This research guide provides an overview of key resources for researching Canadian, United States, Australian and New Zealand laws affecting native peoples. It includes advice and hyperlinks to help you find primary legal authorities such as statutes, regulations, case law and treaties, as well as secondary sources such as Treatises (AKA scholarly books), legal encyclopedias, law reviews, news sources for current awareness, and more. This guide is not a comprehensive list of resources, but it provides you with a place to begin your research.
To get ideas for your topic, browse recent news from the countries of interest to you. Look for recent conferences held where scholars and practitioners discussed your area of interest. Examine recent issues of the journals to see what people have been writing about recently. Browse the table of contents of recently published books to see what topics are being discussed lately.
To ensure no one has written on your topic idea, run searches in Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline and the Legal Indexes in the Find Articles boxes, organized by country of interest.
To find evidence to support your arguments, use the guidance on finding secondary sources to see what evidence other scholars have used to support similar arguments and use the guidance on finding primary sources to find primary law that supports your arguments.
If you are a UC Law SF student researching and writing in this area, I highly encourage you to reach out to me, Dean Deane, (using the email link in the box to the left), or any of the reference librarians, for additional research guidance. (We can meet via chat, video conferencing or in person, whichever works for you). I would love to guide you on how to quickly and efficiently do research to choose a topic, to do research to make sure no one else has written on your chosen topic and to find the best sources of evidence to support your arguments in your paper. This may be law, facts, statistics or secondary sources from other academic fields.
If there are materials that you believe should be added to the guide, or if you find broken links or other problems with the guide, please let Dean Deane know using the email link in the box to the left.
