Your law review or seminar paper must be original - this means you must determine that another article has not been published that addresses the same topic in the same manner. There will be articles on the same or similar topics, but you want to make sure your approach and argument are unique. In order to do a preemption check, you will need to search the legal and non-legal journal literature to see what has been, or may soon be, published on the topic.
For an in-depth walkthrough of the preemption checking process, check out the CALI lesson on Preemption Checking. If you do not yet have a CALI account, please email lawlibraryhelp@udc.edu.
When you search the indexes and databases below, there will be overlap, but each covers some sources the others do not. Research tip: make sure to note sources that may be useful in writing your paper as you go so you can come back to them later.
Searching for Legal Articles
The full text of many articles will be available on Westlaw and Lexis in their collections of law reviews and journals. If not, you can also try some of these sources:
Searching for Non-Legal Articles