LibGuides: Topic Selection and Pre-emption: Topic Selection

General Legal News/Blogs

ABA Journal
Premiere journal for the national legal communitiy.
Hawaii Bar Journal
Publication from the bar association in Hawaii reporting on legal issues of relevance to the state.
U.S. Law Week
Access to circuit news and splits, U.S. Supreme Court news, hot topics, etc. Need UH log in.
Jurist Paper Chase
Legal news and commentary on a national and global level.
SCOTUSblog
The well respected blog reports on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Law.com
Access multiple legal journals (American Lawyer, National Law Journal, etc.) from the publishers main site. Need password for part of this site, see librarian for help.)
How Appealing
Well established blog reporting on national civil litigation issues.
Ninth Circuit Blog
Reports on cases heard before the 9th circuit.
Mondaq
Global coverage of legal issues organized by topic area and region.
Justia Blawg Directory
Organizes legal blogs/news by subject matter.
Library of Congress Legal Blogs by Topic
more than 100 law-related blogs on a variety of topics. Keyword searchable and browsable by topic.
Law Professor's Network
Resident to more than 40 blogs kept active by scholars and practitioners.

Legal Analysis by Topic

Bloomberg Law Reports provides in-depth analysis of legal issues in 20 different specialties. You will need a Bloomberg Law login to access this resource (UH Law School only).
Law 360 (available via Lexis Advance) is a source for breaking news and analysis for legal professionals. It is organized by practice areas, industries, and states (California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas).
Westlaw Practical Law (UH Law School only) - Login to Westlaw and navigate to the Practical Law site.

Circuit Splits

Bloomberg Law
("Ninth Circuit") AND ("circuit split") will find documents in Bloomberg Law about Circuit Splits in the Ninth Circuit. Use the date feature to specify a time frame.
Lexis Advance
Seton Hall Circuit Review
The publication reviews important developments at the federal appellate level with a focus on circuit splits.

Westlaw This link opens in a new window
Select an appropriate jurisdictional case law database such as the Ninth Circuit and run an advanced search without the quotes "ADV: (circuit /s split) and (DATE(2019))". If you retrieve too many results you can try adding keywords for areas of law in which you are interested (for example, climate change).

Legislation and Regulations

Pending legislation or regulations are good sources to find timely issues to write about.

The CQ Researcher
CQ is updated weekly and provides in depth reporting of pending measures on Capital Hill. Log in with your UH log in.
Unified Agenda
Every 6 months federal agencies are required to publish their planned activities. Browse by agency to see what they are up to!
Regulations.gov
Track federal regulations by topic.
The Civil Beat
This newspaper provide watch-dog coverage of the Hawaiian political and legislative scene. Good resource to find a local, legislative problem that needs solving.
Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau
The Hawaii State Legislature has a web site (http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/documentdirectories.aspx); however, the LRB provides easier access to pending legislation, cross-over bills, etc.

Human Resources

Topics can also arise from your daily activities like a case or statute discussed in class, or at your workplace. Your professors can also be an asset in both identifying and helping you refine your topic. If you have an interest in a particular area of law, seek out an expert on the subject and discuss it with them. Their experience in a subject field is invaluable and can never be replaced by Google or some other database search.