LibGuides: United States Constitutional History Resources: Literature Reviews and Secondary Sources

Conducting a Literature Review

In order to determine if your topic has been written about before, and also to gather relevant resources, you will need to conduct what is called a "literature review." This involves gathering sources that relate to your topic.

Step One: Develop Your Searches and Start Your Research Log

The first step in a literature review is to develop your search queries. Write down a brief issue statement, then use that issue statement to formulate potential search terms. You may want to use the Law Library's Legal Research Worksheet to structure your thoughts and develop some initial searches.

As you're running your searches, keep track of the databases you have consulted and the search terms you used in each databases. A good way to do this is to use the following style:

Database: [Name of database]

Search Used: [Exact text of search]

Relevant Results Located: [A description of the search results, including the number of results and the number/type of relevant results located]

Step Two: Search Law Review Databases

You will then need to look through law journal and other databases in order to locate materials. Keep in mind that LexisNexis and Westlaw only include law journal articles from the past 20-25 years, and so many relevant sources will not be included in search results from those databases; to locate more historical articles, you will need to look at HeinOnline and the Index to Legal Periodicals. To conduct a more thorough literature review, you will need to check the following databases:

Law Journal Library This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides PDF full-text access to legal periodicals. Information on constructing searches can be found in the Advanced Search Syntax Guide.
HeinOnline hosts a dedicated LibGuide for this collection that offers additional information, including search tips.

Step Three: Search Non-Law Databases

In addition to these law-specific databases, you will also find many relevant sources by looking at non-law databases that cover history and social sciences. The following are databases that are likely to have relevant results:

JSTOR
JSTOR contains the full-text, in PDF, for all journals it covers. JSTOR covers journals in law, political science, history, economics, business, and other subjects, and is often a great first place to start for journals outside of law.
Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete covers trade magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals in a variety of disciplines.
ProQuest Research Library
This database provides one-stop access to more than 4,000 periodicals from one of the broadest, most inclusive general reference databases ProQuest has to offer. Search from a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications and magazines covering over 150 academic disciplines.

SSRN- Legal Scholarship Network This link opens in a new window
SSRN is a website devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research and communication among researchers.in the social sciences and humanities. SSRN is viewed as particularly strong in the fields of economics, finance, accounting, management, and law.
College of Law faculty can learn more about SSRN including eJournals, posting to SSRN, and the Research Paper Series here

Google Scholar
Google Scholar searches broadly across all disciplines and includes information on citing references. To make it easier to access the full text of articles, use the GSU VPN.

Step Four: Search the Library Catalog

In addition to journal articles, there are a number of books that will be relevant to your research. To locate these, run a search in the library catalog, GIL-Find. Keep in mind that the library catalog does not run a full text search, so you may need to search for more general principles (such as "Fifth Amendment" than in article databases.

The books below are examples of books located in the Law Library collection that discuss the construction of and debates over the Constitution. There are a number of other books available on the same topic.

The Summer Of 1787 by David O. Stewart
Call Number: KF4510.S74 2007
ISBN: 9780743286923
Publication Date: 2007-04-10
A true-life suspense story, The Summer of 1787 takes readers into the sweltering room in which delegates struggled for four months to produce the flawed but enduring document that defined the nation, then and now.
Original Intentions by M. E. Bradford; Forrest McDonald (Foreword by)
Call Number: KF 4541.B68 1993
ISBN: 0820315214
Publication Date: 1993-08-01
A More Perfect Union: The Making of the United States Constitution by William Peters
Call Number: KF 4520.P48 1987
ISBN: 0517564505
Publication Date: 1987-12-16
Negotiating the Constitution by Joseph M. Lynch
Call Number: KF 4510.L96 1999
ISBN: 0801435587
Publication Date: 1999-05-01
No concept sparks more controversy in constitutional debate than "original intent." Offering a legal historian's approach to the subject, this book demonstrates that the framers deliberately obscured one of their more important decisions. Joseph M. Lynch argues that the Constitution was a product of political struggles involving regional interests, economic concerns, and ideology. The framers, he maintains, settled on enigmatic wording of the Necessary and Proper Clause and of the General Welfare provision in the Spending Clause as a compromise, leaving the extent of federal power to be determined by the political process. During ratification, however, attempts by dissident framers to undo the compromise were repelled in The Federalist: charges of overly broad congressional powers were met with protestations that in fact these powers were limited. Lynch describes how early lawmakers applied the Constitution to such issues as executive power and privilege, the deportation of aliens, and the prohibition of seditious speech. He follows the disputes over the interpretation of this document focusing on James Madison's changing views as the new government took shape and political parties were formed. Lynch points out that the first six Congresses and President George Washington disregarded the framers' intentions when they were deemed impractical to follow. In contrast, he warns that the version of original intent put forth in recent Supreme Court opinions regarding congressional power could hinder Congress in serving the nation."
The Constitution Before the Judgment Seat by Jürgen Heideking; John P. Kaminski (Editor); Richard Leffler (Editor)
Call Number: KF 4520.H4513 2012
ISBN: 9780813931746
Publication Date: 2012-02-15
Originally published in German in 1988, the late Jurgen Heideking's exhaustive study of the debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution compares the methods used to call state ratifying conventions and explores everything that made up the ratification debate, from town meetings and festive culture to private correspondence and print media. In Heideking's view, the construction of a new political process was an unintended but key result of ratification debates over the federal Constitution. Heideking's work anticipated diverse strands of subsequent scholarship; this translation can claim to provide not only an invaluable account of the ratification debates but also a master narrative for integrating future studies.
Ratifying the Constitution by Michael A. Gillespie (Editor); Michael Lienesch (Editor); Forrest McDonald (Foreword by); W. Carey McWilliams (Afterword by)
Call Number: KF 4541.A2 R37 1989
ISBN: 0700604022
Publication Date: 1989-04-01
The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution by Leonard W. Levy (Editor); Dennis J. Mahoney (Editor)
Call Number: KF4541.F7 1987
ISBN: 0029187907
Publication Date: 1987-09-01
The Bill of Rights and the States by Patrick T. Conley (Editor); John P. Kaminski (Editor)
Call Number: KF4750.Z95 B55 1992
ISBN: 094561229x
Publication Date: 1992-04-01
Fourteen individual state essays elucidate the complexitites of local and regional interests that shaped the debate over individual rights and the eventual adoption of the Bill of Rights.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 by John R. Vile (Editor)
Call Number: KF4520.Z0 V55 2005
ISBN: 1851096698
Publication Date: 2005-06-24
The first encyclopedic treatment of the personalities, politics, and events involved in drafting the U.S. Constitution. * 350 A-Z entries and dozens of sidebars including persons, events, compromises, committees, constitutional provisions, and even trivia * Two separate chronologies--one for day-to-day events at the Convention and one covering key events in the years surrounding the Convention * Primary source documents including copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution and its amendments * Extensive cross-references, a topical table of contents, bibliographical entries, a complete index, and maps
History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, with Notices of Its Principal Framers by George Ticknor Curtis
Call Number: KF4541.C86 2006
ISBN: 1575888777
Publication Date: 2006-06-01

Step Five: Check Cited and Citing Resources

In addition to these strategies, make sure to check for related articles that may not come up directly in your search. There are two ways to do this:

In LexisNexis, Westlaw, and any other databases that support it, check for articles that cite to a relevant article you’ve located. In LexisNexis and Westlaw, this means looking at the Shepard’s or KeyCite results.
In all sources, scour the footnotes/endnotes/cited references. You’ll invariably find relevant resources that you would not have come across otherwise.

Determining If You Are Finished

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell if you have located all of the resources you need. A good general rule of thumb for this type of project is to stop once you see the same sources over and over again with no new relevant material.