleitner asked the Law Library to begin tracking how COVID-19 is affecting correctional institutions around the world. With the UCLA Law Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project already compiling information on U.S. jails and prisons, Prof. Demleitner, a scholar of international and comparative law, sought to expand data collection to foreign countries.

Franklin Runge, Head of User Services at W&L Law Library, and his team of McThenia Research Assistants were up to the task. They developed a site on the LibGuide platform that is freely available to researchers worldwide.

“Our approach is to start small and slowly add countries in which RAs are fluent in the language and can find and comprehend the data,” says Runge. “The goal is to provide an ‘apples to apples’ comparison between countries. That said, some correctional regimes are radically different and data distribution is not uniform.”

As of October 2020, the guide has resource pages for eight countries: Belarus, Colombia, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, and Ukraine. The pages are updated as new data becomes available, and more countries may be added in the future.

The guide is the most recent in the Library’s collection of LibGuides on researching legal subjects, finding and using materials, and conducting legal research. If you have feedback or questions, or a suggestion for a new LibGuide that the Law Library might offer, please email us at LawRef@wlu.edu.

The W&L Law Library is pleased to announce a new online research guide on Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism Resources.

The guide is a collaboration between the Law Library and W&L University Library, and brings together resources on racism and violence against Black people in the United States to support curricular and extracurricular efforts to oppose racism. It includes information about and links to a diverse range of fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, biographies, poetry, films, and online resources, all specially selected for their value in the ongoing study and discussion of race and racism in America.

The guide on Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism Resources was created with the W&L community in mind. If you have any questions, suggestions, or other feedback on the guide, please email the Law Library at LawRef@wlu.edu or the University Library at library@wlu.edu.

The W&L Law Library is pleased to debut a new online research guide on Federal and State Docket Research.

The guide is the most recent in the Library’s collection of LibGuides on researching legal subjects, finding and using materials, and conducting legal research. It highlights the best resources for court docket and records information, including subscription products like Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law, and HeinOnline, which W&L and other law schools provide for their students and faculty, as well as free resources available to anyone.

The Federal and State Docket Research guide was compiled by W&L Law Library Director and Professor of Practice Alex Zhang. If you have any feedback or questions about the guide, or a suggestion for a new LibGuide that our library might offer, please email us at LawRef@wlu.edu.

The 2019 Washington and Lee Law Journal Rankings are now available at go.wlu.edu/lawjournals.

Maintained by the W&L Law Library, the Rankings are a world-recognized resource for identifying and comparing law journals by subject, country of publication, or rank across several categories relevant to scholars and publishers.

Data for 2019 includes the top 400 U.S.-published law journals and the top 100 law journals published outside the United States, based on citation counts and publication statistics for a 2015-2019 survey period.

New Rankings are released annually based on data up through the preceding calendar year. Historical data from the 1996-2003 to 2014-2018 survey periods remains accessible on the site for reference and comparison.

For more information about W&L Law Journal Rankings, please visit the the How to Use and Methodology pages of the site. Questions and comments are welcome at LawJournalRankings@wlu.edu.