A legal treatise is an extensive scholarly work covering all the law related to a particular legal topic. Treatises serve to provide information about the law and references to specific statutes, cases, and other relevant resources. There is not a standard format for treatises, and they may be in bound, looseleaf, or digital format. A treatise may be of use to a student or practitioner for study, research, or practical purposes. The following are a list of legal treatises on privacy law. Dates listed in parentheses indicate the most recent online update.
Law journal articles are a rich source of legal information and particularly influential in privacy law. Before using a journal article as support for your research, make sure you evaluate the authoritativeness of the article. Key evaluative factors for a law review article are the content, the author, the journal, and the date. In the field of privacy law, the Future of Privacy Forum awards papers every year as "Privacy Papers for Policy Makers." These papers may be especially good sources of law and policy in the field of privacy.
To locate law journal articles published in the last twenty to thirty years, search the Law Reviews and Journals database on Westlaw Edge or Lexis+. To locate older journal articles or to view articles in their original format, search the Law Journal Library on HeinOnline. To locate unpublished or forthcoming articles, search free databases like SSRN or bepress Legal Repository. You may also consult the website of a particular journal to locate articles or a law school's online scholarship repository (like the Carolina Law Scholarship Repository).
Your privacy law research may also involve locating scholarship from other disciplines outside of law, like computer science, consumer health, or business. Sources of scholarship that may help with your research include the UNC Libraries E-Journals Listing for a list of available journals or UNC Libraries E-Research by Discipline for a list of online databases organized by research area. You can also search for articles by keyword, author, or title in UNC Libraries Articles+ to search UNC Libraries extensive collection of digital journal articles
In order to stay up-to-date on changes and new developments in privacy law, keeping track of privacy news updates is important. There are many different online outlets that provide news specifically related to privacy law developments. By monitoring news, you can help determine if your law is accurate as well as keep informed about new applications of old law.
Be sure to consider other sources of news including technology publications like Ars Technica, law firm blogs, advocacy organization websites, and traditional sources of news like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. If you are interested in the privacy implications within another area of law, make sure to seek out news and practice centers from that area of law!
In addition to news, you may need additional sources for compelling facts to support your privacy law research. Information in the form of statistics and reports may be necessary for locating information on the public's opinions on privacy, privacy law policies, or numbers on household using certain products.
To learn more about sources of statistics, consult the research guide for Online Statistical Information for the UNC Law Community. The guide is organized by topic, including Internet and Technology.
A 50 State Survey is a compiled list of laws across all 50 states on a particular topic. 50 State surveys can be very useful for areas of privacy governed by state law and may save hours of time involved in researching a topic from the beginning. However, topics with surveys available are limited, and the compiled laws should be updated and verified before relying on them. The following resources provide access to compiled 50 State Surveys on privacy law topics:
Chart Builders are tools that allow users to create their own exportable charts of state laws by selecting jurisdictions and aspects of the law to compare.
The major legal research databases (available to the UNC Law community with a login) maintain practical resource centers for privacy law that gather privacy law-related forms, checklists, policies, practice guides, 50-state surveys, news, and other resources in one place.
