Note: Articles on legal topics may appear in non-legal research databases, e.g., a legal topic related to business may be in a business publication and found using a business database. Ask a reference librarian for suggestions if needed.
General legal research database: Westlaw Campus Research
UW-Whitewater libraries'access to Nexis Uni ended July 1, 2021.
Access from library database listing or use the link above. Log in with campus Net-ID when prompted.
Contents include federal and state appellate court cases, codes, and regulatory (administrative) law; American Jurisprudence and Corpus Juris Secundum legal encyclopedias; law reviews; American Law Reports, Black's Law Dictionary, international legal authority; and the KeyCite full citator for updating cases and statutes.
Use Advanced Search after selecting the type of legal authority you are searching if you want to do field searching: Or you can type advanced: and then the field code and words in () in the main search box, e.g., advanced:JU(kagan) to find cases where Kagan was a judge. On the advanced search page just find the Judge field to enter Kagan, and the search will be formatted for you in the search box.
Truncate: Use ! for any number of characters at the end of a word/stem, e.g, child! finds children, child, child’s, childhood, etc.
Wild Card: Use * for one character within a word, e.g., wom*n retrieves woman or women
Phrases Put in quotation marks " " : "attractive nuisance" (also true in Basic Search)
Special commands to use between search terms:
&: Both search terms MUST be in the same document, e.g., narcotic & warrant
<space>: at least one search term MUST appear, e.g. car automobile
/p: search terms are in the same paragraph, e.g., hearsay /p utterance
/s: search terms are in the same sentence, e.g., design*** /s defect!
+p: The first term preceding the second within the same paragraph: miranda +p legislat!
+s: The first term preceding the second within the same sentence: palsgraf +s island
/n finds search terms within n words of each other (where n is a number): person** /3 jurisdiction
+n: The first search term preceding the second by n words (n is a number): 20 +5 1080
KeyCite Status Flags
KeyCite Quotation Marks indicate that the citing case, administrative decision, or brief directly quotes the cited case.
Depth of Treatment Bars - The legal issues involved are identified by the headnote numbers from the case being keycited.
Viewing the History of a Case - Click the "History" tab
