Searching law review and journal literature
Try to use specialized collections and and tailored/focused searches when looking for scholarly articles:
- The Law Reviews & Journals collections on LX + and WL offer solid coverage of articles from the 2000s forward; for older literature (esp. for the 1970s for some of the foundational literature around the concept of "consumer law"), Hein Online's Law Journal Library has a deeper collection (going back to vol. 1 for most journals), but may have less intuitive or less familiar search functions/features.
- As with other secondary sources, you can try limiting to related but focused topical/practice areas (such as Antitrust, or Products Liability), to search among specialty journals:
- on LX+, from the Law Reviews & Journals page, click on a Practice Area (e.g., Banking) before inputting your search;
- on WL, from the Law Reviews & Journals page, check boxes to filter for Topic (e.g., Privacy Law) before inputting your search.
- Legal article indexes (such as LegalTrac and Index to Legal Periodicals) allow you to search scholarly (as well as professional magazines and other legal news) literature using a "consumer protection" subject heading, meaning you can quickly home in on articles that mention your other search terms and focus on consumer protection law. Use the Advanced search template and include the phrase (in quotes) "consumer protection" in the subject/subject terms field as one line of your search.
Specialty journals
Available via Hein Online, there are just a few specialty journals devoted to consumer law generally:
