Category: Databases

In July, the California Legislative Information site announced that their online versions of California legal information would be authenticated for the California Constitution, California statutes, and California Codes.

See: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

Journal editors: note Bluebook Rule 18.2., which (in the 20th edition) addresses states’ ongoing evolution toward providing (free) statutes online, in various flavors of “authenticated” and “official.”  Also note that the Law Library continues to collect and update (expensive) commercial versions of annotated California statutes by Lexis (Deering’s) and West.

Interested in the topic of California legislative information online? There’s a long Q&A (which they call a FAQ, and which is in PDF format) about Electronic Legal Materials Authentication and Preservation, linked from the California Legislative Information FAQ at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/home.xhtml

Journal editors: take note! This archive of scanned legal sources has been updated. You’ll find faster, easier access to its most popular content, like legal journal articles and US primary law resources.

To get directly into HeinOnline:

1. Make sure you’re on the UCI network.
2. From heinonline.org, click the “LOG IN” button, and it’ll bring you to the refreshed home page.

One especially nice change is the more obvious option to search by citation, right at the top of the screen:

Scanned California legislative information, including journals and session laws, is now much easier to find. Some law students might recall a difficult-to-navigate site—one that didn’t work at all in some browsers. But that’s all in the past, thanks to the updated site for The California Assembly’s Office of the Chief Clerk!

See: clerk.assembly.ca.gov/archive-list
For access to:
Chaptered bills 1850 – 2008
Assembly journals 1849 – 2010
Legislative histories (bill actions and dates) 1881 – 2010

Interested in more resources for California legislative history? Check the State Law section in our Guide to Legislative History.

Practising Law Institute Discover PLUS (PLI) provides access to Treatises, Answer Books, Forms for standard US practice, Course Handbooks, and Transcripts.

The Transcripts from the PLI seminars are awesome!  They offer an inside view into how practitioners work with and advise clients.  The Transcripts are especially helpful for trying to understand an evolving area of law.

PLI materials cover a range of practice areas, including Bankruptcy, Children’s Law, Corporate & Securities, Environmental, Municipal Law, and Tax.

This librarian has used PLI to guide faculty and students in a range of clinical and scholarly work.  It is uniquely helpful, for example, in learning how to customize derivatives contracts, manage IP assets, and secure a temporary restraining order in a domestic dispute.

For help using PLI, you can always stop by the Law Library Reference Office, or call us at 949.824.6746.  And, check out these PLI tutorials available on YouTube.

TradeLawGuide and WorldTradeLaw are two new options at the Law Library for doing research into WTO cases, legal instruments, and related legal content.

Trade Law Guide covers WTO law, including WTO legal agreements and instruments, negotiating history, precursor agreements, all related WTO and pre-WTO case law, dispute documents and other related content. Citators provide pinpoint references to case law substantively citing WTO and pre-WTO provisions, to case law substantively citing other case law, and to minutes of the Dispute Settlement Body commenting on disputes and associated case law. Also includes summaries and commentaries on case law.

Restricted to UCI. tradelawguide.com

WorldTradeLaw.net includes a free resource library of current trade news and resources, plus the DSC Service, which provides summary and analysis of all WTO reports and arbitrations; a current keyword index; a database of dispute settlement tables and statistics; and a user-friendly search tool for WTO cases, legal texts, and other documents.

Restricted to UCI Law. worldtradelaw.net

The Recorder provides daily news about the California legal world, as well as judicial profiles of state judges from counties all over California.

The Recorder is one of ALM’s legal publications. Email updates are available.

More information about The Recorder is in Encore. Direct access is at www.therecorder.com.

Please note:

• This site is restricted to UCI Law. Law students: see the VPN information in Technical Resources from UCI Law IT Services.
• If you can’t get to this site, try another browser. And please let us know.