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Criminal Procedure

Legal Encyclopedias

Legal Encyclopedias are an excellent way to start your research into Georgia Criminal Procedure Law, since they focus on providing an accessible overview of the law. Georgia Jurisprudence (Westlaw) doesn't have a chapter dedicated to criminal procedure; instead material on this topic is spread throughout the legal encyclopedia, usually in the chapters and sections associated with the relevant substantive law. This makes the Criminal law index entry a valuable starting point for research with this resource. 

National Legal Encyclopedias focus on providing an accessible overview of the law. This means that they can often be a good way to start your research into Federal Criminal Procedure Law, although you need to be careful, since they also include coverage of all 50 states. 

  • American Jurisprudence (AmJur) also does not have a chapter devoted to criminal procedure, and instead distributes topics relating to criminal procedure (arraignment, due process of law, and the like) in their overall Criminal law chapter. The issue also sometimes comes up in discussions of other topics, so checking the index is never a bad idea. AmJur also has an area devoted to criminal procedure forms for research and reference purposes. Although AmJur is published by Westlaw's parent company, you can also find it on Lexis
  • Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS) (Westlaw) has a chapter on Criminal Procedure. As usual, the treatment here is a bit more in-depth, but that can also make it less accessible earlier in your research. It's also a good idea to check the index to find any relevant discussions included in other chapters and entries. 

Treatises

For recommendations, see Getting Started. This is a more complete lists of the library's treatises on this area of law. In addition, you can often find coverage of criminal procedure-related issues in litigation-oriented practice treatises covering other substantive topics. 

Law Reviews

The scholarly commentary found in law review articles makes them an essential source for scholarly or academic legal projects. They can also be of use in more practically-oriented research, especially. If you can find an article that closely matches your issue. You can use these links to search HeinOnline and Westlaw for relevant law review articles. 

American Law Reports

American Law Reports are an excellent resource for researching narrow issues that arise under criminal procedure, especially at the federal level. In addition, you can find many useful ALR annotations discussing the "Construction and Application" of various Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. You can search the ALR database or its index in Westlaw with the following links:

This list of criminal procedure-related ALRs should give you a sense of what's out there, but it's by no means complete:

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