Exploring Initiative and Referendum Law: Selected State Research Guides

Researching ballot measures can be one of the most daunting types of legal research. Exploring Initiative and Referendum Law: Selected State Research Guides offers legal researchers an easy-to-use guide that provides thorough overviews of I&R (initiative and referendum) laws within twenty-three states. This unique resource provides state-specific guidance about both forms of I&R law, those state laws permitting I&R, and those state laws enacted as a result of the I&R process. Any legal researcher beginning a project or needing to know just where to go for the right resources will get helpful general and specific information on practical research strategies and resources.

Up to now, finding the literature to research the state-specific history of a law passed by initiative or referendum has been extremely difficult. This book fills this gap by providing top researchers with brief overviews of the individual state processes while providing important primary and secondary sources, including Web sites. The guide’s chapters are separated alphabetically by state for fast and easy reference. Annotated bibliographies of books, articles, and Web sites are provided, along with instructions about what documents one can expect to find on the Web, and how to use free databases.

Because of this useful volume’s unique focus, the book may well become an essential resource for law librarians, attorneys, law faculty, law students, and Political Science scholars.

This book was published as a special issue of Legal Reference Services Quarterly.

Beth Williams is Reference Librarian, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University School of Law. As a member of the Columbia Law Library Reference Department, she teaches legal research to first-year law students every fall and participates in teaching seminars in Advanced Legal Research and International Legal Research each spring semester. She holds appointments as Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School and as Lecturer in Information and Archive Management at COlumbia University.