What are secondary sources?
Secondary sources describe, explain, and/or analyze primary sources including statutes or court cases.
Why are secondary sources useful?
Secondary sources can save you time and effort! Experts have likely already reviewed and analyzed key primary sources related to the topic you are researching. Their work can help you identify those key primary sources, useful search terms, and provide other useful context around the topic you are researching.
What are the types of secondary sources I might come across in my research?
Secondary sources can include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Legal dictionaries
- Legal dictionaries provide definitions of legal terminology.
- Legal encyclopedias
- Legal encyclopedias provide brief overviews of legal concepts and often contain helpful citation to other relevant sources on a given topic. The two most prominent legal encyclopedias are American Jurisprudence, 2d., and Corpus Juris Secundum.
- Law journal articles
- There are many scholarly periodicals in the legal field, publishing articles on a wide range of topics. Law journals may cover certain issues that are too novel to have yet been addressed in other secondary sources.
- Legal treatises
- Legal treatises are books written by legal experts that provide a comprehensive overview of an area of the law.
- Restatements of the Law
- The American Law Institute publishes Restatements describing United States common law principles in various areas of the law. The Restatements can be found on HeinOnline.
- American Law Reports (A.L.R.)
- A.L.R. annotations (articles) describe the current state of the law on particular legal topics in more depth than encyclopedias. There are not annotations for all topics; they usually focus on emerging areas of the law. You can find American Law Reports on Westlaw Campus Research.
To learn more about all of these types of secondary sources, visit Georgetown Law Library's Secondary Sources Research Guide.
