Law and Legislation Databases

The following are suggested databases to get you started. You can also try:
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Most Useful

Database Name
HeinOnline

Database of legal and government resources, including laws, regulations, some trials and court reports, treaties, monographs, and a variety of other materials covering United States and foreign law. Coverage includes private and public international law, intellectual property and legal history. Includes full text image-based searchable database of legal periodicals. Database coverage for each periodical is from the beginning issue to the most current allowed under contract. New and updated material added frequently.

Dates of coverage: Coverage varies.
Content Type: reference source, scholarly articles
Nexis Uni

Now called Nexis Uni, this database includes more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.  Includes court decisions (including historical cases dating back to the 1880s), full text law reviews, thousands of full text news sources in English and foreign languages, and current data on 13 million companies.

Dates of coverage: Coverage varies.
Content Type: news, primary sources, scholarly articles
ProQuest Congressional

Provides access to records related to the U.S. Congress, including hearings, bill texts, legislative histories, voting records and more. Formerly called Congressional Lexis-Nexis.

Dates of coverage: 1969 - present
Content Type: primary sources

Also Useful

Database Name
Academic Search Complete

Multidisciplinary database that indexes journals from a wide range of subject areas, including literature, history, ethnic studies, computer science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and medical sciences. Includes many fulltext articles. 

Dates of coverage: Coverage varies.
Content Type: scholarly articles
AccessUN

Index of United Nations documents, records, reports and resolutions. Includes some fulltext documents.

Dates of coverage: 1956 - Present
Content Type: primary sources
GPO

Index to over 380,000 US government documents.

Dates of coverage: 1976 - present
Content Type:
PolicyMap

An online data and mapping tool for creating custom reports of data related to demographics, real estate, health, jobs, the environment, education and more. Data comes from authoritative public and proprietary sources. It has thousands of indicators on demographics, the economy, housing, lending, quality of life, education, health, and more. Data is available at the neighborhood census block group in many cases, up to a national level, depending on the data.

Dates of coverage: Coverage varies.
Content Type: data
Sociological Abstracts

Indexes articles on all aspects of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.

Dates of coverage: 1963 - present
Content Type: scholarly articles
U.S. Congressional Serial Set

Fulltext collection of all the Reports, Documents, and Journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for the 15th through the 36th Congress, sessions.

Dates of coverage: 1817 - 1860
Content Type: primary sources, reference source
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Index of materials related to political science, including history and theory, comparative, international, political psychology, law, and public administration and policy.

Dates of coverage: 1975 - present
Content Type: scholarly articles