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Legal Resources for Journalists

This guide is an introduction to legal research for journalists and other non-lawyers in the NYU community.

Overview of This Research Guide

This guide highlights some accessible legal resources for NYU journalism students, journalists, and other non-lawyers. It also provides strategies for navigating the complex world of legal research, including how to determine the type of legal research you need, how to gather background information about your case or topic; and how to identify the most applicable databases to search.

Quick links to begin: 

Types of Legal Resources

Flowchart depicts different types of law starting with government, which goes into three boxes (legislature, judiciary and executive). The boxes under that show that legislature goes into statutory law; judiciary goes into case law and executive goes into administrative law.

There are three main sources of law: statutes, case law, and administrative law. 

  • Statutes are laws that are enacted by legislators.
  • Case law is law that is decided in courts.
  • Administrative laws are regulations that come from government agencies.

Image credit: Georgia State University School of Law Research Guide

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