Paralegal Studies

The state of Illinois website is the best place to start looking for information from official state agencies and programs.
The homepage of the website highlights popular services, the latest news from various Illinois agencies, and popular agencies - scroll down the page to see all of the options.
Additionally, visitors can find the latest information about COVID-19, helpful websites for Illinois visitors, and topics pertaining to residents such as education, employment, and business.

Provides links to Illinois Executive branch offices. Included are: Office of the Governor, Office of the Lt. Governor; Illinois Secretary of State, State Treasurer, Illinois Attorney General, and the State of Illinois Comptroller

Provides links to the websites for the Illinois General Assembly, the Illinois House Democrats, the Illinois House Republicans, the Illinois Senate Democrats, the Illinois Senate Republicans, and the Auditor General.

Provides links and information for the websites concerning the Illinois Judicial branch. Websites included are the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, the Illinois Supreme Court, the State of Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board, The office of the Appellate Prosecutor and the Office of the State Appellate Defender.

**Criminal Law Handbook and Monthly Digests**
The Illinois Handbook of Criminal Law Decisions contain summaries of significant decisions. The Handbook is organized by topic, and decision summaries are added as cases are decided.

**Handbook on Briefs and Oral Argument**
A guide to effective brief writing and persuasive oral argument.

**Illinois Supreme Court Pending Issues**
Summaries of significant criminal law issues raised in cases currently pending in the Illinois Supreme Court, organized by topic.

**Numbering System for State Appellate Defender Publications**
A guide to the topical numbering system used by the Office of the State Appellate Defender in its publications.

The bound volumes of the United States Reports contain the fourth and final generation of the Court’s opinions. See the file entitled "Information About Opinions." However, the materials collected here contain not just opinions, but the full text, from cover through index, of bound volumes 502 et seq., including all of the opinions, orders, and other materials issued for the Court’s 1991 Term and subsequent years. Additional volumes will be included here after they are published in print form.

Caution: Only the printed bound volumes of the United States Reports contain the final, official opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States. In case of discrepancies between a bound volume and the materials included here--or any other version of the same materials, whether print or electronic, official or unofficial--the printed bound volume controls.

Includes the following rules: The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure; The Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure; Interim Bankruptcy Rule 1007-I; The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure; The Federal Rules of Evidence; Rules Governing Section 2254 and Section 2255 Proceedings; Rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; and Local Court Rules.

The Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) provides a way of exploring the Code of Federal Regulations as it exists today and at points in time back to January 2017. The eCFR allows you to: *browse the Code of Federal Regulations as it existed at any point in time; *compare the regulations as they existed on any two dates *view a timeline of how the CFR content has changed *search for specific terms *subscribe to changes in the regulations.

****The eCFR is not an official legal edition of the CFR.****
Understanding the eCFR explains its status and the editorial process.

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the departments and agencies of the Federal Government. It is divided into 50 titles representing broad areas subject to federal regulation.

The Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR) is a continuously updated online version of the CFR and provides enhanced features that are not part of the published CFR

Congress established its Law Library in 1832, recognizing its need for ready access to reliable legal materials. With a collection of over 2.65 million volumes spanning the ages and covering virtually every jurisdiction in the world, the Law Library has become the world’s largest law library.

The United States Code ("Code") contains the general and permanent laws of the United States, arranged into 54 broad titles according to subject matter. The organization of the Code was originally established by Congress in 1926 with the enactment of the act of June 30, 1926, chapter 712. Since then, 27 of the titles, referred to as positive law titles, have been restated and enacted into law by Congress as titles of the Code. The remaining titles, referred to as non-positive law titles, are made up of sections from many acts of Congress that were either included in the original Code or subsequently added by the editors of the Code, i.e., the Office of the Law Revision Counsel, and its predecessors in the House of Representatives.

The United States Statutes at Large, typically referred to as the Statutes at Large, is the permanent collection of all laws and resolutions enacted during each session of Congress. The Statutes at Large is prepared and published by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

National Institute of Justice is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. Criminal and social justice students will find highly useful research reports from this agency for their own research papers.

The NIC is a center of learning that shapes and advances effective correctional practice and public policy. Its research reports are a highly useful resource for criminal and social justice students. Find the latest research in the field of corrections.

The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program has been the starting place for law enforcement executives, students of criminal justice, researchers, members of the media, and the public at large seeking information on crime in the nation. The program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet the need for reliable uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics.
Today, four annual publications, Crime in the United States, National Incident-Based Reporting System, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, and Hate Crime Statistics are produced from data received from over 18,000 city, university/college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the program. The crime data are submitted either through a state UCR Program or directly to the FBI’s UCR Program.

Public and private laws are also known as slip laws. A slip law is an official publication of the law and is competent evidence admissible in all state and Federal courts and tribunals of the United States. After the President signs a bill into law, it is delivered to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where it is assigned a law number, legal statutory citation (public laws only), and prepared for publication as a slip law. Private laws receive their legal statutory citations when they are published in the United States Statutes at Large.

Prior to publication as a slip law, OFR also prepares marginal notes and citations for each law, and a legislative history for public laws only. Until the slip law is published, through the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), the text of the law can be found by accessing the enrolled version of the bill

CAP includes all official, book-published United States case law — every volume designated as an official report of decisions by a court within the United States.

The Legal Information Institute (LII) was founded in 1992 by co-directors Thomas R. Bruce and Peter W. Martin (now Director and Director Emeritus, respectively). Its work is supported by the National Center for Automated Information Research, a growing number of corporate sponsors, and the Keck Foundation through grants and funded joint studies. The LII publishes electronic versions of core materials in numerous areas of the law, both on the web and in other electronic products. They range from the Constitution to the U.S. Code, from Supreme Court decisions to the Code of Federal Regulations.

FindLaw, a part of Thomson Reuters, is a pioneer and innovator in marketing solutions for law firms, online legal information and services for lawyers, businesses, and individuals. Today, FindLaw.com remains the most popular site for free legal information on the Internet with more than eight million visitors each month and the largest online lawyer directory available.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the primary source for criminal justice statistics, collects, analyzes, publishes, and disseminates information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. This should be the first place students should come for social crime statistical data for their research papers.

Officially coming into existence on July 1, 1870, the Department of Justice was empowered to handle all criminal prosecutions and civil suits in which the United States had an interest. To assist the Attorney General, the 1870 Act also created the Office of the Solicitor General, who represents the interests of the United States before the U.S. Supreme Court. The 1870 Act remains the foundation for the Department’s authority, but the structure of the Department of Justice has changed over the years, with the addition of the offices of Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, and the formation of various components, offices, boards and divisions.

The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) is a federally funded resource that is a great one-stop-shop site for any topic related to criminal and social justice, the law, and public safety.