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If you have a citation to a specific law journal article, you can use the HeinOnline a Get Citation Tool on the Quick Research Tools page of this Research Guide.
Or from within HeinOnline, you can use the Citation Navigator to retrieve a PDF of the article. Select the Law Journal Library from the list of HeinOnline databases, then click the link to the Citation Navigator under the main search box. You can then enter your citation and pull up the article to print or download in PDF format.
There are a number of resources available for searching full-text legal periodicals. Both Westlaw and Lexis have law review and journal databases that you can search using either a natural language or Boolean terms and connectors search. You can also limit your search to a single journal title or to journals covering a specific jurisdiction or legal practice area. It is important to note that neither Lexis nor Westlaw contain all law review articles. Even if they have a law review or journal, they may not have every article from every issue. Dates of coverage will vary by title with coverage of some titles beginning in the early 1980's but most are not available before the mid 1990's.
If your research requires a more comprehensive coverage of legal periodicals, we recommend HeinOnline's Law Journal Library. HeinOnline has nearly comprehensive coverage of U.S. law reviews with some international coverage. HeinOnline goes back to volume 1, issue 1 for most of the law reviews it covers. You can access HeinOnline via the link in the Databases box on the law library's homepage. Once in HeinOnline, select the Law Journal Library.
If you need to search for law review articles by topic you can run a keyword search in HeinOnline. To locate articles written by a particular author or appearing in a specific law journal, use the Advanced Search option and type the search criteria you have into the applicable field. If you need assistance structuring an accurate search, contact your faculty's Library Liaison or another member of the BC Law Library's Teaching & Research team.
If you have a citation to an article but no link to the full text, how can you determine if it is available at Boston College? Just search the BC Law School Library catalog to see if the library has the journal in print or makes it available through an online subscription.
For the most efficient search, we recommend that you search by the title of the article. First select the Articles tab and then click on the Advanced Search link.
Then from the Search Filters pull-down menu, select Title and type in the title of the article you are looking for and run your search.
If the article is available at Boston College it will appear in your results list. From your results, click on the title of the article to display the full catalog record. If the article is available through an online resource, the record will provide links to the online version of the article through the database on which it is available. If the journal is available in the print collection, the record will have information on where you can locate it in order to scan a copy of the article or check it out to your faculty member.
If your research involves identifying all articles on a legal topic, consider using a legal periodical index instead of searching full-text articles. Periodical indexes allow researchers to identify what articles have been written on a topic and where they have been published. They will help identify articles that are not searchable through online databases or without a subscription.
Periodical indexes are databases that catalogs published articles by subject, author and other bibliographic data allowing researchers to search by specific criteria. Indexes do not contain the full text of articles but often include an abstract of the article's contents written by the author. There are a number of legal periodical indexes available at Boston College Law School which you can find listed below.
Using a periodical index can be more efficient than running a full-text search. In an index database you will only be searching the subject descriptors (e.g. first amendment and commercial speech) and bibliographic information so your results include more relevant articles and won't include articles that just include your terms in passing. Once you find a relevant article, you can then use its subject descriptor to run searches for additional relevant articles with the same subject descriptors. In order to conduct a comprehensive search, you may need to search multiple indexes, particularly if you need to research historical coverage of a topic or multi-disciplinary issues.
For tutorial on searching periodical indexes to locate law review articles watch this short video.