Find Policies and Legal Research: Secondary Legal Materials

Secondary legal materials consist of law reviews, legal encyclopedias, treatises, and the like. Secondary legal materials essentially are anything that provides information about, analyzes, or critiques policy. Secondary materials are distinguished from primary legal sources, which denote official policy documents.

Nexis Uni provides access to both primary and secondary legal materials. Gale OneFile: LegalTrac, on the other hand, contains only secondary materials. There are several ways to search for secondary legal resources in these databases. Please review the options below.

1. On the Library's homepage, click on Databases A-Z button.
2. Click on the letter N to view our databases starting with N.
3. Click on Nexis Uni from the list of databases.
   
   Note: You may be asked to log in using your Walden username and password.
    
4. On the Nexis Uni homepage, enter your search terms (e.g. "public spending") into the main search box and click on the All Nexis Uni drop-down menu to the left of the search box.
5. In the Narrow By box, select Law Reviews and Journals from the Content Collection tab.
   
   
    
6. Click the magnifying glass icon to Search.

1. On the Library's homepage, click on Databases A-Z button.
2. Click on the letter N to view our databases starting with N.
3. Click on Nexis Uni from the list of databases.
   
   Note: You may be asked to log in using your Walden username and password.
    
4. From the Nexis Uni homepage, select Law Reviews in the Guided Search section.
   
   
    
5. Enter one or more search terms into the Search in all Law Reviews for box. You can also limit the date range, if necessary, using the ...from how long ago box. 
   
   
    
6. Click Search.

1. On the Library's homepage, click on Databases A-Z button.
2. Click on the letter L to view our databases starting with L.
3. Click on Gale OneFile: LegalTrac from the list of databases.
   Note: You may be asked to log in using your Walden username and password.
4. On the Gale OneFile: LegalTrac homepage, click on Advanced in the top right corner.
   
   
    
5. On the Advanced Search screen, enter your keywords (e.g. "animal rights", policies, laws, etc.) into the search boxes. Remember to limit each search box to one concept of your topic. For example, if you are interested in animal rights policies, you could use the following search:
   
   

   First search box: animal rights

   
   

   Second search box: policies OR laws OR statutes OR regulations

   
   

   Using OR between related search terms tells the database to search for any of these terms.  

6. In the More Options section, you can limit to full text and peer reviewed materials by clicking the Full-Text Documents and Peer-Reviewed Journals boxes.
   
   
    
7. Click Search. On the results page, you can further narrow your search using the tools on the right hand side of the screen. These tools These tools include Content Type, Publication Date, Subjects, Document Type, and Publication Title. 
   
   

1.  On the Library's homepage, click on Databases A-Z button.
2. Click on the letter L to view our databases starting with L.
3. Click on Gale OneFile: LegalTrac from the list of databases.
   Note: You may be asked to log in using your Walden username and password.
4. On the Gale OneFile: LegalTrac homepage, click on Advanced in the top right corner.
5. On the Advanced Search page in Gale OneFile: LegalTrac, click the Subject Guide Search tab.
   
   
6. Enter a search term (e.g. "animal rights") into the search box. In the More Options section, you can limit to full text and peer reviewed materials by clicking the Full-Text Documents and Peer-Reviewed Journals boxes. Click Search to run the search.
   
   
7. Now you will see all relevant Gale OneFile: LegalTrac subjects for your topic listed under Subject Terms. Click Subdivisions or Related subjects to view more options. Click on one of the hyperlinked subjects to return all results matching that subject.