LibGuides: Law: Journals & Databases

Finding an article on a reading list

Try this first:

You can look up articles in Library Search, our resource discovery service.

Put the exact title of the article in inverted commas.

If we can provide an instant link you will see the journal article displayed - click Online Access or Fulltext available online to access the text.

Next steps:

If we cannot provide a quick article link or it fails, then search for the name of the whole Journal instead of the article title e.g. "Journal of Common Market Studies"

For print-only journals you will be shown the location and shelfmark, so that you can locate the volume on the shelf

For electronic journals, click to link to the full journal and then navigate to the year, volume and issue that you want to see your article: or there may be an option to search for the article title provided by the online journal portal in which case key in the article in that box.

Finding Legal Journals

Free Legal Journal Sources

LegalPeriodicals.org This link opens in a new window
Legalperiodicals.org contains an index of Irish Legal Periodicals from 1997 to date. Links are provided to articles available online with the consent of the copyright holder.
IRLII - Irish Legal Information Institute This link opens in a new window
IRLII is intended to complement, rather than compete with, BAILII. Apart from providing BAILLI with Irish content, IRLII also offers a number of unique services.

Locating Irish Legislation

To find high quality legal material, including law reports and academic journal articles you should search journals and databases.

BAILLI
The British and Irish Legal Information Institute provides access to primary and secondary legal materials such as British and Irish case law and legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission Reports and other international resources.
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BAILII is a non-profit making charitable trust which is building and operating an interactive database of full-text primary legal materials available without charge on the Web. The service is a major tool for legal research. The continued availability of this free service is of major important to the practice and teaching of law.
Irish Statute Book
Acts and statutory instruments since 1922.

Justis / vLex Justis This link opens in a new window
Full-text database of case law and legislation as well as a citator. v|lexJustis (formerly JustisOne) provides authoritative coverage of UK and Irish primary case law and specialist case law, UK statute law, and easily- searchable European case law and legislation.
Key features include full-text English Law Reports from 1865 and Irish Reports from 1919, and full-text Acts of Parliament for England, Wales and Scotland dating back to the Magna Carta (1235).

If you need help searching this database, there is alot of useful information on this link (IReL Resource)

Legal databases

Justis / vLex Justis This link opens in a new window
Full-text database of case law and legislation as well as a citator. v|lexJustis (formerly JustisOne) provides authoritative coverage of UK and Irish primary case law and specialist case law, UK statute law, and easily- searchable European case law and legislation.
Key features include full-text English Law Reports from 1865 and Irish Reports from 1919, and full-text Acts of Parliament for England, Wales and Scotland dating back to the Magna Carta (1235).

If you need help searching this database, there is alot of useful information on this link (IReL Resource)
Lexis+ This link opens in a new window
Lexis is a powerful online research tool offering a wealth of legal research and sources.It provides the fulltext of legislation, case law, reference books, indexes & articles from journals. (IReL Resource)

Alternative access to this new platform is also available via this URL
Westlaw ie This link opens in a new window
Access to Irish Legal Material, including ebooks, case reports, case digests, legal journals and unreported judgements. (IReL Resources).
Alternative access available via this link
Westlaw UK This link opens in a new window
Fulltext of legislation, case law, legal journal articles. (IReL Resource).

Alternative access available via this link select the option "access through academic institution", then select the "University of Limerick" from the dropdown list and you will then be prompted to log in with your UL email address and password.

Westlaw may also ask you to provide your name and email address a second time, to avail of personalisation features, for more information please check out Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement

The provider of Westlaw access has created guides covering alerts, annotations, cases,, folders, favourites & history, personalisation, EU, legislation, news, topics and how to get started

Historical and Retrospective Law

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Fulltext of journal articles, Legal Classics, American legislative sources and case law. (IReL Resource).
Making of Modern Law This link opens in a new window
Full-text collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century Anglo-American legal treatises. (IReL Resource).

Alternative access available via this link click on find your institution, search for the "University of Limerick" , then select UL when it appears on the list, you will be prompted to log in with your UL username and password.

Facsimile and textual editions of Nineteenth Century legal books

Academic databases indexing legal interest journal articles

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Search the world’s leading scholarly journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities and navigate the full citation network. Summaries of journal articles with some linked full text. (IReL Resource).

Alternative access available via this link
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With over 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers, Scopus offers researchers a quick, easy and comprehensive resource to support their research needs in the scientific, technical, medical, social sciences and arts & humanities fields

If you need access to your saved search history off campus, please use the alternative route to access scopus listed below

Alternative access available via this link click on sign in, then select "sign in via your institution", search for the University of Limerick, you will then be prompted to log in with your UL username and password. Elsevier may send you an email to confirm your identity.
Annual Reviews
Annual Reviews publishes reliable reviews of over 40 disciplines within the Biomedical, Life, Physical, and Social Sciences. Annual Reviews have one of the most cited resources in scientific literature. (IReL Resource)

Alternative access available via this link Select "Institutional sign in", select Institution location and then search for the University of Limerick, you will then be prompted to log in with your UL username and password
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full text of journal articles. (IReL Resource).

Alternative access available via this link select log in, then under "find my institution" search for the University of Limerick, select UL from the list and you will then be prompted to log in with your UL username and password.
LegalPeriodicals.org This link opens in a new window
Irish legal magazines and newspapers index from 1997 to date.

Legal Information Institutes

IRLII - Irish Legal Information Institute This link opens in a new window
IRLII (Irish Legal Information Initiative), hosted by UCC School of Law, is the Irish hub of the global Free Access to Law Movement (FALM). It provides information on Irish legislation, case law, and an Irish legal journals index.

Worldii - World Legal Information Institute
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A database of links to national case law and legislation across the world

Repositories with legal or criminological content

Research Repository (University of Limerick Institutional Repository) This link opens in a new window
Access digital archive collections, and published and unpublished works of faculty and researchers at the University of Limerick.
OpenAire This link opens in a new window
Gain access to records from open access sources such as ULIR (which has research of faculty and researchers at the University of Limerick). Provides open access sources across all disciplines..

Ask us

Journals

Scholarly journals have articles written by researchers who are considered experts in a field. These journals are also known as "peer-reviewed," "refereed" or "academic" journals. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is a scholarly journal.

Popular magazines have articles written by writers or journalists. Time or Newsweek are examples of popular journals.

Finding Caselaw

The library maintains a wide collection of Irish, UK, European and International legal reports in print and electronic form.

CASE TITLE AVAILABLE ON

Irish Reports Justis Lexis

Irish Law Reports Monthly Westlaw.IE

Irish Unreported Cases Courts Service, Justis, Lexis, IRLII

Law Reports, Appeals Cases, Chancery, Justis, WestlawUK, Nexis

Kings/ Queens Bench, Prob., Fam

European Court of Justice Justis, WestlawUK, Eur Lex

European Court of Human Rights HUDOC, Lexis

Law: Journals & Databases