When researching an issue or area of law for the first time, we suggest you begin with a secondary source such as a legal encyclopedia, legal treatise, or ALR. Though not comprehensive, on this page you will find a selective list of print and electronic treatises, books, study aids, and other secondary sources on constitutional law.
Consult our Constitutional Law Treatise Finder for additional texts & study aids. Also consult our research guides for secondary sources on other specific areas of law related to constitutional law, such as our Supreme Court Research Guide and American Legal History Guide.
The following resources are useful places to look for additional secondary sources on Constitutional Law topics:
Expand your search by using subject headings in the law library's catalog to locate more sources. Relevant subject headings from our catalog include:
To search materials in the catalog by subject, use our Advanced Search. Select "subject" in the first drop-down box, then enter a subject heading (such as one of the ones suggested on this page) in the corresponding search box. You can run the search alone or include additional terms in additional search boxes below. To find books, it may help to first narrow your search to "Law Library Catalog" or "Georgetown Univ. + Local Academic Libraries" using one of the radio buttons at the top of the page. After running a search, you can sort by "Date-newest first" on the left to put the most recent materials at the top. You can also narrow your results to books only on the left under "Resource Type."
The Articles for Legal and Non-Legal Research research guide explains the differences between searching journal indexes and searching full-text databases. It also suggests legal and non-legal indexes and full-text databases. Searching Lexis and Westlaw is not comprehensive in its coverage so you will need to broaden your journal search beyond these two resources.
There are several law reviews and journals dedicated to constitutional law; however, note that scholarly articles on constitutional law issues may appear in all types of law journal.
To identify and locate constitutional law-specific journals in our the library's collections, search the catalog by subject for "Constitutional Law -- United States -- Periodicals."