If you have not already used secondary sources in your research, such as a treatise or legal encyclopedia, it is often strongly recommended that researchers begin there rather than beginning by looking for statues or cases directly. This technique can save you time and energy, because legal secondary sources include citations to key statutes and cases while also providing you with context, analysis, and explanations that will help you understand and apply the the law.
For information on statutory research generally, see our Statutes Research Guide and the Statutory Research Tutorial.
Federal Statutes (select statutes applicable to sports law):
Uniform Laws
State Statutes (50 State Surveys)
Organized by subject, this is an annual list of sources, including journal articles, books, reports, and databases, that include state law surveys. Relevant subjects include sports, athletes, sports officials, sports agents and individual sports, such as baseball, etc.
For a basic introduction to case law, see our Case Law Research Guide and/or refer to our Case Law video tutorial. For information on using digests to locate case law, see Digest, Headnotes, and Key Numbers on our Case Law Research Guide.
In addition to the techniques explained in the above guides and tutorials, any of the legal sources on the secondary sources page of this guide will include citations to relevant cases.
Finally, casebooks can be useful for finding court opinions dealing with sports law as well as commentary on the decisions.
Some casebooks on sports law, in addition to other useful sources for finding new cases, include the following:
Over the years, the U.S. Congress has gotten involved in the sports world by introducing legislation and conducting hearings on topics such as anti-doping, work stoppages in professional sports and the effect of smokeless tobacco use on the health of our nation's youth. The hearings, reports and committee prints generated can be accessed through ProQuest Congressional. For information on how to obtain legislative history materials on sports law legislation, see our Legislative History Research Guide or Legislative History Research Tutorial.
Recent Congressional material is also available through the federal government website, GovInfo and through Congress.gov. For the most efficient search, select a specific collection(i.e. Congressional Hearings) to search using the Advanced Search capability.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) publishes authoritative and objective reports for members of Congress on numerous topics. A few of their reports on sports include: