Feminist Jurisprudence Seminar

by Aris Woodham, Director of Web Services and Lecturer in Law, Washington University School of Law Library

A Research Guide for the Seminar in Feminist Jurisprudence

Introduction

Feminist theory in the area of law has been one of the most vibrant and controversial of all academic writing in recent years. The scholarship in this area has developed into a large body of literature which can defy organization in its wide-ranging scope and complexity. Constructing useful bibliographies is a particular challenge because feminist theory in law draws widely from feminist theory in other disciplines, literature, semiotics, sociology, political science, and history to name a few.   Furthermore, it intersects extensively with other types of critical theory, most notably that of critical race theory, and gay and lesbian legal studies.     As a result, this research guide will not attempt anything approaching a comprehensive bibliography of the literature available.  Instead, it will suggest conceptual and practical entry points into the existing body of literature with which the scholar can begin her/his research.  

A note about references:  I have organized suggested resources by their original media, that is texts originating on the Web are listed therein, texts originating in monograph form in print are listed under Books, and texts originating in serial publications in print are listed under Serials.   Please be aware that the many of the sources originating in one medium may also be available in some digital format, i.e. some monographs may be included in Westlaw’s texts and periodicals databases, and some law review articles are available full-text on the Web or in Lexis or Westlaw sources.   Thus the placement of a title beneath a certain category does not exclude the possibility of locating it in another medium.   When sources are available on the Web, either from a free site, or a commercial data service like Lexis/Westlaw, I have tried to include a link for easy access. On a  technical note, some of the links in this research guide will only be active when launched from a computer within the Washington University Law School or Campus. Others, such as those related to the Online Catalog, will be globally available.

Locating Resources

Introduction:

Scholarly resources tend to fall into general categories which can be useful in understanding their scope and limitations within any research project. For the purposes of this guide, I have identified four primary types of material: (1) reference sources, of the type generally recognized as providing concise or summary information about a broad variety of topics, (2) single-volume analytical works or treatises, those longer works, organized under a single title generally dealing at length with a narrow topic and frequently but not always contained within one volume, (3) periodical works, also called serials, these are publications like journals or law reviews which publish incrementally with multiple authors on a variety of topics usually all under the general auspices of a particular discipline or broad subject, and finally, (4) Web sites and (5) primary source material, in law these would include court decisions, agency regulations and legislative enactments. In terms of legal scholarship all but primary sources are considered secondary texts, that is, they do not issue directly from a law-making authority such as a court, legislature or administrative agency.

The foundational literature of feminist legal theory is found in secondary resources for the most part, that is books and periodical articles. Primary legal resources come into play through their use as objects of discussion and analysis. Apart from this illustrative function, the authoritative texts found in statutes, cases and regulations will probably not be a major target of your research. For that reason, this guide will focus more on access points into the analytical literature. There will, however, be suggested methods of locating potentially relevant primary sources discussed in the last section.

Treatises and Books

The primary tool for locating treatises and monographs (single title) works in the area of legal theory and philosophy is the online catalog. Our Law Library catalog contains records of titles in our Law School collection. (Please see the graphic, Figure 1, below for a detailed explanation of the parts of a bibliographic record in our Web-based online catalog.) Washington University also participates in the Missouri Union Catalog, MOBIUS, which contains records of materials from the University of Missouri campuses and St. Louis University, in addition to other smaller academic libraries throughout the state. Any book located in MOBIUS will have location notes to identify the library of ownership. To determine whether or not an item in MOBIUS is owned by Washington University, click on the title of the book in your results list. The full record associated with the item will be displayed. Items held in these other libraries are available to you through InterLibrary Loan.  Please refer to our online explanation of how to acquire these materials if they are not in our Law School. This guide will assist you in acquiring materials not available in-house.

The effect of access to these collections of other libraries is significant. For example, a search for materials with the subject heading Feminist jurisprudence in the Washington University Catalog results in a list of fourteen titles. Click here to see the results of that search. A search for materials with that subject heading in the much larger Mobius Catalog results in over forty titles. Click here to see the results of that search. A search in our law library catalog can be automatically expanded to include items from these other Missouri libraries by clicking on the button titled 'MOBIUS UNION CATLOG', as indicated on Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. (click on figure for full view)

Subject Headings

As seen in the above example, these online catalogs use a standard set of subject headings to identify materials dealing with certain topics. For example, the required texts for this seminar, Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory (Aspen Law & Business, 1999) and Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations (D. Kelly Weisberg, ed., Temple University Press, 1993), Susan Estrich, Real Rape, (Harvard University Press, 1987), Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice (Harvard University Press, 1982) and Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Harvard University Press, 1991) are cataloged under a variety of standard subjects, the most common being Feminist jurisprudence, Feminism, Women -- Legal status, laws, etc., Sex and law,Feminist theory, Feminist criticism,andCritical Legal Studies. These all represent significant points of access in locating titles in your area of interest. Searching for information cataloged under these subject headings is one of the most precise means of locating useful monographs.

Another method of searching, keyword, will search for your query terms in all major parts of a bibliographic record, i.e. subject headings, author's name and title words. This is a less precise search method but can be useful in expanding the scope of your search for resources. For example, if you are searching for work by the prominent author Catharine MacKinnon and you know that the word pornography is probably in the title, or would appear at a minimum in a subject heading, you could construct a simple keyword search, mackinnon and pornography. The results of that search will include books authored or edited by MacKinnon that include the word pornography in another part of the record.

As in the Westlaw or Lexis databases, keyword searching looks for the terms appearing anywhere in the record, i.e. title, journal title, author, subject, series, organization names, corporate names, and many books' table of contents. Like Boolean search techniques used in the online services such as Westlaw and Lexis, keyword searching ignores some 'stop' words, i.e. an, a, etc. You may use Boolean operators (and, or, not) to refine your search and use parentheses to nest them:

Examples:

KEYWORD: pornography and violence
KEYWORD: theory or criticism
KEYWORD: gender not sex
KEYWORD: (epistemology or hermeneutics) and feminism

Use the asterisk * to truncate your search terms, i.e.the search constit*  retrieves constitute, constitution, constitutional, etc.

Library of Congress Call Numbers

Another type of classification system is represented by the Library of Congress (LC) call number. Each book in a library will have a unique alpha-numeric label derived from this system. If you explore the list of titles resulting from a search on any of the subject headings listed above, you will note that many of the books cataloged under the heading of Feminist Jurisprudence tend to have call numbers in the general range K200-K380. This indicates that the subject of  Feminist Jurisprudence is associated with that range of call numbers. This is useful information, as the online catalog also accomodates searches by LC call number. Thus you have another means of broadening the scope of your search. For example, view the results of a search on the LC Call Number K349. You will note the resulting list is organized from the lowest to the highest number. If you went to the shelves, the volumes should be arranged in the same order listed on the screen. By clicking on the first underlined call number, and then using the 'Next Record' button at the top of the page to view successive records, you can browse through the 11 records classified with that call number, the online equivalent of physically browsing among the stacks.  However, because your results list is limited to those numbers with a K349 call number, you will see only titles that deal with feminist jurisprudence and theory.

It is possible to browse through multiple call numbers after viewing the results of any kind of search. For example, after executing a keyword search, click on the title of any record retrieved. You will see a record similar to that displayed in Figure 1 with additional information about the work displayed on the screen. The call number will be a hypertext link. Click on that link to see a list of all the books surrounding that title. As indicated above, you can use the 'Previous Page' and 'Next Page' buttons at the top and bottom of the screen to see materials that fall before and after than number in the classification sequence.

IndexMaster

Another method of locating relevant treatises is IndexMaster, a Web-based database, available from within the Washington University Law School.  This service allows you to search and view the tables of content and indices of thousands of legal treatises from a variety of legal publishers. For a complete list, see IndexMaster's List of Participating Publishers. You may search for treatises by keyword, publisher, title or author and then browse the index and table of contents for relevancy. After identifying a useful title, you can then return to the Library Catalog and determine whether it is held by any local library. If not available locally, an Interlibrary Loan request can be initiated.

In addition to printed monographs, a few selected treatises are available full-text online in the WESTLAW(password required) Texts & Treatise database (database identifier = TEXTS).  This database can be searched using the standard Boolean (Terms and Connectors) syntax common to all WESTLAW databases. < hr >

Periodical Literature (Journals and Law Reviews)

There are numerous journals now devoted now to issues of gender and the law, and some that deal with all types of critical theory. Some of the most prominent are listed below. Most of these are held by the Law Library and located in alphabetical order in the north wing of the fifth floor. Current issues are shelved in the reserve collection, located at the Circulation Desk. If an item is not held locally, a note will indicate where it can be located. Specific articles from a journal not held within our collection can also be requested via inter-library loan. Because selected articles and abstracts from some Journals are made available on the Web by the sponsoring institutions, each journal title is hyperlinked to its online web site if available.

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law
Australian Feminist Law Journal (available at SLU-Law Library only, call number K1 .U7737)
Berkeley Women's Law Journal
Buffalo Women's Law Journal
Canadian Journal of Women and the Law
Cardozo Women's Law Journal
Columbia Journal of Gender and the Law
Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy
Feminist Legal Studies
Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal
Hastings Women's Law Journal
Journal of Gender, Race and Justice
Journal of Women and the Law
Law and Sexuality
Michigan Journal of Gender and Law
Texas Journal of Women and the Law
University of California, Los Angeles Women's Law Journal
Wisconsin Women's Law Journal
Women's Rights Law Reporter
Yale Journal of Law & Feminism

Locating articles from these and other journals on specific topics in feminist jurisprudence is a task greatly facilitated by the existence of journal indexes. Unlike the Law Library catalog described above, which provide information primarily about titles, a journal index lists and catalogs the individual articles contained within serial publications.

Indexing/Abstracting Services:

There are two traditional printed legal periodical indexes used in locating scholarly articles in law reviews and other serial publications. These are the Current Law Index [K33 .C87] whose coverage begins in 1980 and goes to the present and the Index to Legal Periodicals [K9 .N32] whose coverage begins in 1908. Prior to that time period, the Index to Legal Periodical Materials, located in periodicals, which began publishing in 1886 and continued through 1932, provides indexing of the major legal periodicals of that time period. Very recent publications (within the last few months) are indexed in the Current Index to Legal Periodicals (a/k/a CILP) [KF8 .W3].

The print indexes are typically published in multiple volumes, whose coverage is chronological. The citations will be arranged alphabetically in by author's last name and subject heading within each volume or pair of volumes. A single article may appear as a citation under several different subject headings. Update pamphlets are issued monthly and bound into a permanent volume yearly. Useful subject headings used in these indexes includeCritical Legal Studies, Feminist Jurisprudence, Critical Race Theory, and Sex Discrimination. Topics in applied feminist theory, such as Pornography and Privacy, Right of, should be searched under those specific headings.

The Current Law Index, Index to Legal Periodicals and Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals now have electronic equivalents on the World Wide Web whose coverage begins in the early eighties and extends to the present. Because the field of feminist legal criticism has seen most of its literature develop in this time period, online searches may be adequate. LegalTrac, Wilson Index to Legal Periodicals, and the Wilson Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals are all available from the Washington University Law School Web site and can be accessed from any PC within the law school.

LegalTrac on the Web: LegalTrac begins its indexing coverage in 1981. Like the online catalog, it contains hundreds of thousands of records, each record describing an article written in a law review, legal newspaper, or other type of legal serial. In some instances, the full-text of the article will be included with the record, although this is not a standard feature. As with the online catalog, each individual record has subject headings assigned to it that describe the content of the article. In some cases these subject headings are identical to those used in the LC system that is used in classifying monographs (e.g. books), Feminist Jurisprudence (709 articles) being the most significant of those. The following subject terms all serve as entry points to the serial literature in LegalTrac: Feminist Criticism (4 articles), Feminist Literary Criticism (2 articles), Feminist Literature (6 articles), Feminist Psychology (2 articles), Feminism - Research, Feminist Studies, Women's Studies, Feminist Theology (1 article), Feminist Therapy (1 article), Feminist Criticism, ,Feminist Literature, Feminist Psychology, Feminist Theology. Four hundred and fifty articles are indexed under the more general phrase, Critical Legal Studies.

There are several search methods available for locating articles in LegalTrac. They are listed in the left frame of the introductory LegalTrac screen (subject guide, relevance, keyword and advanced). See Figure 2 for an example. Any method can be selected by clicking on that option, as displayed. The most basic is termed a 'Keyword search'. In this mode, a user can search by keywords, or the aforementioned subject heading, by entering the words in the white search box. The terms may be joined by a connector such as not or or. If no connector is used the conjunctive and will be assumed and the LegalTrac will search for records that contain both terms occurring in any order and in any part (the same or different fields) of the record.  Figure 3 (below) displays a results list for the keyword search 'feminist jurisprudence'.  The advanced search mode allows for searching on specific fields (parts) of the record, the title, subject, or journal name for example. Searches can be limited to words in particular record. In this mode, multiple searches can be run and the results grouped into sets and used in future searches. In both these modes, the search can be limited by date of publication or journal name. For more detailed information on all types of searching in LegalTrac on the Web, click here to see the LegalTrac Help screen. 

Figure 2. (click on figure for full view)

Figure 3. (click on figure for full view)

The 'View' link associated with each record in a results list will (when followed) provide more detailed information about the article and your retrieval options, which will include e-mail and printing of the record, and, in a few instances, e-mail or printing of the full-text of the article. The View display will also provide information about whether or not the Library owns the Journal, although this should always be confirmed in the Library Online Catalog.  In some instances, the full text of the article will be available at the LegalTrac web site. Click here to see an example of an article dealing with postmodern jurisprudence.

Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP) on the Web:  ILP on the Web begins its indexing coverage in 1981. Like the Law Library online catalog and LegalTrac, described above, it is a database containing thousands of records, each record describing an article written in a law review, legal newspaper, or other type of legal serial. As with the previous services, the search results, (in the form of cite lists) can be printed or sent to an e-mail account. As is typical, each individual record has subject headings (termed descriptors in Wilson) assigned to it that describe the content of the article. In some cases these subject headings are identical to those used in the LC system that is used in classifying monographs (e.g. books). They are always identical to those used in the printed version of the index. In the area of feminist legal theory, the subject headings are identical to those recommended for Legaltrac.

There are two search modes in the Web-based ILP (See Figure 4 below), Search and SearchPlus. Both support simple keyword searching as well as more complex Boolean search phrases. As indicated in Figure 4, searches can also be limited to words in specific fields within the citation record, such as the title, author and subject fields. Date ranges can be specified in the basic search form as well. For instructions on formulating more complex search queries in ILP, click here.

In the area of feminist jurisprudence, the Index to Legal Periodicals lists over 1300 separate articles which are cataloged under the subject heading Feminist jurisprudence. Another useful subject heading is simply the term'Women (>1000 articles). The more general phrase, Critical Legal Studies garners references to 360 articles.

Figure 4. (click on figure for full view)

WESTLAW and LEXIS/NEXIS: The online research services LEXIS (password required) and WESTLAW (password required) also have databases containing digital equivalents of both print indexes in addition to full-text databases containing periodical and newspaper articles. In WESTLAW the Current Index to Legal Periodicals (database identifier = CILP) contains article citations from recently published periodicals. The Index to Legal Periodical (database identifier = ILP) and Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (database identifier = IFLP) contain citations dating from 1984. The Legal Resource Index (database identifier = LRI) is based upon the print index, Current Law Index [K33 .C87] and thus only references articles dating from 1980. UNCOVER, an index to articles from many different disciplines in the humanities and sciences, is also available (database identifier = UNCOVER). In LEXIS/NEXIS, the Legal Resource Index (Library = LAWREV, File = LGLIND) and Index to Legal Periodicals (Library = LAWREV, File = ILP) are also available.

As a result of this coverage in WESTLAW AND LEXIS, several of these periodical indexes, the Index to Legal Periodicals for example, are available to you in three modes, print, the Web, and the online services. Furthermore, the content of LRI, available on both LEXIS and WESTLAW is a subset of the LegalTrac database, available on the Web. The selection among these services and the resulting delivery mechanisms (attached printing, e-mail, stand-alone laser printing) depends largely on individual preference, however, the scope of all of these digital indexes is limited to the last twenty years. Prior to that time frame, the only access points available will be through the print indexes. This is less of a problem in the area of feminist legal theory, however, as the field is a newer area of legal philosophy.

While selected full-text articles from Law Reviews and Legal Newspapers are available in the online research services, WESTLAW(password required) and LEXIS/NEXIS(password required), it is important to remember that not all articles from the periodicals represented in these databases are available online. Most periodical articles, especially if they were published prior to 1980 are not available online. Although many different databases in LEXIS/NEXIS and WESTLAW contain articles from legal periodicals, the primary sources are WESTSLAW's Texts & Periodicals-All (database identifier = TP-ALL), and Journals & Law Reviews (database identifier = JLR) and LEXIS/NEXIS's combined law review files (Library = LAWREV, File = ALLREV) and combined bar journals (Library = LAWREV, File = BARJNL).

Non-legal periodicals

Because feminist jurisprudence and related theories overlap extensively with other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, non-legal periodical indexes can also be of considerable importance in your research. The general libraries of Washington University provides numerous indexes of scholarly and general literature their Web-based information gateway.  A list of the databases sponsored there is available. Full-text sources are listed separately. Of particular interest for this course are the Expanded Academic Index, Book Review Digest, Contemporary Women's Issues, Philosopher's Index, and Dissertation Abstracts Online.

WESTLAW makes available a database called Philosopher's Index (database identifier = PHIL-IND) which indexes texts from a wide range of international periodicals and monographs in the are of philosophy. As in the other indexes discussed, the bibliographic citations are assigned subject headings. Useful headings include jurisprudence (a recent search garnered 447 articles classified under the term jurisprudence), constitutional theory, and hermeneutics.

Web Sites

The non-proprietary textual material found in files located on the computers that make-up the Internet constitutes a large body of material, much of it difficult to classify. While some web sites impose a type of organization on their texts which can be considered analagous to that of a serial, others resemble forms more akin to a monograph. With matters of classification further complicated by the ephemeral nature of many web pages, I have placed web sites within their own unique category. In this section, I am referring specifically to sites sponsored by non-conventional publishing sources. That is to say, highly organized database services such as Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis, which have moved to the Web as their primary delivery channel, are altogether distinct and have been referenced earlier in this guide.

In contrast to those well-designed and highly commercial resources, most types of full-text information on the Web must be located primarily through searching one or more of the major Web search engines, HotBot, Altavista, Excite, and Northern Light. Each of these sites has an extensive help section which will provide information about constructing search queries. As a general rule, they will accept keyword search queries, entered with connectors of any kind. Those listed here, however, will also support limited types of Boolean search queries. As with any information whose source is uncertain or unknown, texts of unknown provenance on the web should be evaluated critically. The following sites are sponsored by known insitutions and consititute a mere sampling of what is available. Nonetheless, they are a good starting point for locating non-proprietary resources on the Web.

Suggested Web Sites:

• About.com: List of Feminist Legal Theory sites
  A list of sites from one of the Web's most respected directories
• Antigone: AALS Section on Women in Legal Education
• Feminist Jurisprudence (Cornell)
• Feminist Theory and Feminist Jurisprudence
• Gender and the Law
• The UBC Faculty of Law Feminist Legal Studies
  includes a bibliography of feminist publications by UBC feminist legal scholars

Primary Source Material

As mentioned earlier, the literature of feminist legal theory exists primarily in secondary resources. However, the use of authoritative legal texts as objects of analysis and proof sometimes plays a critical role. As a result, this section is included to assist you in the location of useful primary legal texts.

Issues relating to gender are generally categorized under the heading 'Civil Rights' when they manifest themselves in a lawsuit or other formal legal action. The area encompasses both statutory and case authority. Consitutional issues, such as federalism, also have a decisive impact. A thorough guide to researching Civil Rights is beyond the scope of this guide. The following material is, therefore, only intended to be an introduction.

Case Law:

Situated at the top of a hierarchical system, the opinions of the Supreme Court are the final arbiter of most major conflicts arising in the area of 'civil rights'. Its language is relentlessly analyzed and plays a central role in the ongoing discourse surrounding gender issues, in particular those of discrimination and harassment. The decisions of the Supreme Court are printed in an official source, the US Reports, the Official Reports of the Supreme Court (Ju 6.8), published by the Government Printing Office.  In addition several prominent commercial publishers gather and bind the opinions in reporters.  The most prominent are the Supreme Court Reporter (West Group, Thompson Publishing), located in the Reading Room and Federal Materials, and Cases argued and decided in the Supreme Court of the United States (Lawyers' Edition) in the Federal Materials. All three reporters are available in this and most law libraries of any size. Because the Official Reportstypically lags several years behind in binding the final versions of the opinions, the commercial editions described above have generally been relied upon by most attorneys and scholars.  The additional features added by the commercial publishers, such as the assignment of West's topics and key numbers (a system of classification discussed below) has also contributed to the traditional preference for these series.  The first appearance of each opinion is in individual pamphlet form, termed slip opinions.  These are superseded by advance sheets, pamphlets containing numerous opinions, and then by the  bound reporters in which the final and (in the case of the Official Reports) official version of the opinion is reported.

With the advent of the two primary online legal research services in the 1970s, WESTLAW(password required) (database identifier = SCT) and LEXIS/NEXIS(password required) (Library=GENFED, File=USLED) the opinions of the court became available electronically. Currently the LEXIS/NEXIS database is based upon the print source, Cases argued and decided in the Supreme Court of the United States (Lawyers' Edition) and the WESTLAW database based upon the Supreme Court Reporter.   Both services are supplemented by slip opinions. 

In the past decade the court's slip opinions have been available on the Internet at several Web sites, most notably, Cornell (1990-present) and, Findlaw, (US Supreme Court Decisions: US Reports 150-, 1893-). These are slip opinions, that is they may contain errors that were corrected before the opinions appearance in bound form in one of the commercial or official reporters.

Lower Federal Courts at the appellate and trial level also issue opinions which, subject to review by the Supreme Court, interpret the Constitution. The Federal Circuit Court opinions are reported in print in the Federal Reporter, v. 1 (Mar.-May 1880) - v. 300 (Sept.-Nov. 1924), Federal Reporter 2nd (F.2d), v. 1, (Nov. 1924-Jan. 1925)-v. 830 (1993), and Federal Reporter 3rd, v.1 (1993) - Present, all located in the Federal Materials section of the Library on the 5th Floor. As with the Supreme Court opinions these are also reported in the online research services, WESTLAW(password required) (database identifier = CTA) and LEXIS/NEXIS(password required) (Library=GENFED, File=SUPCIR).

In the past several years, the Circuits have begun to post their slip opinions on the Web. The primary site for locating these is the Federal Courts Finder, which lists each Circuit Court, with links to the appropriate server. These databases are generally limited in scope to the last few years and contain uncorrected slip opinions, which should be relied upon with caution.

Decisions of the Federal district (trial) courts, when they are published, appear in print in the Federal Supplement, v. 1 (Oct. 1932) -v. 999 (1998); 2nd series., v. 1 (1997) - Present, located in the Federal Materials section on the fifth floor of the Library. Many unpublished opinions, in addition to the published decisions, of the district courts appear in the online services, WESTLAW(password required) (database identifier = DCT) and LEXIS/NEXIS(password required) (Library=GENFED, File=CADC).  A few District and Bankruptcy courts have begun to post decisions on the web, but there are relatively few.  A comprehensive and current list of federal court sites is maintained at the Federal Judiciary Home Page

Federal cases from 1789-1880 are printed in Federal Cases, also located in the Federal Materials section, as well as the Reading Room of the Library. The equivalent databases online are in WESTLAW (database identifier = ALLFEDS-OLD), covering Federal cases from 1789 through 1944 and the OLDER file in the GENFED library of LEXIS/NEXIS.

An excellent starting point in locating discussions of specific topics in Constitutional theory within case law is the West Digest system. Based on a classification tree, the Digests provide references to cases which discuss specific topics within that classification scheme. If you are interested a more detailed discussion of Digests, please refer to another of our reserch guides, titled Constitutional Interpretation Studies"of digests are discussed in detail therein in the section titled 'Secondary Sources'.

Supreme Court Briefs

The briefs filed in cases before the Supreme Court can be of critical importance in both understanding the final decision of the Court, and in grasping the full panoply of issues and arguments which surround the issues in contention. Amicus briefs are often of particular usefulness in understanding the ramifications of the legal arguments. The significant preparation and research that go into these briefs make them highly valuable sources for the scholar and analyst. The Law Library
makes the briefs available in two formats, microfiche and online.

Microfiche

Our Microfiche collection is housed on the second floor of the Library in the North wing. The collection includes the Applications for Writ of Certiorari, Briefs and Amicus Curiae Briefs.

Online

Full text Briefs and Amicus Curiae Briefs are available on both the WESTLAW(password required) (Database SCT-BRIEF) and LEXIS(password required) (Source: Federal-Legal U.S. > Supreme Court Cases and Materials > US Supreme Court Briefs) database services. Unlike other media, the digital format in both these services enables full-text keyword searching. As with all searching in Westlaw and Lexis, search terms can include names (e.g. mackinnon), concepts (e.g. pornography) and phrases ("gender discrimination").

Tables designed by Dora Bertram.

Bibliographies - Print

Books:

Feminist jurisprudence, women and the law: critical essays, research agenda, and bibliography by Taylor,-Betty-W; Rush,-Sharon; Munro,-Robert-John
[KF477.A1 T39 1999]

Feminist jurisprudence: emerging from Plato's cave- a research guide by Holland,-Frances-Schmid, 1954-
[SLU Law - KF477.A1 H65 1996]

Periodical Articles:

The following are somewhat dated, but do provide a glimpse into the development of the field over the last fifteen years.

• Research guide to women's studies for law students by Wentz,-Julia-A
  Legal-Reference-Services-Quarterly. v. 15 1995 p. 43-56
  
• Law through a feminist prism: a selective bibliography by Isaacs,-Lisa
  Record-of-the-Association-of-the-Bar-of-the-City-of-New-York. v. 51 Mar. 1996 p. 210-30
  
• Bibliography of selected materials on feminist international legal theory
  Transnational-Law-and-Contemporary-Problems. v. 3 Fall 1993 p. 581-90
  
• Conference on the International Protection of Reproductive Rights
  The-American-University-Law-Review. v. 44 Apr. 1995 p. 963-1475
  
• Symposium: the voices of women
  Iowa-Law-Review. v. 77 Oct. 1991 p. 1-177
  Yes, Virginia there is feminist legal literature: a survey of some recent publications by Graycar,-Regina
  
•  Australian-Journal-of-Law-and-Society. v. 3 1986 p. 105-35 p;

Book Reviews

Citations to scholarly book reviews in the legal literature are most commonly found in law reviews, the primary type of serial in the discipline of law. The process of searching for reviews in this type of source is similar to locating specific articles (see section above on 'Indexing/Abstracting Services' under 'Periodical Literature'). LegalTrac and Wilson's Index to Legal Periodical are both excellent starting points for locating reviews of books published within the last twenty years. For reviews prior to 1980, the print versions of those indexes is the primary access point. These indexes are discussed in detail in the section on 'Periodical Literature'.

Constructing searches for book reviews in bibliographic databases such as LegalTrac and Wilson's ILP is not difficult. By including the search phrase "book review" in quotations in the search query, the result set will be typically limited to those items in which the phrase appears in the title or abstract. Combined with an author's name or words from the title of the book under review, it is easy to pinpoint specific reviews of particular works.

Only a few of the citations retrieved in LegalTrac will provide full-text of the articles themselves. The law review and texts and periodical databases of LEXIS and WESTLAW however, will contain many examples of full-text reviews taken from law reviews and periodicals. The relevant databases are TP-ALL in WESTLAW and All Sources: Secondary Legal > Law Reviews and Journals in LEXIS. A good example(LEXIS password required) of a book review is available through use of the LEXSEE feature. After clicking on the link above you will be asked to enter your LEXIS id. Upon doing so, you will see the full text of the article

Excellent examples of book reviews in the general literature include the Women's Review of Books and its British counterpart, the London Review of Books.
The Womens Review of Books is available in Olin Library on Level 3 in the Periodicals section. Older editions are available on Level 1 in the 'Oversize' collection.

Current print issues of the New York Review of Books are available in Olin library, Level 2 in the 'Oversize' collection. Current issues of it are kept in the periodicals area, Level 3. The online version contains selected articles from the print newspaper as well as an archive of earlier published reviews.

The London Review of Books is also held by Olin (current issues are on Level 3). Similarly, its online version contains samples of current and older articles.

For additional assistance with this, or any research topic, please do not hesitate to contact a  reference librarian.