HeinOnline has always been an excellent resource for law journal articles, and over the past few years has expanded its digital library to include a wide array of other secondary legal materials as well as primary domestic and international legal resources. William S. Hein & Co., based in Buffalo and in business for the past 80 years, was already the world’s largest distributor of legal journals. With HeinOnline, they capitalized on that market share by creating a digital archive of virtually every major legal journal in publication. Two things make HeinOnline unique: 1) HeinOnline’s law journal database is an historical archive, so coverage of most journals begins with the very first volume, as opposed to LexisNexis and Westlaw, which only cover the last 20 years or so, and 2) HeinOnline scans the articles directly from the journals in PDF, so that the end-user is looking at an exact copy of the article, with pagination intact. For this reason, most academic law journals around the country will accept a HeinOnline PDF for cite-checking purposes.
In addition to the law journal database, HeinOnline has a comprehensive database of federal primary materials including the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, the Statutes at Large and the United States Code, Supreme Court Decisions, Attorney General Opinions, as well as Agency documents and decisions. HeinOnline also has the session laws of all 50 states. HeinOnline’s international content includes the United Nations Law Collection and the Treaties and International Agreements Library. Foreign materials include the English and Israel Law Reports. Students who compete in moot court will be glad to know that HeinOnline has a comprehensive library of moot court competititons including Jessup International, dating back to 1960. And, HeinOnline’s secondary legal materials include a database of more than 1,300 classic legal treatises on a wide range of topics. HeinOnline can be accessed throught the law library’s database portal, http://www.law.gmu.edu/library/catalog, and our reference librarians will be happy to show you how this or any of our databases can help you find the legal information you need.