Tarlton Law Library: Finding Materials in PDF: Home

Introduction

Rule 18.2.1 of the Bluebook states: “When an authenticated, official, or exact [i.e., PDF] copy of a source is available online, citation can be made as if to the original print source (without any URL information appended).”

If you need the exact or original image of a document (usually in Portable Document Format (PDF)), use this guide for help finding it online, whether for law review source collection or some other purpose. The "Primary Sources" tabs link to legislative, judicial, and executive materials, first for the federal level and then for states. The "Texas" tab lists primary sources for the state separately, followed by legislative history materials. The "Foreign & International" tab mainly lists treaties, along with some other selected resources. The "Secondary Sources" tab focuses on law books, law reviews, and the Restatements. Finally, some newspapers available in PDF can be found on the "Newspapers" tab.

This guide is selective, not comprehensive, in listing resources as it is impossible to make note of everything in PDF. The dates of coverage provided are for PDF only; a given resource might have more extensive coverage in a different format.

Main Databases with PDF Content

This is a list of selected databases. To see all licensed databases available at UT, check the full lists from both the law library and UT Libraries.

Please note, access to certain databases linked in this guide may be restricted to UT Law or the UT community. Hover over the symbols to see access policies. Links without symbols are open to the public.

bepress
A network and database of law, business, and interdisciplinary scholarship. bepress provides a repository of scholarly articles (Legal Repository), publishes a series of electronic journals on economics and business, political science and public affairs, health and medicine, and science and technology, and provides a portal that enables users to search the repository and e-journals and to receive email notifications of new scholarship (ResearchNow).

EBSCO Legal Collection This link opens in a new window
EBSCO Legal Collection offers full text for hundreds of law journals. The majority of titles are available in native (searchable) PDF, or scanned-in-color.

Status:

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Includes important treatises and other materials from the 18th century, including American and British law-related materials.
Google Books
Searches full-text books digitized by the Google Books Partnership Project and the Google Books Library Project.
govinfo
A service of the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO) that provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the federal government.

HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline is a collection of legal periodicals, government documents, historical monographs, and other collections related to law. The collection includes thousands of legal periodicals and begins with the first issue of each journal.

On-campus, public patrons can use the following link to access this resource: On-campus Heinonline
Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (H.W. Wilson & Co.) This link opens in a new window
The Index to Legal Periodicals and Books provides abstracts and citations and, in some cases, full text, of articles from 891 legal periodicals (Aug. 1981-present) and English-language books published in 1993 or later.

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JSTOR
Collection of online journals, books, and primary sources on diverse topics such as economics, sociology, and history.
Library of Congress: A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation
U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, from 1774-1875.

LLMC Digital This link opens in a new window
The LLMC Digital resource makes available page images of legal and historical documents and scholarly works. Extensive collections of U.S. federal and state documents, Anglo-American case reporters, legal encyclopedias, and reference materials, and legal materials from several civil law jurisdictions are currently available. Additional materials from a 7500 title and 90,000 volume microform backfile are being digitized at the rate of 10,000 volumes per year.

Making of Modern Law (MOML): Legal Treatises 1800-1926
Legal Treatises is a digital online archive of 22,000 legal treatises published in the United States and Great Britain between 1800 and 1926. The fully searchable database provides access to over 10 million individual page images from casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches and more.
Making of Modern Law (MOML): Primary Sources
A digital archive of 1,500 historical primary sources containing constitutional conventions and compilations (reports, journals, proceedings, and debates, and supplementary documents published by the conventions including, manuals, rules of order, and information for the use of delegates); city charters (the texts of enacted and proposed charters and ordinances in American jurisdictions); law dictionaries; and early U.S. state codes.
Making of Modern Law (MOML): Trials 1600-1926
A digital collection of more than 10,000 titles describing courtroom dramas published between 1600 and 1926. Included in the collection are unofficially published trial accounts, official trial documents, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations.
ProQuest Congressional
Includes legislation and public policy, statistical information including projections and analyses, legislative history, federal regulations, voting and financial records for individual members as well as members of various congressional committees. Searchable full text of House and Senate documents (1817-present), reports (1819-present), and hearings (1824-present) is available.
ProQuest Legislative Insight
Contains legislative histories and links to the related full-text Congressional documents of more than 18,000 federal laws enacted since 1929. There are selected fully-searchable PDFs that include full text of the public law itself, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, and committee hearings, reports, and prints. Also included are presidential signing statements, CRS reports, and miscellaneous publications that provide background information related to the making of the law.
SSRN's Legal Scholarship Network
A repository of scholarly law articles from the Social Science Research Network.
U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978
Containing nearly 11 million pages of records and briefs from over 150,000 cases brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978, this resource provides full-text search capabilities to more than 350,000 documents, including appellant's and appellee's briefs, oral transcripts, and petitions for writ of certiorari.
US Congressional Serial Set
The serial set includes reports, documents, and journals of the US senate and house of representatives. Upon completion the resource will provide access to materials dated from 1817 to 1980; currently, the resource covers 1817-1841.

If You Still Can't Find What You Need . . .

Here are some tips if you still can't find what you need after using this guide:

if this guide lists a database that could contain what you are looking for, but does not mention the date you need, click through to the resource to double check the dates of coverage, which are constantly changing;
search the online catalog TALLONS directly to double check the library's digital holdings (catalog records will appear with the notation "[electronic resource]");
double check the databases available from the law library and UT Libraries;
find the organization's website or the author's online C.V. to see if there is a version posted in pdf;
if searching for a state publication, look for a research guide for that particular state for suggested resources;
ask a librarian.

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Finding Materials in PDF

Introduction

Main Databases with PDF Content

If You Still Can't Find What You Need . . .