Resources for Writing a Law Review Comment or Scholarly Paper

Avoiding Preemption

Preemption checking is the process to determine whether there is any legal or specialized literature on your topic that has been already been previously published by someone else.

Books and Chapters

Look for books on your subject in PRIMO, the Chastek Library catalog. Use this to find out whether or not a book or book chapter may have been published about your topic. For an even larger net, search WorldCat, a catalog with the holdings of thousands of libraries around the U.S. and abroad.

GU Law faculty, students, and staff can borrow from any GU library. You can also find books that are only available elsewhere by following the directions on the Law Library's Interlibrary Loan page.

Law Periodicals

Look for journal articles on your subject. Do not rely only on journals and law reviews on Westlaw or Lexis. These databases cover only a fraction of the law reviews, newsletters, bar journals, etc. published in the United States. Use these indexes to search law journals instead:

Current Awareness and Topical Sources

Many legal and non-legal newspapers and websites are helpful at this stage of the preemption check. These will include:

Once you've defined your claim and ensured that the topic is not currently preempted, continue monitoring important cases and statutes to make sure nothing important has changed in the time you've spent researching and finalizing your analysis. Below are resources available for monitoring your topic.