This page highlights recent acquisitions and regularly updated sources in Westlaw and Lexis+. It recommends subjects to use when searching BLS Library's SARA catalog for books. Within a guide box category or sub-category, books are listed "newest to oldest."
Westlaw - Subscription:
Constitutional Law:
Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure (multi-volume treatise)
by
In SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - WESTLAW. Enter your Westlaw username/password.Available in Westlaw. BLS Library also provides this treatise as a Proview ebook.
Excerpt from Westlaw's description: "Rotunda, Nowak, and Amar's Treatise on Constitutional Law: Substance and Procedure provides scholars, practitioners, judges, and officials with an up-to-date analysis and synthesis of federal constitutional law. Focus is primarily on the Supreme Court and incorporates the political, historical, and economic background of court decisions."
Modern Constitutional Law (multi-volume treatise)
by
In SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - WESTLAW. Enter your Westlaw username/password. BLS Library also provides this treatise as a Proview ebook.
Excerpt from Westlaw's description: "Judges from various state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have cited Modern Constitutional Law in support of their decisions. The treatise covers an expansive range of topics, and is designed to make constituitonal doctrine accessible to lawyers and non-lawyers."
Freedom of Speech/First Amendment:
Smolla & Nimmer on Freedom of Speech
by
Available in Westlaw + as a ProView ebook. 1 non-circulating print copy (call #: KF4772 .N54) also is available in BLS Library's Main collection.
Excerpt from Westlaw's content highlights: "Smolla & Nimmer on Freedom of Speech provides in-depth coverage and expert analysis of free speech and free press First Amendment issues, including history, theory, doctrine, and insights into cases and decisions."
Search and Seizure/Fourth Amendment:
Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment
by
In SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - WESTLAW. Enter your Westlaw username/password.
Westlaw's content highlights: "This set provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of contemporary Fourth Amendment issues involving search and seizure."
Lexis+ - Subscription:
Criminal Constitutional Law:
Criminal Constitutional Law (treatise)
by
Available in Lexis+. Enter your Lexis+ usesrname/password.
Excerpt from Lexis+ description: "This wide-ranging treatise examines all the complex constitutional issues involved in criminal law. Criminal Constitutional Law provides substantive discussion, as well as procedural guidelines on tactics and strategy. The treatise analyzes all important Supreme Court, federal and state decisions interpreting Constitution provisions."
Constitutional Rights of Prisoners:
Constitutional Rights of Prisoners (treatise)
by
Available in Lexis+. Enter your Lexis+ usesrname/password.
Excerpt from Lexis+ description: "Constitutional Rights of Prisoners details critical information on all aspects of prison litigation, including information on trial and appeal, conditions of isolated confinement, access to the courts, parole, right to medical aid, and liabilities of prison officials."
When searching BLS Library's SARA catalog for materials, relevant subjects to search include:
Constitutional Law: General:
2025:
Constitutional Ambiguity and the Interpretation of Presidential Power
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available. BLS Library also provides 1 print circulating copy with this call number/location: KF5053 .W38 2025 (Main).
Contents: Constitutional ambiguity and presidential power -- Writing a new constitution -- Constitutional ambiguity -- A historical time series -- Obstacles to the interpretation of the constitution in early America -- The sovereign power and constitutional interpretation -- A strict interpretation of the constitution -- A living constitution -- The unitary executive theory -- The constitution and the supreme practical test.
Constitutionalism and Liberty: Essays in Honor of David K. Nichols
by
Contents: Section I: Separation of powers and constitutional authority -- Gouverneur Morris on the mixed regime and separation of powers / Christopher J. Bissex, Morning Consult -- John Adams and the defining of the federalist presidency / Jordan T. Cash, Michigan State University -- The compromise of 1850: The Senate's triumvirate on the price of union / Kevin J. Burns, Benedictine College -- Ronald Reagan as New Deal Conservative / Anthony D. Bartl, Angelo State University -- President Obama and the Jeffersonian tradition of executive power / Mark A. Scully, Lee University -- Executive privileges / Jeffrey J. Poelvoorde, Converse College -- American political development and ideational institutionalism / Benjamin A. Kleinerman, Baylor University, Matthew K. Reising, Princeton University -- Section II: Constitutional law and the American judiciary -- Power struggle: Locke and Montesquieu on judicial power / Adam M. Carrington, Ashland University -- Modern administration and the integrity of the article III judicial power / Matthew S. Brogdon, Utah Valley University -- The myth of the modern judiciary / Benjamin Slomski, Purdue University Fort Wayne -- "Tender and sacred ties": The Abolitionist defense of parental rights and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments / Joseph K. Griffith II, Ashland University -- The flag and the American constellation / Jacob Boros, Saint Vincent College -- Section III: Political theory and Republican government / James Madison's memorial and remonstrance and the first amendment / Michael P. Zuckert, University of Notre Dame -- Thomas Jefferson on higher education / Lee Ward, Baylor University -- Leo Strauss on the significance of the mutability of "natural right" / Timothy W. Burns, Baylor University -- Macbeth and Christian rule / Jerome C. Foss, Saint Vincent College -- Michelangelo's David and the Florentine Republic / J. David Alvis, Wofford College.
Who Am I to Judge?: Judicial Craft Versus Constitutional Theory
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. BLS Library provides multiple copies of this digital book.
Contents: Looking for Good Judgment in All the Right Places -- Judging Without Theory: The 1930s -- What Is Constitutional Theory and Why Should We Care? -- Why It's a Mistake to Ask Whether Originalism Is a Good Constitutional Theory -- Why It Doesn't Take a Theory to Beat a Theory -- Students for Fair Admissions and the Craft of Judging.
2024:
Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique
by
In SARA catalog record, click: " ACCESS ONLINE VERSION -- (DE GRUYTER)." Support an "unlimited" number of BLS users.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "A detailed and compelling examination of how the legal theory of originalism ignores and distorts the very constitutional history from which it derives interpretive authority."
Constitutional Symmetry
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - CAMBRIDGE. BLS Library provides multiple copies of this digital book. Excerpt from ebook's description: "Intense political disagreements over constitutional law and the Supreme Court have divided America. Constitutional Symmetry offers a fresh perspective by urging judges to make decisions that work 'symmetrically' across major partisan and ideological divides instead of favoring one partisan coalition over the other. Zachary S. Price argues this approach will aid the political process, align with the role morality of judging, and advance the framers' hopes for the Constitution. Chapters explore how this approach can encourage new solutions to fraught debates over free speech, religious liberty, separation of powers, federalism, affirmative action, gun rights, abortion, parental rights, and the law of democracy."
Memory and Authority: The Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "From one of the nation's preeminent constitutional scholars, a sweeping rethinking of the uses of history in constitutional interpretation."
Overturned: The Rhetoric of Overruling in the United States Supreme Court
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. Multiple digital copies are available.
Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism
by
In SARA catalog record, click: "Online resources: Click here to access online." Multiple digital copies are available. 1 print copy also is available.
2023:
How to Interpret the Constitution
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBSCO. Multiple copies are available.
Excerpt from this ebook's summary: "Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein provides a lively introduction to competing approaches to interpreting the Constitution - and argues that the only way to choose one is to ask whether it would change American life for the better or worse. If a method of interpretation would eliminate the right of privacy, allow racial segregation, or obliterate free speech, it would be unacceptable for that reason. But some Supreme Court justices are committed to "originalism," arguing that the meaning of the Constitution is settled by how it was publicly understood when it was ratified. Originalists insist that their approach is dictated by the Constitution. That, Sunstein argues, is a big mistake. The Constitution doesn't contain instructions for its own interpretation. Any approach to constitutional interpretation needs to be defended in terms of its broad effects--what it does to our rights and our institutions. It must respect those rights and institutions--and safeguard the conditions for democracy itself."
Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths of the Constitution
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. Multiple copies are available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "In this profoundly important reassessment of constitutional interpretation, the eminent legal philosopher Hadley Arkes argues that 'originalism' alone is an inadequate answer to judicial activism."
Older:
We the Elites: Why the U.S. Constitution Serves the Few
by
In SARA catalog for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "This book exposes the constitution for what it is – a rulebook to protect capitalism for the elites. The misplaced faith of social movements in the constitution as a framework for achieving justice actually obstructs social change - incessant lengthy election cycles, staggered terms and legislative sessions have kept those movements trapped in a redundant loop. This stymies progress on issues like labour rights, public health and climate change, projecting the American people and rest of the world towards destruction."
A Republic of Statutes: The New American Constitution
by
Excerpt from this book's description: "William Eskridge and John Ferejohn propose an original theory of constitutional law whereby, while the Constitution provides a vision, our democracy advances by means of statutes that supplement or even supplant the written Constitution."
Constitutional Law, International Law & Transnational Governance:
Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance Failures
by
In SARA catalog record for this open-access ebook, click: Online resources: Constitutionalism and transnational governance failures.
Law for Leviathan: Constitutional Law, International Law, and the State
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Constitutional Law, U.S. States:
Constitutional Right to Abortion: Congressional Research Service Legal Sidebar:
Constitutional Right to Abortion: Recent (2023-2025) BLS Library Book Acquisitions:
Abortion in the United States: The Moral and Legal Landscape
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - TAYLOR & FRANCIS. Should support "unlimited" number of users.
Excerpt from abstract: "This book explores the seismic shift brought about by the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which dramatically changed the constitutional standing of abortion decisions set in place by Roe v. Wade 50 years earlier. The authors describe the history of US Supreme Court’s decision-making around abortion and some of its attendant considerations, including the constitutional right to privacy, moral obligations to protect life, and determinations about when life begins."
After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Anti-Dobbs: An Interdisciplinary Polemic
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do About It
by
Contents: How the law fails women: misogyny beyond misogynists -- The equal protection of feminists and misogynists -- Overentitlement and overempowerment -- Misogyny and maternity: abortion bans as overentitlement -- What to do about it: remaking constitutions and democracy -- From patriarchy to prohibition: resetting entitlements through constitutional change -- Rebalancing power through parity democracy -- Building feminist infrastructures: the constitutionalism of care.
Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe v. Wade
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "Fighting Mad is a book about what 'reproductive justice' means and what it looks like to fight for it. Editors Krystale E. Littlejohn and Rickie Solinger bring together many of the strongest, most resistant voices in the country to describe the impacts of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision on abortion access and care."
The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBC). 1 copy available. First-time use of EBC platform requires BLS patrons to click: Create Account.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "Decades before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pregnant people faced arrest and prosecution for supposed crimes against the fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses they gestated. The Pregnancy Police investigates the legal arguments undergirding these prosecutions and sheds much-needed light on the networks of health-care providers, social workers, and legal personnel participating in this ongoing surveillance and punishment of pregnant people."
Quasi Person: The Week 24 Abortion Watershed
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: "Online resources: Click here to access online." 1 copy available.
Excerpt from Introduction, p. 18: "In this book I discuss only the acute dilemma of whether a viable fetus has a right to be born healthy at the stage of viability, in light of the latest technological developments." Includes discussion of "the important work of the legal scholar Judith Thomson."
Regulating Abortion: The Politics of U.S. Abortion Policy
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBSCO. Unlimited copies available.
Excerpt from ebook's description: "Explores the historical development and severe ramifications of America's strict abortion regulations."
Roe v. Dobbs: The Past, Present, and Future of a Constitutional Right to Abortion
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "With this volume, Roe v. Dobbs: The Past, Present and Future of a Constitutional Right of Abortion, we confront the remarkable beginning and end--once again, after a half-century of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, shockingly overruled by the Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The goal of this book is to bring together some of our nation's leading constitutional scholars, historians, philosophers, and medical experts to share their views on whether there should be a constitutional right to abortion and what the consequences of Dobbs might be."
Executive Power & Presidential Immunity:
Constitutional Ambiguity and the Interpretation of Presidential Power
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 digital copy is available. BLS Library also provides 1 print circulating copy with this call number/location: KF5053 .W38 2025 (Main).
Contents: Constitutional ambiguity and presidential power -- Writing a new constitution -- Constitutional ambiguity -- A historical time series -- Obstacles to the interpretation of the constitution in early America -- The sovereign power and constitutional interpretation -- A strict interpretation of the constitution -- A living constitution -- The unitary executive theory -- The constitution and the supreme practical test.
Constitutionalism and Liberty: Essays in Honor of David K. Nichols
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 digital copy is available.
Includes: Section I: Separation of powers and constitutional authority -- Gouverneur Morris on the mixed regime and separation of powers / Christopher J. Bissex, Morning Consult -- John Adams and the defining of the federalist presidency / Jordan T. Cash, Michigan State University -- The compromise of 1850: The Senate's triumvirate on the price of union / Kevin J. Burns, Benedictine College -- Ronald Reagan as New Deal Conservative / Anthony D. Bartl, Angelo State University -- President Obama and the Jeffersonian tradition of executive power / Mark A. Scully, Lee University -- Executive privileges / Jeffrey J. Poelvoorde, Converse College -- American political development and ideational institutionalism / Benjamin A. Kleinerman, Baylor University, Matthew K. Reising, Princeton University.
The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy
by
Contents: Prologue: Daredevil Sunday -- Nixon's lost insurance -- The benign prerogative -- The VP's job -- "A total pardon" -- To charge le grand fromage -- Both sides of West Exec -- Expletive deleted -- Supreme stakes -- The vise closes -- Pardons and self-pardons -- The sixth option -- Party in interest -- The sun sets on Nixon -- Nightmare's end -- Ford settles in -- The collapsing floor -- A leak-free decision -- Delivering the pumpkin -- The prosecution caves -- From Nixon to Trump -- Showdown at Casa Pacifica -- The last cuff links -- "We have all played a part" -- The legacy of the pardon -- Ford's burden -- All roads lead to, and from, Willie Horton -- The atrophy and rebirth of the pardon power -- The first-term Trump pardons -- Epilogue: Time clarifies -- Author's note -- Notes -- Index.
Prosecution of the President of the United States: The Constitution, Executive Power, and the Rule of Law
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Contents: The Founding Era -- The Nixon Era and the 1973 Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum -- The Clinton Era -- The Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Presidential Immunity -- The Second Memorandum of the Office of Legal Counsel -- Donald J. Trump v. Cyrus R. Vance -- The Separation of Powers -- Impeachment: Sequentiality -- Impeachment: Criminality -- The Rule of Law.
Freedom of Speech/First Amendment:
Free Speech and Incitement in the Twenty-First Century
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBC). 1 digital copy is available. Excerpt from ebook's description: "Explores the line between free speech protected by the First Amendment and unprotected incitement to imminent lawless action."
Platform Neutrality Rights: AI Censors and the Future of Freedom
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBC). Multiple digital copies are available. Excerpt from ebook's description: "This book analyzes questions of platform bias, algorithmic filtering and ranking of Internet speech, and declining perceptions of online freedom."
Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. Multiple copies are available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "[P]rovides the first comprehensive synthesis of the case law on academic freedom and the First Amendment at American universities. Responding to the judicial decisions and drawing on the justification for academic freedom as a professional norm, he develops a theory of academic freedom as a distinctive First Amendment right."
Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide
by
Excerpt from this guide's description: "Free speech is indispensable on college campuses, essential to learning and the pursuit of truth. But free speech does not mean a free-for-all. A university that values free expression still has to regulate some speech to enable its educational mission. So how can we distinguish reasonable restrictions from impermissible infringement? In this clear-headed, no-nonsense explainer, Cass Sunstein takes us briskly through a wide range of scenarios involving students, professors, and administrators."
The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. Multiple copies are available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "A timely, revelatory look at freedom of speech--our most basic right and the one that protects all the others."
Gun Rights and Regulation/Second Amendment:
Gun Present: Inside a Southern District Attorney's Battle Against Gun Violence
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Madison's Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: this history "overturns the conventional wisdom about the Second Amendment--showing that the right to bear arms was not about protecting liberty but about preserving slavery."
New Histories of Gun Rights and Regulation: Essays on the Place of Guns in American Law and Society
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - OXFORD.
Excerpt from this ebook's abstract: "The essays in this book explore the historical tradition of gun rights and regulation, broadening the growing scholarly conversation about the law and history of firearms. The contributors, [who] include distinguished historians and legal scholars, add valuable new context and content to the place of guns in American law and society."
The Gun Dilemma: How History Is Against Expanded Gun Rights
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Excerpt from this ebook's abstract: "Drawing on new information sources, this book examines those [contemporary] gun controversies in the light of our gun history and contemporary policy environment, covering gun policy areas including assault weapons, ammunition magazines, silencers, public gun brandishing and display, and the emergent Second Amendment sanctuary movement. Revealing and illuminating as that history is, the author argues that we should not be straitjacketed by that history, but rather informed by it as the nation struggles with how to frame its gun policies."
Vote Gun : How Gun Rights Became Politicized in the United States
by
In SARA catalog record for this ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 3 copies available.
Excerpt from this ebook's description: "Patrick J. Charles charts the rise of gun rights activism from the early twentieth century through the 1980 presidential election, pinpointing the role of the 1968 Gun Control Act....He examines in detail how the National Rifle Association reinvented itself as well as how other advocacy groups challenged the NRA’s political monopoly. Offering a deep dive into the politicization of gun rights, Vote Gun reveals the origins of the acrimonious divisions that persist to this day."
Voting Rights/First & Fourteenth Amendments:
Aligning Election Law
by
Available through Oxford Academic.
Excerpt from abstract: "This book argues that alignment between governmental outputs and popular preferences should be a tenet of the law of democracy. Alignment is a core democratic value. Yet it isn’t appreciated by election law scholarship, much of which focuses on other democratic goals. Nor do the courts consider alignment when deciding election law cases. In fact, the Roberts Court has undermined alignment at almost every turn. And in part because of these rulings, modern American politics is marred by pervasive misalignment. If alignment were recognized as a legal and political principle, it could function as a sword or as a shield."
The Court v. the Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights
by
In SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - EBC. 1 copy available.
Publisher's summary: "Summary: "In The Court v. The Voters, law professor Joshua Douglas takes us behind the scenes of significant cases in voting rights--some surprising and unknown, some familiar--to investigate the historic crossroads that have irrevocably changed our elections and the nation. In crisp and accessible prose, Douglas tells the story of each case, sheds light on the intractable election problems we face as a result, and highlights the unique role the highest court has played in producing a broken electoral system."