This guide is designed to help you navigate Library-licensed and open access research sources beyond what you might easily find in UC Library Search.
If you are located on-campus, make sure that you are connected to the UCSD-Protected wifi.
If you are located off-campus, start by setting up VPN AnyConnect on your device.
The UC San Diego Health and Health Science VPN also provides off campus access to resources the Library provides. Instructions and assistance for UC San Diego Health and Health Science VPN users can be found in the Pulse intranet.
Just learning about a topic? Start with secondary sources like books or law review articles. Law review articles are the scholarly journal of the legal world and often contain citations to relevant cases and legislation on the topic at hand. Reading law review articles on your research topic can save you lots time.
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic), WestlawNext, and HeinOnline contain the full text of law review articles and other research tools including legal encyclopedias and other reference books. These databases also include the full text of federal and state case law (published court opinions), regulations, and statutes.
For lower-level court transcripts, you will generally need to contact the original court for availability and ordering instructions. (Expect to pay a fee.)
►Search tip: See newspapers/media coverage for additional information on cases that never made it to the appellate courts or were otherwise never published.
NOTE: Institution-wide access ends 6/30/25. Full text access to federal and state court cases, laws and regulations; law reviews, legal periodicals, and encyclopedias; European Union legal documents; and legal guides. Also includes some news sources.
Nexis Uni contains thousands of full-text sources including newspapers, news wires, television news transcripts, newsletters, magazines, and trade journals. Business sources include company information, industry news, and biographical information. Legal sources include law reviews, legal reference works, and federal and state caselaw (court decisions), statutes, and regulations. Also includes select international court opinions and municipal ordinances. Coverage dates vary. International and U.S. sources.
Full text of law reviews/legal periodicals plus primary sources such as the Code of Federal Regulations; Federal Register; Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS); Treaties and Agreements Library; United States Code; U.S. Attorney General Opinions; U.S. Congressional Documents; U.S. Federal Agency Documents, Decisions, and Appeals; U.S. Federal Legislative History Library; U.S. Statutes at Large; State Session Laws Library; State Statutes: A Historical Archive; Acts of the Parliament of Canada (Annual Statutes); World Constitutions Illustrated; World Treaty Library. Also includes special topics databases.
Includes a broad range of official and ephemeral information resources issued by federal agencies, individual officials and candidates, and other organizations from all branches of the U.S. Federal Government, and links that content to publicly accessible government documentation. Includes social media, official media releases, legislation, regulations, and a variety of government documents from Congress and the Executive branches. Textual data can be visualized in word clouds, tree maps, bubble graphs, and terms view graphs. Users who sign up for an account and agree to additional terms of service can download a small number of full documents; researchers and students with non-commercial, academic projects can apply with VoxGov for additional bulk data download credentials.
Legal Research in a Nutshell by 
