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Juris Masters Program Guide

A guide with materials on research for students in the Juris Masters program.

Research Help

The librarians are happy to meet with students to help with research for your paper or to help with spading assignments. The librarians use this Research Checklist PDF file when we meet with you about the research for your note, comment, or seminar paper. This is a helpful tool for you to use while researching your paper. We have also prepared a list of Digital Resources for Seminar Paper Research PDF file.

For more information on specific research topics such as Intellectual Property, Foreign and International Law, and Legislative History, consult the George Mason Law Library Research Guides.

If you have questions or to set up an appointment, email lawref@gmu.edu.

Periodicals

Lexis and Westlaw – Note that coverage on Lexis & Westlaw generally begins around 1980. Many law reviews are not included at all, and others have only selected coverage. Do not rely solely on Lexis/Westlaw for your preemption check!

HeinOnline - HeinOnline offers full-text, PDF versions of law reviews and journals going back to volume one for most American law reviews and journals. Use a field search in the Law Journal Library, and put all Boolean connectors in capital letters, e.g. AND.

Google Scholar - Searches the scholarly literature across many disciplines to help you find law and non-law articles. You can use the Library Links tool in the Settings menu to tell Google Scholar that you are affiliated with George Mason University. Then, articles retrieved by your search and available in one of library databases will be available to you after you sign in with your Mason credentials.

Other Periodical Indices – Indexes for periodicals covering many other areas of scholarship are available at the main Mason library. The most popular are: EconLit for economics articles; Business Source Complete for news and articles about business; Academic Search Complete as a catch-all for many subjects; and Factiva for newspapers. For others, browse the Mason Database Portal.

International and Foreign Law - Use the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals via HeinOnline and PAIS Index to search for foreign periodicals covering foreign and international law topics.