Seminar Guide - Criminal Justice Law & Policy

There are many ways to choose a topic. Three common topic selection strategies are listed below.

Hot Topics - Topics that are receiving lots of media and public attention, but have not yet been written about.

Circuit Splits - These happen when two or more federal Courts of Appeal have ruled differently on the same issue. That issue may end up being resolved by the United States Supreme Court.

Open Questions - Emerging, unsettled and/or unexplored areas of law.

Databases with a key icon () in front of them are provided by the Law Library or the Texas A&M Libraries. A NetID and password may be required for access.

Legal News Sources

• U.S. Law Week
• Bar Journal Library
• Westlaw's Legal News, Highlights and Notable Trials (requires a Westlaw ID and password)
• Lexis' Legal News: Resources (requires a Lexis ID and password)

Blogs

• Sentencing Law & Policy Blog
• For the Defense
• Prosecutor's Discretion
• SentenceSpeak - blog by the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums

News Aggregators

• TOPICsearch: Current events database covering politics, social and economic issues, scientific discoveries and other popular topics.
• ABA Journal Latest News
• CNN Legal News
• Jurist Latest US Legal News
• National Law Journal

Current Awareness Tools

• Lexis, Westlaw, and BNA all let you create email alerts on a topic or word
• Subscribe to RSS feeds on blogs
• Google Alerts

Recent Legal Conferences

• Legal Scholarship Blog

U.S. Law Week (BNA) has an entire section devoted to circuit splits. Go the the United States Law Week link on the library's electronic resources page or log in to Bloomberg Law and scroll down to the link to the BNA Circuit Splits Table.

Split Circuits Blog, moderated by Professor A. Benjamin Spence of Washington & Lee University School of Law (as of 2013, this blog is no longer active, but the archives have useful information)

Seton Hall Circuit Review, a journal devoted to articles dealing with circuit court cases

Pay attention to your reading materials, research, and class lectures for unresolved issues and open questions.