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Writing A Law Dissertation Literature Review

731 words (3 pages) Law Dissertation Help Guide

5th May 2020 Law Dissertation Help Guide Reference this In-house law team

Writing a law dissertation literature review

Legal academic dissertations at all levels now typically incorporate some type of ‘literature review’. Generally this is incorporated in an early section in your dissertation.

The following is a guide to help you through the mind field of your literature review. It is by its very nature general in its advise and you must always check the specific requirements of your own institution to maximise your chances of success.

The most effective literature review will be a critical review of the work of established researchers. This is something which a student new to research in the subject area may struggle with, feeling that they are not in the position to criticise the work of experienced researchers. It should be remembered that a critical review is not restricted to a criticism of the work of established researchers but also represents an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you are capable of thinking critically and with insight as to the issues raised by previous research. Conversely, if the area of law in question has evolved or significantly changed in light of a recent decision, do not be afraid to claim that the research has been superseded or indeed is no longer ‘good’ law.

A literature review can serve a number of purposes including: indicating the current level of thinking on the topic or indicating gaps within current knowledge; to provide background information to provide an overview of the topic to the non-specialist reader and to show your own grasp of the topic. Your aim should be to correctly balance the use of quotation from the work of others with a critical review and evaluation of your own. It is far too easy to liberally sprinkle references about with little or no consideration as to how these fit in to topic under consideration.

You should only include in your formal literature review those research projects which are closely related to your chosen topic. It should not be used to document all that you have read on that topic. If in doubt, concentrate on the most recent papers although you should aim to include key studies which have been widely cited elsewhere regardless of how old they may be.

It is advisable to check with your tutor whether you should refer to a range of relevant projects representing a variety of research methods or whether you should concentrate on those which have adopted the same methodology which you intent to adopt. If you opt for the first option, take care not to concentrate too heavily on one particular methodology unless it represents one which you intend to adopt.

If you are struggling to find any materials close to your chosen topic, you may wish to widen your search to include less closely-related studies or perhaps shorten the length of your review. Your tutor or supervisor may well be able to help. Do however ensure that the search you have undertaken for relevant papers and books has been adequate.

When starting your search for initial reading materials, do make good use of the staff in your institution’s library who will be able to help you locate relevant articles both in specialist academic journals, both in print and on line. These should be regarded as an essential resource even if you are studying at undergraduate level. Only obtain your sources from approved online resources such as LexisNexis, Westlaw and the like. Do not use sources which do not include details of the author and date and under no circumstances use Wikipedia. Start with more general texts to provide you with an overview of that current thinking in the area before moving on to more specialist texts. Take detailed notes as you go along and do not bank on the paper source you used at the outset being available throughout your period of study, particularly if the topic you have selected one is popular one with your peers or if your library only a few copies of the text.

The key to success at this point is planning together with a clear structure to your review by means of headings and subheadings. You should at all costs avoid your review turning into a list of disjointed description of your sources. The use of subheadings will help you keep on track and provide a sense to proportion to each of the contributing texts.

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Law: Introduction to Research

• Finding a Research Topic
• Getting Started
• Generate Research Ideas
• Brainstorming
• Scanning Material
• Suitability Analysis
• The difference between a topic and a research question

Literature Review

• Referencing

When thinking about any risks associated with your research you may realise that it is difficult to predict your research needs and the accompanying risks as you were not sure what information would be required; this is why a literature review is necessary. A thorough literature review will help identify gaps in existing knowledge where research is needed; filling those gaps is one of the prime functions of research. The literature review will indicate what is known about your chosen area of research and show where further contributions from further research can be made.

Undertaking a literature review is probably one of the most difficult stages of the research process but it can be both exciting and fulfilling. This section aims to put the literature review into context and to explain what it does and how to do it.

The literature on a particular legal topic is of fundamental importance to the international community of researchers and scholars working within particular academic disciplines. Academic publishing supports research by enabling researchers to tell the world what they have discovered and allows others researching in the same area to peer review their work; in this way, a combined body of knowledge is established.

During your research, you will use the literature to:

• develop your knowledge of your chosen topic and the research process in general terms
• ensure that you have an understanding of the current state of academic knowledge within your chosen topic
• identify the gaps in knowledge that your research will address
• ensure that your research question will not become too broad or narrow.

The Purpose of Literature Review

Understanding existing research is at the core of your study. A good literature review is important because it enables you to understand the existing work in your chosen topic as well as explaining concepts, approaches and ideas relevant to that topic.

The literature review is also essential as it will enable you to identify an appropriate research method. Your research method, and needs, can only be established in the light of a review of existing knowledge.

Your literature review is regarded as secondary research. The research process is an ongoing one, so your literature review is never really finished or entirely up to date as reading and understanding the existing literature is a constant part of being a researcher; professionally it is an obligation.

Different Types of Research

• Different types of research
• Different sources
• Understand research in your chosen area
• Explaining relevant concepts and ideas
• Contextualizing your results
• What to read?
• Peer review
• Searching the literature
• Critically evaluating documents

Your research will draw upon both primary and secondary research. The difference between primary and secondary research is that primary research is new research on a topic that adds to the existing body of knowledge. Secondary research is research into what others have written or said on the topic.

You will also draw upon primary and secondary sources to undertake your research. Primary sources are evidence recorded at the time, such as a photograph, an artifact, a diary, or the text of a statute or court ruling. Primary legal sources are the products of those bodies with the authority to make, interpret and apply the law. Secondary sources are what others have written or said about the primary source, their interpretation, support, or critique of the primary source. Similarly, secondary legal sources are what academics, lawyers, politicians, journalists, and others have said or written about a primary legal source.

Part of the aim of your studies is to make a contribution to the existing body of academic knowledge. Without a literature review there would be a risk that what you are producing is not actually newly researched knowledge; instead it may only be a replication of what is already known. The only way to ensure that your research is new is to find out what others have already done. However, this is not to say that you should never attempt to research some things that have been done before if you feel that you can provide valuable new insights.

You also need to use the literature review to build a body of useful ideas to help you conceptualise your research question and understand the current thinking on the topic. By studying the literature you will become familiar with research methods appropriate to your chosen topic and this will show you how to apply them. Careful consideration should be given to the research methods deployed by existing researchers in the topic, but this should not stifle innovative approaches. Your literature study should also demonstrate the context of your own work, and how it relates, and builds, on the work of others; ‘to make proper acknowledgment of the work of previous authors and to delineate [your] own contributions to the field’ (Sharp et al., 2002, p. 28).

When you have completed your primary research, you will still have the task of demonstrating how your research contributes to the topic in which you have been working. Comparing your results to similar work within the topic will demonstrate how you have moved the discipline forward.

Comparing your results with the gaps that you identified in the early stages of your literature review will allow you to evaluate how well you have addressed them.

A successful literature review will have references from a number of different types of sources; it is not simply a book review. What is much more important than the number of references is that you have a selection of literature that is appropriate for your research; what is appropriate will depend on the type of research you are undertaking. For example, if your topic is in an area of recent legal debate, you will probably find most of the relevant material in journal articles or conference papers. If you are studying policy issues in law-making, you would expect to cite more government reports. In either case, you will need some core references that are recent and relevant. A research project could also contain a number of older citations to provide a historical context or describe established methods. Perhaps a recent newspaper, journal or magazine article could illustrate the contemporary relevance or importance of your research.

You will have to use your own judgment (and the advice of your tutor) to ascertain what the suitable range of literature and references is for your review. This will differ for each topic of research, but you will be able to get a feel for what is appropriate by looking at relevant publications; most publications fall into the following broad categories:

Online legal databases

Online legal research services such as Westlaw , LexisNexis , JSTOR , EBSCOhost , or HeinOnline are a good source of journal articles and as a repository of legislation, case law, law reports, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, and treatises.

Journal articles

These provide more recent discussions than textbooks. Peer-reviewed journals are the gold standard for academic quality. Having at least some journal articles in your literature review is almost always required. Note that the lead time on journal articles is often up to two years, so they may not be sufficiently up to date for fast-moving areas. Look for special issues of journals, as these usually focus on a particular topic and you may find that they are more relevant to your area of research.

Many law schools host journals that contain articles by academics and students; these may also be of interest. Other sources could include online newspapers such as  The Conversation  which are sourced from academia and designed to highlight current academic research or respond to current events.

Conference literature

Academic conferences are meetings in which groups of academics working in a particular area meet to discuss their work. Delegates usually write one or more papers that are then collected into a volume or special edition of a journal. Conference proceedings can be quite good in providing a snapshot of a topic, as they tend to be quite focused. Looking at the authors of the papers can also give you an idea of who the key names in that area are. The quality varies widely, both in terms of the material published and how it is presented. Most conferences include some professional researchers, some of whom can be contacted, and lots of students. Conference papers are often refereed but usually not to the same level as journal articles.

Having conference papers in your literature review does lend academic credibility, especially in rapidly developing areas, and conference papers generally contain the preliminary work that eventually forms journal articles.

Textbooks are good for identifying established, well-understood concepts and techniques, but are unlikely to have enough up-to-date research to be the main source of literature. Most disciplines, however, have a collection of canonical reference works that you should use to ensure you are implementing standard terms or techniques correctly. Textbooks can also be useful as a starting point for your literature search as you can investigate journal articles or conference papers that have been cited. Footnotes are a rich source of preliminary leads.

Law magazines

These can be useful, particularly for projects related to the role of lawyers. Be aware of the possibility of law firm bias (for example in labour law towards employers, employee rights, or trade unions) or articles that are little more than advertisements. Examples of professional journals include the  SA ePublications (Sabinet), De Rebus - SA Attorneys' Journal ,  etc . Most jurisdictions have some form of a professional journal.

Government and other official reports

There is a wide range of publications, including ‘white papers', official reports, census, and other government-produced statistical data that are potentially useful to the researcher. Be aware of the possibility of political or economic bias or the reflection of a situation that has since changed.

Internal company or organisation reports/Institutional repository

These may be useful in a few situations but should be used sparingly, particularly if they are not readily available to the wider community of researchers. They will also not have been through a process of academic review. Such unpublished or semi-published reports are collectively called ‘grey literature.

Manuals and handbooks

These are of limited relevance, but may be useful to establish current techniques, approaches, and procedures.

Specialist supplements from quality newspapers can provide useful up-to-date information, as can the online versions of the same papers. Some newspapers provide a searchable archive that can provide a more general interest context for your work.

The worldwide web

This is widely used by lawyers today. According to the 2011 American Bar Association Report, 84.4% of attorneys turn to online sources as their first step in legal research (Lenhart, 2012, p. 27). It is an extremely useful source of references, particularly whilst carrying out an initial investigation. Although sites such as Wikipedia can be very helpful for providing a quick overview of particular topics and highlighting other areas of research that may be connected to your own, they should  not  usually be included in your review as they are of variable quality and are open to very rapid change. Treat the information you find on the internet with appropriate care. Be very careful about the source of information and look carefully at who operates the website.

Personal communications

Personal communications such as (unpublished) letters and conversations are not references. If you use such comments (and of course, you should respect the confidence of anyone you have discussed your work with), you should draw attention to the fact that you are quoting someone and mark it as ‘personal communication’ in the body of the text. Responses you might obtain from, for example, interviews and questionnaires as part of your research should be reported as data obtained through primary research.

It is crucial that most of your literature should come from peer-reviewed materials, such as journal articles. The point of peer reviewing is to increase quality by ensuring that the ideas presented seem well-founded to other experts in the topic. Conference papers are generally peer-reviewed, although the review process is usually less stringent, and so the standing of conference papers is not the same as for journals. Books, magazines, newspapers, and websites (including blogs, wikis, corporate sites, etc.) are not subject to peer review, and you should treat them with appropriate caution. Also, treat each publication on its merits; it is more helpful to use a good conference paper than a poor journal paper. Similarly, it is acceptable to refer to a well-written blog by a knowledgeable and well-known author provided that you supply appropriate context. In all these cases, the important thing is that you interpret the work correctly.

You will have undertaken legal research and developed your research skills as you prepared for earlier assignments. A literature review builds on this. You may, however, be wondering where to start. One technique is to use an iteration of five stages to help you with your early research.

The five stages are: planning, searching, gathering, analysing and comparing.

Following these stages will provide you with a systematic approach to gathering and analysing literature in your chosen topic of study; this will ensure that you take a critical approach to the literature.

To undertake an effective review of the literature on your chosen topic you will need to plan your review carefully. This includes setting aside enough time in which to undertake your review. In planning there are several aspects you need to think about:

• What sources of information are most relevant to your chosen research question?
• What gaps in knowledge have you identified in your chosen topic and used as a basis for your research question?
• What search terms will you use and how will you refine these?
• How will you record your sources?
• How will you interrogate those sources?
• How will you continue to review the literature as you progress with your research in order to keep as up-to-date as possible?
• Are you able to easily access all the sources you need?
• What arrangements may you need to make to access any hard copy materials?
• Will you join one of the legal alert services to keep you abreast of changes in your chosen topic (such as new court judgments)?
• What notes of progress will you record in your research diary?

Spending time thinking about all aspects of the literature review, planning your time, and setting yourself targets will help to keep your research on track and will enable you to record your progress and any adjustments you make, along with the reasons for those adjustments.

This section is designed to provide you with some reminders in relation to searching, choosing search terms and some ideas about where to start in undertaking a literature review.

Where to start

The best places to start are likely to be a legal database (or law library) and Google Scholar. Many students and academics now use Google Scholar as one of their ‘go to’ tools for scholarly research. It can be helpful to gain an overview of a topic or to gain a sense of direction, but it is not a substitute for your own research of primary and secondary sources.

Having gained an overview from your initial search through browsing general collections of documents, you will then need to undertake a more detailed search to find specific documents. Identifying relevant scholarly articles and following links in footnotes and bibliographies can be helpful as you continue your search for relevant information.

One of the decisions you will have to make is when to stop working on your literature review and your research, and when to start writing up your dissertation. This will be determined by the material you gather and the time constraints you are working on.

Selecting resources

One starting point may be to locate a small number of key journal papers or articles; for a draft outline proposal for your research, you might have around four to six of these, accumulating more as you develop the research subsequently. Aim for quality, not quantity. Look for relevant and recent publications. Most of your references will typically not be more than four years old, although this does depend on your field of study. You will need quite a few more in due course to cover other aspects of your research such as methods and evaluation, but at this stage, you need only a few recent items.

While reading these documents, aim to identify the key issues that are essential to your research question, ideally around four to six.

Compare and contrast the literature, looking for commonalities, agreements, and disagreements and for problem identification and possible answers. Then write up your analysis of the comparison and any conclusions you might reach. The required outcome will be that you can make an informed decision about how to proceed with your primary research, based on the work carried out by other researchers.

Note that ultimately there are no infallible means of assessing the value of a given reference. Its source may be a useful indication, but you have to use your judgment about its value for your research.

Reviewing your sources

Skim read each document to decide whether a book or paper is worth reading in more depth. To do this you need to make use of the various signposts that are available from the:

• notes on a book’s cover can help situate the content
• abstract (for a paper), or the preface (for a book)
• contents page
• introduction
• conclusions
• references section (sometimes called the ‘bibliography’)

In your record, make a brief note (one or two sentences) of the main points.

Next, skim through the opening page of each chapter, or the first paragraph of each section. This should give you enough information to assess whether you need to read the book or paper in more depth, again make a suitable note against that record.

Reading in more detail: SQ3R

If you have decided to look in more detail at a source document that you have to skim read, you can use the well-known ‘SQ3R’ approach (Skimming, Questioning, Reading, Recalling, and Reviewing).

1. Skimming – skim reading the chapter or part of the paper that relates to your topic, or otherwise interests you.

2. Questioning – develop a few questions that you consider the text might answer for you. You can often use journal, chapter, or section titles to help you formulate relevant questions. For example, when studying a journal article with the title, ‘Me and my body: the relevance of the distinction for the difference between withdrawing life support and euthanasia’, you might ask, ‘How is the distinction between withdrawing life support and euthanasia drawn?’

3. Reading – read through the chapter, section, or paper with your questions in mind. Do not make notes at this stage.

4. Recalling – make notes on what you have read. You should normally develop your own summary or answers to your questions. There will also be short passages that you may want to note fully, perhaps to use as a quotation for when you write up your literature review. Be sure to note carefully the page(s) on which the quotation appears.

5. Reviewing – check through the process, perhaps flicking through the section or article again. It is also worth emphasising that if you maintain your reference list as you go along, not only will you save yourself a lot of work in later stages of the research, but you will also have all the necessary details to hand for writing up with fewer mistakes.

(adapted from Blaxter et al., 1996, p. 114)

There is no doubt that this approach takes considerably more effort than sitting back and studying a text passively. The benefit from the extra work involved in the development of a critical approach, which you must adopt for your research.

Following citations in a paper

When you have found (and read) your first couple of papers, you can then use them to seed your search for other useful literature. In this case, we will use this example:

When we looked at the references list in Suppon, J. F. (2010) ‘Life after death: the need to address the legal status of posthumously conceived children',  Family Court Review , vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 228–45, a couple of items, going only by the titles, looked promising:

• Doucettperry, Major M. (2008) ‘To Be Continued: A Look at Posthumous Reproduction As It Relates to Today’s Military’,  The Army Lawyer , no. 420, pp. 1–22.
• Karlin, J. H. (2006) ‘“Daddy, Can you Spare a Dime?”: Intestate Heir Rights of Posthumously Conceived Children’,  Temple Law Review , vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 1317–54.

These are simply the papers that we felt looked most appropriate from the references. There is no formula for determining the best paper; you simply need to read a few and try to develop a feel for which seem the most appropriate for your own research project. You should only be citing papers that contribute to your research in a significant way, or that you have included material from; not everything that you read (and discarded) along the way.

Recording your references

We strongly suggest that you establish a recording system at the outset when you begin your research and keep maintaining records in an organised and complete manner as you progress. You need to choose a consistent method of recording your references; this is a personal choice and can be paper-based or electronic. Do not be tempted to have more than one method or repository as this can lead to confusion and unnecessary extra work. There are software tools available that can help you to both organise your references and incorporate them into your written work. Always keep a backup copy of your records.

The following is a suggestion as to how you might record any document that you think you may use.

Open a new record, and record the basic details:

• author(s), including initials
• date of publication
• title of work or article.

Additionally, for books:

• place of publication
• page numbers of relevant material.

Additionally, for journal papers:

• journal name
• volume and issue number
• page range of the whole article.

‘How many references are needed to make a good literature review?’ There is no straightforward answer to this. In general, an appropriate number of references would be in the range of 15 to 25, with around 20 being typical. However, this is not hard and fast and will depend on the topic and research question chosen.

The crucial thing is to aim for  quality  and  relevance ; there is no credit to be gained from amassing a lengthy list of material, even if it all appears to be relevant. Part of your task is to select a range of references that is appropriate for the length and scope of your research project. It is easier, and more conducive to good research, to handle a smaller number of references specifically chosen to support your argument. Remember also that in general, a student whose research project contained a smaller number of references would generally be expected to demonstrate a deeper and  more critical  understanding of those references.

A colleague once commented on a student’s work in the following vein: ‘I don’t really need you to tell me what the author thinks since I can read her thoughts myself, but I do want to know what  you  think about what the author thinks’. Literature reviews are not a description of what has been written by other people in a particular field, they should be a discussion of what you think of what they have written, and how it helps clarify your own thinking.

This is why critical judgement is so important for your literature review. You must exercise critical judgement when determining which sources to read in-depth, and when evaluating the argument they put forward. Finally, critical judgement is important in communicating how those arguments might frame your research. It should not be a narrative of what you have read and the stories those sources tell. It should be sparing in its description of others’ arguments, and expansive in how those arguments have shaped your own thinking.

You need to exercise critical judgement as to which resources are the most useful and worthy of discussion. Having done this, you also need to ensure that your review is analytical rather than descriptive. A critical review extracts elements from the resource that directly relate to the chosen research interest; it debates them, or compares and contrasts them with how other resources have analysed them. A critical examination of the literature should allow you to develop your understanding of your research question. It should guide you to what knowledge you will need to answer your research question, and begin to develop some subsidiary questions. This will break the content down into more manageable and achievable segments of knowledge that you require.

Some elements of a good critical literature review are:

• relating different writings to each other, indicating their differences and contradictions, and highlighting what they lack
• understanding the values and theories that inform, and colour, reading and writing
• viewing research writing as an environment of contested views and positions
• placing the material in the context of your own research.

An excellent way to critically analyse a document is to use the PROMPT system. The PROMPT system indicates what factors you should consider when evaluating a document. PROMPT stands for:

• Presentation – is the publication easy to read?
• Relevance – how will the publication help address your research aim?
• Objectivity – what is the balance between evidence and opinion? Does the evidence seem balanced? How was the research funded?
• Method – was the research in the publication carried out appropriately?
• Provenance – who is the author and how was the document published?
• Timeliness – is the publication still relevant, or has it been superseded?

By thinking about each of these factors when you read a publication in-depth, you will be able to provide a deeper, more critical analysis of each publication. A final tip for critical reading is to note down your overall impressions and any questions you still have at the end. Keeping a list of such open questions can help you identify the gaps in the literature by noticing which questions were raised, but not answered, by the publication; this, in turn, will guide your research.

In the planning stage, you thought about the gaps in existing knowledge you had identified, and which you then used as a basis to develop your research question. Through the work, you undertook in the earlier stages of your literature review you have a clear understanding of the existing work within the topic. At this point, a comparison of the results of your literature review, with the gaps you had previously identified, will enable you to reflect, and consider, whether you now have enough knowledge to address those gaps. You can then evaluate whether you need to further refine your literature review.

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HOW TO PREPARE A LITERATURE REVIEW FOR A DISSERTATION

How to prepare a literature review for a dissertation.

Tired of being told "literature review" every five minutes at university? Not knowing what that means or where to begin? We've got your back with this step-by–step guide to writing a fantastic dissertation literature review.

WHAT IS A LITERATURE REVIEW?

The literature review is an essential component of a dissertation; it is an analysis and evaluation of the materials that you have researched and collated on the subject of your dissertation. After that, it identifies any holes in the existing research that will be filled by your study.

Many people have misconceptions about the meaning of a dissertation literature analysis. It can be complex. Although a dissertation review of the literature may occasionally include a synopsis of important sources, it is not always necessary to engage in a critical analysis of the text to express your positive and negative opinions. How should a certain source be interpreted? Is this analysis distinct from other points of view in the literature? This kind of critical interaction is what you ought to anticipate from a literature study.

Expectations for a literature review go beyond a summary, which is likely to provide a concise overview of the important points from the source(s). Reviews of the literature might offer fresh perspectives on well-known research publications or integrate several viewpoints (this is called the "gap"). A review of the literature could also be a thorough and critical analysis of intellectual trends in a certain area, with a particular focus on the most significant, frequently contentious subjects. A literature review can also be used to assess a source and inform the reader of its reliability, applicability, and relevance to the subject.

“A literature review is an overview of the research arguments you have learned about through your readings. It does not contain any fresh literary contributions. Hence, "literature review" becomes a phrase.”

Although academic articles and literature reviews are sometimes confused, they are not the same thing. New research on a topic is intended to be presented in academic articles. A literature review is an essential component of that goal. A research paper's foundation is a literature review. You can use it to find research gaps and support any new arguments or insights that you are going to present. You are attempting to summarise and analyse the research justifications you discovered from reading. However, you will not be making any  new  contributions. Thus the term "literature  review ".

IS A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE TRULY NECESSARY?

Now that you know what a literature review looks like, it is time to learn why you need one. A literature review, whether you want it or not, is an academic writing that requires it. It shows your tutor and reader that your knowledge of the sources is relevant to your question or research area.

The literature review, although it might seem unrelated, aids in persuading the person grading the work that what you wrote is pertinent and that your arguments are strong and worth the effort. A literature review is crucial, so take the time to do it correctly.

HOW SHOULD A DISSERTATION'S LITERATURE REVIEW BE WRITTEN?

We have broken down the next section of our blog into key steps that will make it easier for you to write your dissertation literature review. First, you identify your sources. Next, you read through them again. The next step is to identify any gaps in your research and literature. Using the knowledge you have gained and the preparations you have made, you will then compose your review.

  IDENTIFY SOURCES.

A good literature review for a dissertation requires you to have an idea of the sources you want to examine. If your teacher hasn't given you a formal list of references, you can use the techniques above.

Check to verify that the sources you're using are objective and balanced. Make sure to include a sufficient number of scholarly journals, books, and other helpful published materials by credible researchers. You might consider the objectives and parameters of your research to help you select the right sources. What are your goals? Your review literature should include: To what theoretical problems or points of view are you aiming to find solutions? What do you think of my strategy? What will you decide to concentrate on? Study types: quantitative or qualitative? Or perhaps a mix of the two? You can choose your sources with the aid of these queries. And once more, a source's abstract can be a helpful tool. You can tell whether a source is helpful by taking a fast look at the abstract and its keywords.

Focus can easily be lost when you're trying to identify sources. Keep a list handyMendeley is an online or desktop application-based reference tool that lets you preserve your sources. It's a terrific technique to maintain the order of your bibliography. These systems also come with citation tools that, if necessary, let you generate your citations in any format you like. These tools will save you a lot of time that you would have spent looking for the right Harvard and APA citations.

CHECK YOUR SOURCES

 Once you've sorted your sources, it's now time to start reading them. It's best to read the information in stages.

To get a feel for the content and arguments, you should first go through all the texts. This will assist you in selecting the sources to examine in more detail. You can examine your sources more closely and critically during the second phase of your investigation. Be critical, take copious notes, and ask lots of questions. What scholarly assessment would you make of the text? Any opinions on the theoretical justification, general hypothesis, or methodological approach? These should be noted. By doing this, you may make sure that your literature review does more than simply summarise your readings. Additionally, it will motivate you to develop a concise line of reasoning so that your work is cogent and reasonable.

EXAMINE YOUR RESEARCH FOR GAPS

An essential step in writing a dissertation review is to identify the research gap. It is especially critical to identify the gap if the review is included in research proposals. This will bring to light the significance of your research and make it easier for you to establish whether or not you were designed with the express purpose of filling the void. In other contexts, being able to spot the flaw might be interpreted as a demonstration of strong critical thinking and might get you bonus points.

It is essential to understand what the gap is before we can identify it. A research gap occurs when there is an issue, perspective, or topic that arises in the course of study but is not covered in the current body of research literature. It is crucial to identify the research gap in order to highlight the originality of your research. This will show that you are not just reciting or reiterating previously published research. This also demonstrates that you are up to date on the state of the literature in your chosen field of study. This, in turn, will show how much research you have done and the effort that went into your review.

Post-graduate students frequently struggle to discover research gaps in their discipline. You must identify research gaps and propose research questions to address them in post-graduate research papers. It doesn't have to be difficult to identify research gaps. There are numerous approaches to this.

START WITH READING

 A simple way to start is to review key articles related to your area of research. You will need to go through many articles to find the best one for your research. You can typically acquire a short summary of all the literature by entering keywords into Google Scholar. You can also use databases like JSTOR and Wiley Online Library. Click on "related articles" to see if any other papers have cited your source.

It is simple to focus on the most important points of articles relevant to your area of research. You will need to go through many articles to find the most relevant ones for your research. You can often find a quick summary of all the literature by utilising Google Scholar's keywords. You can also use databases like JSTOR and Wiley Online Library To see if any other publications have mentioned your source, click on "similar articles."

ABSTRACTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Whatever path you choose, the abstract could be a great place to start for understanding the articles' contents. It is also a good idea to read the final and introductory paragraphs of each article. These sections contain information about the research goals and outcomes, as well as recommendations for future research. You could also read as much about your subject as possible and then look at the literature to see if there are any gaps. This is often a sign of research gaps.

COMPILE YOUR EVALUATION

You are now ready to put your fingers on the keyboard. These are some tips to help you get started.

EXAMINE SOME SAMPLE LITERATURE

Please take a look at samples of dissertation literature reviews and take the time to read them. This will help you get familiar with key themes and debates. These can be used to help you structure and frame your own evaluation. You can get an idea of academic writing by looking at samples. Be aware of the formal language and academic style. Do not forget that the bibliographies and reference lists of certain texts can help you find more sources if you need them.

REMAIN SIMPLE

Your topic should be as specific as possible. There are many perspectives and sources available on any topic or subject. Research problems are often approached in a variety of ways by researchers. The literature on any given topic is very broad. You won't have to cover every perspective or argument in your literature review. This could actually hinder your ability to write coherent and focused pieces. Limiting the scope of your work will make it easier. Make sure you clearly define the focus of your work in your review.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE MOST UP-TO-DATE SOURCES

It is important that your sources are up-to-date in order to review scientific work. Research is always changing, especially in the medical field. A three-year-old source may be out of date. This rule might not be applicable to the social sciences, since many classic theoretical works will be familiar to you. You may be asked to review the works of Hobbes or Marx. It is important to maintain a balance between theory and current approaches. You must demonstrate how perspectives have shifted over time. Alternatively, you could show how scientists used classic theories to influence current research.

ANALYSE THE ORGANISATION OF YOUR ACTIVITIES

A dissertation review of the literature necessitates more organisation than just an introduction and body. Because you will be reading a large number of texts, it is important to organise your thoughts and ideas about themes, topics, and the argument. Here's a guideline on how to do it:

CONSIDER THE FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE FIRST

A dissertation literature review is just like any other academic paper. It will have a simple introduction, content, and epilogue.

A literature review introduction should be concise, focused, and clear. The review should be concise and clear. It should also clearly define the scope of the review. A literature review should also give an overview of the arguments that will be made and why they are valid.

The body of your literature review will include an in-depth evaluation of the scholarly resources you have read. Your sources can be organised by concepts, approach, or chronological sequence. Your review should contain clear arguments and a link to the literature. Are there scholars who agree with you? Let the reader know by saying so in a way they can understand. This demonstrates that you are well-versed in scholarly research in your profession. Make a note of any competing viewpoints; this will decrease the methodological strength of your article. Direct quotations can be used in literature reviews, but you should use them sparingly to avoid appearing lazy. Tutors are unlikely to address it with kindness. The goal of literary reviews is to demonstrate your capacity to connect with content critically. Direct quotes are not a good indicator of your ability to do so. Try paraphrasing quotations and using direct quotes only when they are absolutely necessary to demonstrate your point.

It's crucial to summarise your dissertation literature review in a summary. This section should reflect the primary inferences that you have made based on the readings you have done. A comprehensive research strategy has to incorporate your analysis of the existing research. In addition to this, you should identify any holes that exist in the existing research and explain how your study would fill those holes. Within this area, you will also have the opportunity to provide suggestions for more research. This will demonstrate to the judge that you are analytically capable and get you more points.

PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE BODY'S STRUCTURE

Now that you've established the framework for your research, it's time to consider what the body should look like. It is at the heart of your work. As a result, it is critical to consider how you will organise it. You can organise your work in a number of ways, such as by chronology, themes, trends, methodology, or arguments.

You will need to arrange your sources according to the date they were published in order to structure your work chronologically. This method has some drawbacks. It can make your arguments less coherent and, in certain cases, it can cause problems with the coherence of your work. Be careful.

It is easier to organise your work by grouping your sources according to the justifications they provide in a "for/against" format. This enables you to present your work more fluidly and makes it easier to understand for readers to see the main debates in the literature. If you were to explain the debates over European migrant policy to others, you could begin with this:

"While scholars like X believe that immigration policies should be more stringent in order to stop the increase in Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Europe, others such as Y have a different perspective. They advocate a human rights approach ..."

This method allows you to contribute your perspective to the work. This is an excellent example:

"While X supports the enactment of more restrictive migration policies, this paper argues that policies for migration should be based upon human rights considerations."

This strategy allows you to include supplementary literature to back up your claim.

If your review is focused on a single topic, you can organise your material by theme or sub-theme. This technique of organisation allows you to present a high-level summary of all contentious issues inside each sub-theme. You can also easily switch between chronological periods in a thematic review.

Although using a methodical approach to trying to organize sources to structure work is a typical strategy, Additionally, it is typically used in combination with other methods of resource organisation. This is particularly evident in the introduction when researchers might just want to indicate that a topic has been thoroughly investigated from either a quantitative or qualitative perspective. They will frequently mention a number of professors and research to back up their arguments. A methodological approach can be used in scientific reviews to guide the discussion. If that's the case, concentrate on the methodologies used by other researchers. What strategies did they use to answer a specific research question? Are there any drawbacks to this method? What alternatives would you still personally prefer?

You'll soon realise that arranging the body of your literature review might be a process that requires iteration. You will use many of these methods in your write-up. You might also have additional sections in your research that are not part of the overall structure. You might include a "context section" that gives some background information to help you understand the topic of your literature review. You might also include historical aspects. You could add a short section called "Methodology" to explain how you chose your sources and how you looked at them.

CREATE THE PARAGRAPHS THAT MAKE UP THE BODY

After you have decided on how you want to structure your body, it is time to start writing each paragraph in accordance with academic conventions. Consider the following passage from a literature study on stakeholder involvement in environmental management to help clarify what is being said.

Despite all the hype and worries, relatively few studies have been done to support the assertions made concerning stakeholders' participation (Webler 1999; Beierle 2002; Brody 2003; Blackstock et al., 2007). The few attempts at process evaluation have prioritised the procedure over the results (e.g., Beierle 2002; Renn and al. 1995; Rowe & Frewer 2000). This can be partially brought on by the challenge of selecting acceptable data gathering techniques and standards. All stakeholders should choose and use the criteria for participatory assessments, according to Blackstock and colleagues' (2007) argument. This is not simple. Webler and Tuler (2006) discovered strong disagreements among participants when they chose from ten case studies to determine what constitutes a "good" participatory experience. (Source: Reed, M.S., 2008.) A literature review on stakeholder participation in environmental management (141(10), i> Biological conservation

The example demonstrates how to write a dissertation literature review in a formal and academic way. Take note of how the sources were organised into arguments and topics. We also noticed that arranging sources within the body of your literature evaluation was never a linear procedure. You can employ several of the strategies we've discussed. Your work should be concise, unambiguous, and free of inflammatory or personal language. Avoid statements like "I despise X's work." A more formal approach to express your disagreement is as follows: "I would argue against X’s position that..."," or "X’s argument is inconsistent evidence because..."," or "X’s arguments are based upon false assumptions because...". Take note of how words like "dispute" are used in the preceding paragraph. This is an academic substitute for everyday terms like "says." You can also use "states", "assertions", "proposes", or "claims" as alternatives. There are many academic options, including "states," "asserts," "proposes," and "promulgate." Some readers and educators, however, believe these terms to be overly weighty and archaic. Make sure you are familiar with your institution's writing standards.

It is worth looking at the articles to get an idea of how your writing will look in peer-reviewed journals. Many tutors will give you a brief guideline for writing styles. It is important that you follow these guidelines. When writing literature reviews, You will be required to write in the third person. This means phrases like "this paper argues" and "this paper believes that..." are appropriate. There are a few limitations for post-graduate students and academic research, including when you've extensively published your work or conducted primary research, which gives you academic credibility to make big assertions. In these circumstances, you would use the first person, and sentences like "I argue" or "I offer" would be appropriate. When discussing ideas or theories, it is ideal to utilise the present tense (though in the context of specific research experiments, the past tense may be better).

In literature reviews, linking words and phrases is more important than the use of academic terms. You'll be assembling a group of writers with opposing viewpoints. Similar to, there are parallels in convergence with...

You may use the following if there is disagreement:

A literature review for a dissertation must conclude with a brief of all the consequences. This should be related to your main point or a broad research question.

A FEW FINAL WORDS

Academic traditions and your research area will influence the structure of your literature review. However, there are some steps that all disciplines should follow, and they apply to all research areas.

DO NOT JUST STATE THE AUTHORS' POINTS OF VIEW

Compare your findings to those of others.

USING MULTIPLE STRATEGIES, ORGANISE YOUR ARGUMENT'S BODY

Your framework should be organised around major themes, controversies, or contentious subjects, as well as methodological methods. Your evaluation must be vibrant while still being cohesive. Be sure to link your review to the literature gaps you have identified.

USE A LOT OF EVIDENCE

This is a crucial part of a dissertation literature analysis. When establishing a point, it is necessary to use multiple sources. See the preceding sample paragraph. Evidence must be used to back up all arguments and interpretations of study issues. Make no unsubstantiated claims. A literature review is not an opinion piece, but rather an academic piece.

BE EXTREMELY PICKY

Each item of research must be examined. Whether you're committed to demonstrate that you understand the research, you can try using writing methods like: There's extensive literature that studies the patterns of migration for Syrian refugees. Some of the most notable works are: X (2015), y (2013), Z (2014). It is not required to thoroughly analyse these works after you have acknowledged them. Be cautious of the sources you will be delving into during your evaluation.

DO NOT DEPEND TOO HEAVILY ON STRAIGHT QUOTES

Use them just to emphasise a point. Additionally, do not rely too heavily on a single author's creations. Instead, emphasise the significance of the author to your study before continuing. You must relate those conversations to your research if you must refer back to this author's writing. Give more than a simple synopsis of the author's work. What aspects of your work compliment those of the author? Be receptive to criticism.

CLARIFY YOUR OPINION

The whole purpose of a study is to give an in-depth analysis and an overview of the views that are there, However, a full study should include the requirement that you make your stance clear within the literary sense. Notice how skillfully, in the example paragraph of Reed (2008), the author integrates his views through references. Take a look back at the paragraph and try to master this technique.

MAKE SURE TO PROPERLY CITE YOUR WORK

Be sure to make use of the correct reference style..

Are you getting swamped by your literature review? You're not finished yet.

Writing a dissertation review of the literature can be difficult, especially in light of the extensive research and analysis that is required.

Discover further about our undergraduate essay and postgraduate dissertation literature evaluation services.

Are you feeling overburdened by your existing literature? You're not by yourself.

A literature review for a dissertation could be a time-consuming and difficult section to prepare, considering the extensive research and analysis necessary.

Get help where you need it

If you are working on a dissertation, you will likely be asked to prepare a literature review as part of your research. A literature review is an essential component of a dissertation, as it allows you to demonstrate your knowledge of your chosen research area and identify gaps that your study can help fill. However, preparing a literature review can be a daunting task, especially if you are new to academic writing or have not done extensive research in the past. If you are feeling overwhelmed, it would be wise to seek the guidance of a law tutor, who can help show you the ropes when it comes to conducting research, selecting sources, synthesising information, and writing clear and concise prose. With the help of a tutor, you can feel confident in your ability to produce a literature review that will impress your dissertation committee and contribute to the advancement of your field.

USE THE DIRECTIVE ESSAY WORD: "COMPARE AND CONTRAST."

Top 10 guidelines for writing a dissertation abstract.

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Systematic literature review.

Last update: December 10, 2020

‘Literature review’ can refer to a portion of a research article in which the author(s) describe(s) or summarizes a body of literature which is relevant to their article. ‘Literature review’ can also refer to a methodological approach in which a selection of existing literature is collected and analyzed in order to answer a specific question. One approach to doing this type of literature review is called a ‘systematic literature review’ (SLR).

When conducting an SLR, the researcher creates a set of rules or guidelines prior to beginning the review. These rules determine the characteristics of the literature to be included and the steps to be followed during the research process. Creating these rules helps the researcher by narrowing down the focus of their project and the scope of the literature to be included, and they aid in making the research methodology transparent and replicable.

There are many different ways that an SLR can be used in socio-legal research. For example, an SLR can be used to show the impact of a certain law or policy (Loong e.a. 2019), uncover patterns across literature (e.g. perpetrator characteristics) (Alleyne & Parfitt 2017), outline crime prevention strategies that are currently in place (Gorden & Buchanan 2013), describe to what extent a problem is understood or researched (Krieger 2013), point out the gaps in the current research (Urinboyev e.a. 2016), or identify potential areas for future research. Various types of documents may be included in an SLR such as court transcripts, academic literature, news articles, NGO reports or government documents.

The first step for starting your SLR is creating a research journal in which you will write down your SLR rules and keep track of your daily activities. This will help you keep a timeline of your project, keep track of your decision making process, and maintain the transparency and replicability of your research. The next step is determining your research question. When you have your research question, you can create the inclusion and exclusion criteria or the characteristics that literature must or must not have to be included in your SLR. The key question is “what kind of information is needed to answer the research question?” It is necessary to explain why the criteria were selected. After this, you can begin searching for and collecting literature which meets your inclusion criteria. Different databases and sources of literature (e.g. academic journals or newspapers) will yield different search results, so it may be helpful to do trial searches to see which sources provide the most relevant literature for your project. Once you have collected all of your literature, you can begin reading and analyzing the literature.

There are various research tools that can aid you in conducting your SLR such as qualitative data analysis software (e.g. ATLAS.ti) or reference manager software (e.g. Mendeley). Determine which programs to use based on your personal preference and your research project.

Fink, A. (2014). Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Hagen-Zanker, J. & Mallet, R. (2013). How to do a Rigorous, Evidence Focused Literature Review in International Development: A Guidance Note. Working paper Overseas Direct Investment.

Oliver, S., & Sutcliffe, K. (2012). Describing and analysing studies. Gough, D. A. & Oliver, S. In An Introduction to Systematic Reviews. London, UK. SAGE.

Pittaway, L. (2008). Systematic Literature Reviews. Thorpe, R. & Holt, R. In T he Sage Dictionary of Qualitative Management Research . London, UK. SAGE.

Siddaway, A. (2014). What Is a Systematic Literature Review and How Do I Do One?

Snel, M. & de Moraes, J. (2018). Doing a Systematic Literature Review in Legal Scholarship. The Hague, NL. Eleven International Publishing.

Interactive Learning Module 1: Introduction to Conducting Systematic Reviews

Alleyne, E. & Parfitt, C. (2017). Adult-Perpetrated Animal Abuse: A Systematic Literature Review. Trauma, Violence & Abuse. Vol. 20. No. 3. Pp. 344-357.

Example of a systematic literature review.

Brown, R. T. (2010). Systematic Review of the Impact of Adult Drug-Treatment Courts. Translational Research . Vol. 155. No 6. Pp. 263-274.

Gorden, C., & Buchanan, J. (2013). A Systematic Literature Review of Doorstep Crime: Are the Crime-Prevention Strategies More Harmful than the Crime? The Howard Journal . Vol. 52. No. 5. Pp. 498-515.

Krieger, M. A. (2016). Unpacking “Sexting”: A Systematic Review of Nonconensual Sexting in Legal, Educational, and Psychological Literatures. Trauma, Violence & Abuse . Vol. 18. No. 5. Pp. 593-601.

Loong, D., Bonato, S., Barnsley, J., & Dewa, C. S. (2019). The Effectiveness of Mental Health Courts in Reducing Recidivism and Police Contact: A Systematic Review. Community Mental Health Journal. Vol. 55. No. 7 Pp. 1073-1098.

Urinboyev, R., Wickenberg, P., & Leo, U. (2016). Child Rights, Classroom, and Social Management: A Systematic Literature Review. The International Journal of Children’s Rights. Vol. 24. No. 3. Pp. 522-547.

Literature Reviews

• General overview of Literature Reviews
• What should a Literature Review include?
• Examples of Literature Reviews
• Research - Getting Started

Online Resources

• CWU Learning Commons: Writing Resources
• Purdue OWL: Writing a Literature Review

Literature Reviews Examples

Social Sciences examples

• Psychology study In this example, the literature review can be found on pages 1086-1089, stopping at the section labeled "Aims and Hypotheses".
• Law and Justice study In this example, the literature review can be found on pages 431-449, stopping at the section labeled "Identifying and Evaluating the Impacts of the Prisoners' Rights Movement". This article uses a historical literature review approach.
• Anthropology study The literature review in this article runs from page 218 at the heading "Between Critique and Enchantment" and ends on page 221 before the heading "The Imagination as a Dimension of Reality".

Hard Science examples

• Physics article The literature review in this paper can be found in the Introduction section, ending at the section titled "Experimental procedure".
• Health Science article The literature review in this article is located at the beginning, before the Methods section.

Arts and Humanities examples

• Composition paper In this example, the literature review has its own dedicated section titled "Literature Review" on pages 2-3.
• Political geography paper The literature review in this paper is located in the introduction section.

Standalone Literature Review examples

• Project-based learning: A review of the literature
• Mental health and gender dysphoria: A review of the literature
• Academic engagement and commercialisation: A review of the literature on university–industry relations
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Writing a law school research paper or law review note

• Books and articles

Basics of Format & Content

Research papers are not as strictly structured as legal memos, briefs, and other documents that you've learned about in legal writing and drafting courses. For example, there is no prescribed content/format similar to to the Questions Presented, Brief Answers, etc. that you learned for a legal memo.

A general approach to thinking about the content of a research paper is:

• Introduction in which you give some background and a clear statement of your thesis
• Status quo -- what is the existing law and why is it a problem
• Proposals for change

See this blog post by Jonathan Burns , an IU McKinney alum, for more on basic content.

If you're writing for a law review or seminar, you should get formatting instructions regarding things like margins, font size, line spacing. If you don't, or if you're doing an independent study, here are some basic guidelines to follow:

• Times New Roman or similar, 12 pt font.
• Double spaced lines.
• One inch margins all around.
• Footnotes in academic Bluebook style (use the rules on the main white pages instead of the light blue pages at the front of the Bluebook).
• Footnotes in same font as text, 10 pt font.
• Use Roman numerals and/or letters on headings and subheadings or style the fonts so that the difference between headings and subheadings is clear.   
• Page numbers in the footer, preferably centered, especially on first page. You could do bottom center on first page and then upper right in the header thereafter. Use the header and footer functions for this. If you don't know how to use headers and footers in Word, here is help:  https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/word2016/headers-and-footers/1/ . 

Headings and subheadings

Research papers should have headings and subheadings. These help your reader follow your logic--and a logical structure is very important. Headings and subheadings can also help you keep your thoughts organized. Just don't overuse them--you don't want every paragaph to have a subheading. 

Road map paragraph

Often, research papers will also include a paragraph at the end of the introduction that narrates the road map the paper will follow.   Here is an example of this kind of paragraph:

"The section that follows [this introduction] sets the stage by recounting two scenarios from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, with discussion of the knowledge and implementation of accessibility features in online instructional materials. The next section provides an overview of various impairments and their effects on a user's experience of the online environment. Next is a review of the laws relevant to accessibility with attention to their potential application to online instruction, along with standards used to guide accessibility compliance. The article then explores the concept of universal design and its guiding principles, followed by a discussion of how to use the universal design principles to organize and better understand accessibility standards and practices. The final section briefly summarizes the discussion and encourages law librarians and professors to become knowledgeable and skilled in universal design for online materials to benefit all their students."

Table of Contents

A table of contents can also be helpful, though it's not necessary. If you add a table of contents to your papers, put it right at the beginning, before the introduction. Here's part of the table of contents for the same paper the paragraph above was taken from--it really just lays out the heading and subheadings with page numbers: 

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Literature Review: Conducting & Writing

• Sample Literature Reviews
• Steps for Conducting a Lit Review
• Finding "The Literature"
• Organizing/Writing
• APA Style This link opens in a new window
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• MLA Style This link opens in a new window

Sample Lit Reviews from Communication Arts

Have an exemplary literature review.

• Literature Review Sample 1
• Literature Review Sample 2
• Literature Review Sample 3

Have you written a stellar literature review you care to share for teaching purposes?

Are you an instructor who has received an exemplary literature review and have permission from the student to post?

Please contact Britt McGowan at [email protected] for inclusion in this guide. All disciplines welcome and encouraged.

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Writing A Literature Review : A Guide For Law Students

Are you feeling stressed out because you need to write a literature review but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re just short on time and need to get it done quickly and you think who can write my custom paper for me ? Either way, writing a literature review in a day is definitely possible with US essay writer .

To write a literature review, you must synthesize and summarize the ideas of previous authors. This kind of writing aims to improve an area of research or study. A literature review is a short piece of academic paper that should be well-organized. The central part of the literature review should contain a comparison and contrast between two or more studies.

Table of Contents

Organizing A Reading Grid

Organizing the main body of the review, finding sources, how to organize a literature review.

To write a literature review, you must be organized and systematic. Therefore, before you start writing, you need to create an outline. This outline should be in bullet point form and as detailed as possible. It should clearly outline your arguments and connections between sections of your literature review. In addition, the outline should also indicate word count limits for each team. Knowing how many words you will need to spend on each section will help you to identify potential problems before you start writing.

It’s essential to take notes and citations from sources. Doing this early will make writing your literature review and annotated bibliography easier with help of essay writing service . The next step to writing a literature review is identifying the connections between studies. This will help you to organize your existing knowledge, develop a strong literature outline, and indicate your contribution.

When writing a literature review, time is often the limiting factor. If you have a limited time frame, you may want to focus on the latest landmarks, which will give you the confidence that you’ve read all the most relevant references. Make a reading grid or a conceptual map of your topic to organize your reading material.

Once you’ve organized your reading grid or reading list, gathering information is the next step in writing a literature review. This can be done through university or public libraries or by searching online databases like Google Scholar. You can use keywords related to your literature review topic to find relevant research. Finally, browse through bibliographies and literature reviews to determine what’s most appropriate.

To write an effective literature review, it is imperative to organize the sources in an appropriate order. Therefore, the literature review must be organized chronologically, thematically, and methodologically. The body of the evaluation will include a discussion of the selected sources. It will be collected using a systematic approach, and it should guide readers through the central theme of the research.

After gathering relevant sources, students should analyze each source and choose those that are the most pertinent to the topic. Many students try to cram everything they have read about a subject into a review. However, they won’t have enough time to read everything they have collected, so you should choose the sources that they find most relevant.

If you want to find sources for a literature review in a single day, you need to start with an initial idea of what you want to research. This way, you’ll avoid reading anything unfocused or irrelevant to your topic. You can use Google to find relevant articles, but try to look for academically authoritative texts instead. A Google search will bring thousands of results, but only a tiny percentage will be traditional.

A literature review, like a research paper, will consist of literature from other researchers. You can find this literature in books, articles, reports, and websites. While it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of literature available, you’ll need to choose the best relevant sources. Thankfully, there are systems to make this daunting process more accessible.

When writing a literature review in a day, it is essential to start with an outline. This will help you to organize your thoughts and identify potential problems before you start writing . In addition, taking notes and citations from sources as you read will make writing your literature review and annotated bibliography easier. Finally, browse through bibliographies and

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It is unlikely that law researchers will be conducting systematic reviews, however you may need to conduct a literature review.

Applying systematic searching skills and techniques can also help shape and improve your research.

Below are some resources that can inform and guide law researchers with literature reviews and systematic research.

Key resources

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Contact your librarian

Faculty Librarian Law +61 7 5595 1550 [email protected]

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• SCU Library
• Library guides
• Subject Guides

Legal Research Skills

• Databases and search operators

Key Australian legal databases

Keyword searching using search operators.

• Starting your research
• Journal articles
• Case citators
• Cases considering legislation
• Cases on a topic
• Cases defining words & phrases
• Legislation on a topic
• Finding commencement, amendment & reprint information
• Bills & extrinsic material
• International legal materials
• News & current awareness
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Subscription databases

To be used exclusively for academic research only. Provides Australian case law (including the CaseBase case citator), legislation, journals, commentary (including a comprehensive legal dictionary & the Halsbury's legal encyclopaedia), and practical guidance modules. Some international content (NZ, UK, US, Canada & Hong Kong) is also included. View the Lexis+ Introductory Guide or Help pages to get started.

Free databases

All legal databases.

• Law databases A-Z list of all databases relevant to law at SCU. Includes multidisciplinary databases which may be useful for literature reviews.

When starting your research it's a good idea to get an overview of your topic or area of law by doing a keyword search.

Use Boolean and other advanced search operators to improve keyword search results. Below are the most common operators.

Tip: If you get the search operators wrong, the database probably won't alert you to the error; instead your search will find no results. If you are not sure, check the help section of individual databases to find the specific operators used.

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• How to write a literature review

This example shows how a literature review from a PhD thesis can be analysed for its structure, purpose and content.

Three sections of the thesis are analysed to show the:

• relationship between the introduction and the literature review
• structure and purpose of dedicated literature review chapters
• inclusion of literature review in other chapters of the thesis.

Access the thesis

Co-witnesses and the effects of discussion on eyewitness memory by Helen M Paterson

Overview of thesis (introduction)

This introductory section is less than two pages long.

The first paragraph:

• states the overall objective of the thesis
• defines the introduced term
• provides broad motivation for interest in the area
• introduces the sections of the thesis that will address the overall objective.

The other paragraphs describe the content and purpose of each section of the thesis.

Literature review

The literature review is made of up of two chapters.

Chapter 1: Literature review of relevant research

The overall goals of this chapter are to firstly establish the significance of the general field of study, and then identify a place where a new contribution could be made.

The bulk of the chapter critically evaluates the methodologies used in this field to identify the appropriate approach for investigating the research questions.

Chapter 2: Theoretical explanations of memory conformity

Chapter 5, Study 3: Co-Witness Contamination

This chapter has the following structure:

• Introduction
• Discussion.

The introduction introduces the particular study to be reported on, and includes a three-and-a-half page literature review.

The literature review in this chapter:

• links back to the relevant general findings of the earlier literature review chapters
• briefly reviews the broad motivation for this study
• identifies that two previously used methodologies in this field will be compared to resolve questions about the findings of previous studies which had only used a single methodology
• uses previous literature to generate specific hypotheses to test
• reviews additional literature to provide a justification for a second objective to be investigated in the study reported on in this chapter.

Learning Advisers

Our advisers can help undergraduate and postgraduate students in all programs clarify ideas from workshops, help you develop skills and give feedback on assignments.

How a Learning Adviser can help

Secondary Sources: ALRs, Encyclopedias, Law Reviews, Restatements, & Treatises

Legal encyclopedias, law review articles, american law reports, restatement drafts, getting help, introduction.

Secondary sources are a great place to begin your research . Although the primary sources of law--case law, statutes, and regulations--establish the law on a given topic, it is often difficult to quickly locate answers in them. Secondary sources often explain legal principles more thoroughly than a single case or statute, so using them can help you save time . Secondary sources also help you avoid unnecessary research, since you're tapping into work that someone else has already done on an issue.

Secondary sources include:

• Legal encyclopedias
• American Law Reports (ALR)
• Law review articles

Restatements

Secondary sources are particularly useful for:

• Learning the basics of a particular area of law
• Understanding key terms of art in an area
• Identifying essential cases and statutes

This guide provides a basic overview of each source, including their strengths and why you might use them, as well as tips on finding, using, and citing them.

This guide is based on material written by Deanna Barmakian.

This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License .

You may reproduce any part of it for noncommercial purposes as long as credit is included and it is shared in the same manner. 

Intro to Legal Encyclopedias

Legal encyclopedias contain brief, broad summaries of legal topics, providing introductions to legal topics and explaining relevant terms of art.They also provide citations to relevant primary law and sometimes give citations to relevant major law review articles.

There are two main legal encyclopedias in the United States that are national in scope. They are useful, but not well-suited for jurisdiction specific research.

State legal encyclopedias provide background and explanations of state legal topics. Not every state has a legal encyclopedia. Depth of coverage and quality vary. State encyclopedia articles are updated irregularly.

Electronic versions of the encyclopedias are updated directly. If using a print encyclopedia, always remember to check the pocket parts for any updates.

National Legal Encyclopedias

• American Jurisprudence 2d (AmJur) Reading Room KF 154.A42 Am Jur 2d articles summarize broad principles of U.S. law and provide citations to cases, statutes, rules, forms, and A.L.R. annotations. A six-volume general index is located at KF 154.A42. Topical indexes are located in the last volume of every topic.
• American Jurisprudence Available on Lexis
• American Jurisprudence on Westlaw
• Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS) Reading Room KF 154.C56 This 152-volume set is arranged into approximately 400 topics. Articles within topics begin with a general rule of law and are followed by the exceptions and qualifications to that general rule. A four-volume general index is located at KF 154.C56. There are also individual indexes for each major topic.
• Corpus Juris Secundum on Westlaw CJS is not available on Lexis.

State Legal Encyclopedias

Legal encyclopedias are listed alphabetically by state. Electronic versions are included only if they are comprehensive in scope.

For a few states, Westlaw offers a practice series that contains selective coverage of state law, usually covering a few major topics and information useful to litigators. To find them, browse the Westlaw directory by U.S. State Materials > Other U.S. States > State name >  Forms, Treatises, CLEs, and Other Practice Materials, then browse the page for "practice series."

• California Jurisprudence 3d Reading Room KFC 80 .C29
• Summary of California Law Reading Room KFC 80 .W5
• California Jurisprudence 3d (Westlaw)
• Summary of California Law (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Summary of California Law (Westlaw)
• Colorado Law Annotated 2d Reading Room KFC 1880 .P76
• Florida Jurisprudence 2d Reading Room KFF 80 .F56
• Florida Jurisprudence 2d (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Florida Jurisprudence 2d (Westlaw)
• Georgia Jurisprudence Reading Room KFG 80 .G45
• Georgia Jurisprudence (Westlaw)
• Illinois Law and Practice Reading Room KFI 1265 .I44x
• Illinois Jurisprudence (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Illinois Law and Practice (Westlaw)
• Indiana Law Encyclopedia Reading Room KFI 3065 .W44
• Indiana Law Encyclopedia (Westlaw)
• Louisiana Civil Law Treatise Reading Room, KFL 92 - 583 (call numbers vary)
• Louisiana Civil Law Treatise (Westlaw)
• Maryland Law Encylopedia Reading Room KFM 1265 .W4x
• Maryland Law Encyclopedia (Westlaw)
• Michigan Law and Practice Encyclopedia Reading Room KFM 4265 .M63x
• Michigan Law and Practice (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Michigan Civil Jurisprudence (Westlaw)
• Dunnell Minnesota Digest (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Encyclopedia of Mississippi Law Reading Room KFM 6665 .E53x
• Summary of Mississippi Law Reading Room KRM 6665 .G7
• New Hampshire Practice Reading Room KFN 1280 .N48
• New Jersey Practice Reading Room KFN 1880 .N4
• New Jersey Practice (Westlaw)
• New York Jurisprudence 2d Reading Room KFN 5065 .N48
• New York Jurisprudence 2d (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• New York Jurisprudence 2d (Westlaw)
• Strong's North Carolina Index Reading Room KFN 7445 .6 .S82
• Strong's North Carolina Index (Westlaw)
• Ohio Jurisprudence 3d Reading Room KFO 65 .O35
• Ohio Jurisprudence 3d (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Ohio Jurisprudence 3d (Westlaw)
• Pennsylvania Law Encyclopedia Reading Room KFP 65 .P46x
• Pennsylvania Law Encyclopedia (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Summary of Pennsylvania Jurisprudence 2d (Westlaw)
• South Carolina Jurisprudence Reading Room KFS 1865 .S68x
• South Carolina Jurisprudence (Westlaw)
• Tennessee Jurisprudence Reading Room KFT 65 .T46
• Tennessee Jurisprudence (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Texas Jurisprudence 3d Reading Room KFT 1265 .T49
• Texas Jurisprudence 3d (Lexis) Available on Lexis
• Texas Jurisprudence 3d (Westlaw)
• Michie's Jurisprudence of Virginia and West Virginia Reading Room KFV 2465 .M52
• Michie's Jurisprudence of Virginia and West Virginia (Lexis) Available on Lexis

How to Cite Legal Encyclopedias

See Bluebook B8.15 and Rule 15.8.

Quick example:

17 AM. JUR. 2d Contracts § 74 (1964).

Intro to Treatises

Treatises , not to be confused with treaties , are book-length expositions on the law as it pertains to a particular subject. Treatises may be scholarly in nature, such as Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law , or they may be geared toward a legal practitioner, such as a manual or handbook.

A legal treatise may be a short, single volume or a large, multivolume set. Many are available electronically as well as in print. Different kinds of treatises have different purposes:

Legal hornbooks are designed as teaching tools for law students. Hornbooks provide more detailed treatments of particular areas of law than an encyclopedia or ALR entry. They generally contain summaries of landmark cases and other useful details.

Nutshells provide an overview of a legal topic without the detailed analysis or extensive case referencing found in other treatises.

Some treatises are designed to serve as practitioners’ tools. These works tend to address realistic legal problems and often provide useful features for practicing lawyers, such as forms and tables.

Looseleaf services are an example of treatises designed to serve as tools for practitioners. Such works address realistic legal problems and often provide useful features for practicing lawyers, such as forms and tables. Looseleaf services are frequently supplemented treatises--hence the looseleaf binder format that enables single pages to be easily updated without republishing the entire volume--that often contain primary legal sources and finding aids in addition to secondary analytical material, making them an invaluable resource if one exists for your topic.

Still other treatises are designed to serve as self-help publications for the public, such as those published by Nolo Press .

Finding treatises

There are several ways to locate legal treatises:

• Use the HLS Library Guide to Legal Treatises by Subject for librarian-recommended treatises in many areas of law
• Do a keyword or subject search in Hollis , Hollis Classic , or another library catalog . Use the expanded search or facets to limit your search to the law school library.
• Ask a research librarian to help you locate treatises on your topic
• Consult reference sources that review treatises by subject such as:

The Legal Information Buyer's Guide and Reference Manual by Ken Svengalis Legal Information: How to Find It, How to Use It by Kent C. Olson (note: this guide does not include single volume works) Legal Looseleafs in Print by Arlene Eis

Using treatises

Using legal treatises is like using any non-law book with a few special advisories.

First, as with any book, use the table of contents and the index to quickly locate relevant sections .

Second, remember that for a publication to provide reliable coverage of contemporary issues, it must be updated regularly and accurately to reflect any changes in the law . Updating may happen through the addition of pocket parts (which are usually tucked in a pocket in the back cover of a volume), by updated pages in a looseleaf, or periodic republication or an entire volume. Researchers should always make sure they are working with the most current edition of the treatise and be sure to consult pocket parts.

Third, while many treatises are still only available in print, more treatises are becoming available online . For example, major treatises on insurance law are available in both Lexis and Westlaw. Electronic versions of treatises allow for full text searching, which can be valuable for research. For more focused search results, consider narrowing your search to relevant sections, if possible. In many cases, you can still access the tables of contents and indexes to help locate chapters or sections of interest.

Remember that you can (and should!) check to see how current the electronic text is by clicking the I link next to the title of the treatise to see how regularly it is updated and when the last update took place.

How to Cite Treatises

See Bluebook Rule 15.

RICHARD H. FALLON, JR. ET AL., HART AND WECHSLER'S THE FEDERAL COURTS AND THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 330 (5th ed. 2003).

Intro to Law Review Articles

Law review or journal articles are another great secondary source for legal research, valuable for the depth in which they analyze and critique legal topics, as well as their extensive references to other sources, including primary sources.

Law reviews are scholarly publications, usually edited by law students in conjunction with faculty members. They contain both lengthy articles and shorter essays by professors and lawyers, as well as comments, notes, or developments in the law written by students. Law review articles often focus on new or emerging areas of law and they can offer more critical commentary than a legal encyclopedia or ALR entry .

Some law reviews are dedicated to a particular topic, such as gender and the law or environmental law, and will include in their contents the proceedings of a wide range of panels and symposia on timely legal issues.

Sources of full text law review articles

These resources all provide comprehensive coverage of United States law reviews, and allow you to search the full text of the articles that they index.

• Bloomberg Law Bloomberg Law is available to all HLS students, faculty, and staff. Register with your HLS email address. Law reviews are included in Bloomberg Law's selection of secondary sources.
• HeinOnline Law Journal Library Database of full text, PDF law review articles; use advanced search to search by topic or search specific titles. HeinOnline is the most comprehensive law review articles database, as coverage begins with the first issue of each journal.
• LexisNexis U.S. Law Reviews and Journals, Combined Combined full text database of United States Law Reviews and Bar Journals. Coverage begins in 1982; regular updates as received from publishers. Lexis also contains databases for Canadian law reviews articles and law review articles by jurisdiction and topic.
• Westlaw Journals & Law Reviews Journals and Law Reviews contains full text documents from law reviews and CLE materials from U.S. and Canadian based publications. Coverage varies by publication with most going back to the 1980s or 1990s.

Indexes to law reviews and journals

These resources only index articles, usually by author, title, keywords, and subject; you will have to find the full text separately. However, they provide additional ways of searching, including taking advantage of subject indexing by expert librarians, and they enable finding material that may not be found in full text databases. In most cases, there will be a link to find the article you desire at Harvard. If we do not own the journal in question, you may request the article via interlibrary loan .

• Current Index to Legal Periodicals A weekly publication by the University of Washington Library, CILP indexes the most recent law review and journal publications by subject as well as provides the tables of contents of the journals indexed. Also available on Westlaw and in print in the reference room at K 33 .C86.
• Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals IFLP indexes legal literature worldwide, covering all forms of foreign law, including comparative law and legal systems, such as Islamic law; socialist law; public and private international law; and transnational commercial law. Although Anglo-American law is not covered, British and American publications concerning foreign law are included. IFLP includes journal articles, congress reports, essay collections, yearbooks and book reviews in all languages. Coverage begins in 1985.
• Index to Legal Periodicals, Retrospective (1908 - 1981) This retrospective database indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic will also be covered.
• Index to Legal Periodicals and Books (1981 - ) ILP indexes articles in over 800 legal periodicals such as law reviews, bar association journals, yearbooks, institutes, and government publications from August 1981 to the present. In 1994, ILP began indexing legal books and now indexes approximately 2,000 per year. ILP can be searched simultaneously with ILP Retrospective (see next link) through the open database selection area link.

• Index to Canadian Legal Literature (Westlaw) ICLL is a periodical index and bibliography of Canadian legal literature from 1985 to present. ICLL indexes monographs, essays, federal and provincial government publications, publications of law faculties and legal research institutes and associations, including theses, publications from the law societies and associations, legal education materials, and more. Also available in print in the reference room at KE 1 .I532 2001
• Nineteenth Century Masterfile Jones & Chipman's Index to Legal Periodical Literature covers the content of about 235 British legal periodicals and 67 Law Report titles from 1786-1937. Jones & Chipman is available as part of 19th Century Masterfile, a collection of indexes covering 19th century periodicals and newspapers. Also available in print in the Library at Reference K 33 .I53. more... less... Help Searching
• Legal Journals Index (Westlaw) Legal Journals Index provides citations to articles in over 450 legal journals published in the United Kingdom and other European countries from 1986 to the present. The index covers topics pertaining to the laws of the European Union and its member states. Citations include abstracts and links to the full-text of the article and referenced cases when available. Also available in print in the reference room at KD 59 .L44.

Working Paper Repositories

Working papers are an additional source of secondary analysis. They are frequently draft or pre-publication versions of law review articles, though you will also find published versions of articles in these databases. When citing or relying on a draft paper, be sure to carefully check its citations and request the author's permission before citing.

• SSRN Legal Scholarship Network Contains both published and working papers by law faculty, as well as scholars working in the fields of accounting, economics, financial economics, and management. Search by author and by title and abstract keywords. Most papers are available for download in pdf format.
• BePress Legal Repository Contains approximately 3000 articles and papers by law faculty.

How to Cite Law Review and Journal Articles

See Bluebook Rule 16.

Quick example: Paul Butler et. al., Race, Law and Justice: The Rehnquist Court and the American Dilemma, 45 Am. U. L. REV. 567, 569 (1996).

Intro to ALR

American Law Reports (frequently abbreviated and referred to as ALR) contains in-depth articles on narrow topics of the law. ALR articles, called annotations, provide background, analysis, and citations to relevant cases, statutes, law review articles, and other annotations .

ALR is published in series:

• two series under its original title Lawyers Reports Annotated
• eight ALR series, one through six
• two federal series

ALR annotations are not jurisdiction specific. Each annotation contains a Table of Jurisdictions to help you find relevant cases within specific states. In the federal series, the Table of Jurisdictions directs you to cases by circuit.

All ALR series continue to be updated, though not on a regular schedule. When using the set in print, always check the pocket parts for updates. ALR is also available in both Lexis and Westlaw, and the electronic versions incorporate updates into the text. ALR annotations can also be completely superceded by more recent annotations. Electronic versions will provide referrals to the superceding annotations, but in print, you should check the History Table at the end of the ALR Index to verify that your annotation has not been superceded.

Find relevant annotations by using the print indices or searching the ALR databases in Lexis or Westlaw. When using ALR electronically, it is most efficient to look for your terms in the titles of the annotations, since their titles are specific, and reflect their contents.

Finding ALR in print and online

• ALR on Westlaw Contains the full text of the annotations included in the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Federal, and Federal Second series of American Law Reports (ALR) and the Index to Annotations covering these series. Because West publishes ALR, this is the most comprehensive electronic version.

• The ALR Index is located in the Reading Room at KF 132.2.I53. It covers annotations written since 1948.
• The ALR Quick Index is located in the Reading Room at KF 132.6.A543. It covers major annotations from the ALR 3d series to the present.

How to Cite ALR Annotations

See Bluebook Rule 16.6.6

William B. Johnson, Annotation, Use of Plea Bargain or Grant of Immunity as Improper Vouching for Credibility of Witness in Federal Cases, 76 A.L.R. FED. 409 (1986).

Intro to Restatements

Restatements are highly regarded distillations of common law . They are prepared by the American Law Institute (ALI), a prestigious organization comprising judges, professors, and lawyers. The ALI's aim is to distill the "black letter law" from cases to indicate trends in common law, and occasionally to recommend what a rule of law should be. In essence, they restate existing common law into a series of principles or rules.

Restatements cover broad topics, such as Contracts or Property. They are organized into chapters, titles, and sections. Sections contain a concisely stated rule of law, comments to clarify the rule, hypothetical examples, explanation of purpose, as well as exceptions to the rule.

Restatements are not primary law. Due to the prestige of the ALI and its painstaking drafting process, however, they are considered persuasive authority by many courts. The most heavily cited Restatements are the Restatement of Torts and the Restatement of Contracts.

The ALI web site contains information regarding Restatement projects, ALI membership, history and institutional processes.

Finding Cases Discussing Restatements

Annotations of cases citing a Restatement section can be found in the Appendix volumes the Restatements in print. There may be one or many Appendix volumes. They are organized by Restatement series, (i.e. citations to the first Restatement, then second, etc.), then by section number. Appendices are not cumulative. The spines indicate sections and years covered. They are updated with pocket parts, cumulative annual supplements, and semiannual pamphlets called Interim Case Citations. The same case annotations are available when using the Restatements on LexisNexis or Westlaw.

You can Shepardize a Restatement section on LexisNexis using the following formats. Note that Bluebook citation format for Restatements, or permutations thereof, will not work.

• torts second sec. 46
• property second (donative transfers) sec 25.9
• conflict of laws second sec. 6
• contracts second sec. 35 cmt. d illus. 7

You can also KeyCite a Restatement section on Westlaw using the following formats. Note that KeyCite finds significantly more citing material than Shepard's for Restatements. (See the KeyCite Publications List for additional help with citation format.)

• rest agen s 1
• rest 2d contr s 3
• rest 2d prop-lt s 1.1
• rest 3d trusts-pir s 170

Current Restatements

Listed below are print editions of the Restatements and their locations in the library. Restatements are also available on both Lexis and Westlaw:

Restatements on LexisNexis Rules (along with comments, illustrations, and notes) are searchable in separate sources from case citations. This makes searching for relevant rules very efficient on LexisNexis. Case citations are linked from individual rules. Browse tables of contents or search by keyword. Restatement drafts are in separate sources from final versions of Restatements. The first series of Restatements is not available on LexisNexis.

Retreiving Restatement sections using Get a Document is not intuitive. Search for restatement in the Get a Document Citation Formats list to determine the proper format.

Restatements on Westlaw All series of Restatements are available on Westlaw. Browse tables of contents or search by keyword. Searching the Restatements on Westlaw can be problematic, because multiple series as well as selected drafts are combined into one database along with case citations to all of them, e.g. Torts first, second, and the topic-specialized Torts third series along with citations to all series are in one database. This can make keyword searching inefficient unless you use a fielded search or use the Table of Contents mode to search within a particular Restatement. Examine your search results carefully to ensure you are looking at the current version of a rule. If a rule has been superceded, there will be note above the rule text indicating this.

Retrieving Restatement sections using Find is somewhat intuitive. The format mimics the database ID. See the listed format for KeyCite below; they will also work for Find. For a complete list of Restatement retrieval formats, search the Find Publications List for restatement. 

• Agency 2d Reading Room KF 1345 .A764
• Agency 3d Reading Room KF 1345 .A764
• Conflict of Laws 2d Reading Room KF 411 .A453
• Contracts 2d Reading Room KF 801 .R47
• Foreign Relations Law of the United States 3d Reading Room KF 4651 .A748x
• Judgments 2d Reading Room KF 8990 .R48
• Law Governing Lawyers 3d Reading Room KF 300 .R47
• Property Reading Room KF 570 .A73
• Property, Donative Transfers 2d Reading Room KF 613 .R47
• Property, Landlord and Tenant 2d Reading Room KF 590 .A84
• Property, Mortgages 3d Reading Room KF 695 .R49
• Property, Servitudes 3d Reading Room KF 656 .R475x
• Property, Wills and Other Donative Transfers 3rd Reading Room KF613 .R479x
• Restitution: Quasi Contracts & Constructive Trusts Reading Room KF 1244 .R46x
• Security Reading Room KF 1050 .A745
• Suretyship and Guaranty 3d Reading Room KF 1045 .R463x
• Torts 2d Reading Room KF 1249 .A4 R47
• Torts, Apportionment of Liability 3d Reading Room KF 1249 .A4 R4774x
• Torts, Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm 3d Reading Room KF1286 .R473x
• Torts, Products Liability 3d Reading Room KF 1296 .R476x
• Trusts 2d Reading Room KF 730 .A8
• Trusts 3d Reading Room KF 730 .R4763x
• Trusts, Prudent Investor Rule 3d Reading Room KF 730 .R4725
• Unfair Competition 3d Reading Room KF 3195 .R475x

Restatements in Draft Status

For more information about the drafting process, see the Restatements Drafts sub-tab.

• Employment Law 3d (discussion draft) Reading Room KF3319 .R473x
• Restitution and Unjust Enrichment 3d (tentative draft) Reading Room KF 1244 .R463x
• Torts, Economic Torts and Related Wrongs 3d This project began in 2010; there are no drafts yet.
• U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration 3d

How to Cite Restatements

See Bluebook Rule 12.8.5

RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF PROP.: DONATIVE  TRANSFERS § 2 (2000).

• Liability for Economic Harm (tentative draft) (Torts 3d)

The Drafting Process

For a short overview of the drafting process for a Restatement, see How the ALI Works .

Parties Involved

• ALI Officers: a group of approximately ten, including the Chair of the Council, President, Vice Presidents, Treasurer, Director, and Deputy Directors
• ALI Council: an elected, standing group of approximately sixty judges, professors, and lawyers
• Reporter: Head of the Restatement project appointed by the ALI Officers and Council, responsible for drafting the language of the Restatement
• Advisers: Group of professors and lawyers (usually 12-30 for a Restatement) with subject expertise appointed to advise the Reporter
• Members Consultative Group: Groups of ALI members (usually 50-75 for a Restatement) interested in the topic of a Restatement who wish to offer input
• ALI Membership: a approximately 3000 ALI members who discuss and ocasionally vote on Restatement language at annual meetings; membership gives input only near the end stages of the drafting process

Drafting Process

The following process typically takes between 9 and 21 years:

• A Reporter is appointed by the Council
• The Reporter divides the project into parts that go through the following process separately:
• The Reporter writes a preliminary draft
• The Preliminary draft is sent to the Advisers and the Members Consultative Group
• The Advisers and Members Consultative Group recommend revisions
• The Reporter, at his/her discretion, makes the revisions
• The draft goes back and forth between the Advisers and the Reporter and a series of revised preliminary drafts are made
• The Reporter and Advisers send a council draft to the Council of the Institute
• The Council suggests revisions
• The Reporter is somewhat obliged to make the suggested revisions
• The draft goes back and forth between the Advisors and the Council and a series of council drafts are made
• The Council presents a tentative draft to the ALI membership
• The draft goes back and forth between the Council and the Membership and a series of tentative drafts are made
• Issues surrounding the draft settle and a proposed final draft is usually created
• The proposed final draft (or last tentative draft) is submitted to the ALI Membership at the annual meeting
• The Membership and the Council approve the proposed final draft
• The Restatement is adopted and promulgated and the official text of the Restatement is published

Other ALI-authored works, such as Uniform Commercial Code articles, are created in a similar process. If you want assistance locating materials relating to non-Restatement ALI projects, please ask a research librarian .

TRACING THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF RESTATEMENT SECTIONS

Legal researchers sometimes need to trace the historical development of a Restatement section, the impetus for its inclusion, which section of a prior Restatement it derived from, or how it came to be worded a certain way.

For many sections, Reporter's notes explain the development of a section, often explaining earlier versions and citations to cases that were used as the basis for the rule. Reporters notes can be found in the Appendix volumes of individual Restatements.

To trace how the text changed during the drafting process, you can compare various drafts: the tentative drafts, council drafts, preliminary drafts and proposed final drafts. Each draft has its own record in the library catalog. Use the Title Keywords search in  Hollis Classic --for example, search  restatement torts --to locate them. Drafts are also available in the microform set Archive Publications described below.

Some Restatement volumes contain conversion tables. These tables indicate where sections of drafts or sections from earlier series were included in the final, adopted version of a Restatement.

Although some Restatements are designated 2d or 3d, there are not always antecedents. For instance, the Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers is a Restatement of the Law Third, but there has never been a first or second Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers.

• The Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Law Institute Available online from 1997 Available on Westlaw from 2000 For additional and older material, see: Reading Room KF 294 .A5 A3 Microform Room Drawer 812 An excellent research tool for those tracing the development of a Restatement section. The ALI has published the Proceedings annually since 1923, except for 1945-1955. The Proceedings contain reports to ALI members, Reporter presentations, transcripts of discussions of drafts, the text of proposed amendments, and include an index of sections discussed. For the years 1945-1955, the Proceedings are only available in the Archive Publications set described below.
• The ALI Reporter Available online from 1999 Reading Room KF 200 .A455 The ALI's quarterly newsletter contains the latest information about ALI projects, meetings, and members, including reports on actions taken on drafts and the full text of chapters approved for discussion at the annual meeting with revisions explained.
• Archive Publications Microfilm Room KF 294.A5 A43, Drawers 963-965 A microfiche set containing the text of of Restatements, all drafts, and ALI Proceedings from annual meetings for the years that were not officially published, 1945-55. It also contains drafts of four Restatement projects that were terminated before completion. The set is arranged by Restatement, by section, and chronologically. Coverage starts with the founding of the ALI in 1923. All drafts produced for ALI projects are added to this set a few years after the project is completed or terminated. There is a print guide to this microfiche collection in the Microform Room at KF 294 .A5 A43.
• American Law Institute Archives Finally, there is a well-indexed, comprehensive collection of the American Law Institute Archives at the Biddle Law Library of the University of Pennsylvania. The archive contains drafts, comments, and correspondence related to ALI projects.

Determining the Current Status of Restatement Drafts

The American Law Institute is continually working on Restatements and other projects. Researchers are often interested in determining whether a Restatement has become final, or what stage the drafting process has reached. The following tools can help answer those questions, as well as provide a history of the development of ALI projects.

• ALI Catalog of Publications The catalog contains information about draft content and authorship. It mentions which portions of Restatements are superceded or in development.
• Annual Report of the ALI Director The Annual Report summarizes work contemplated, underway, and completed during the year on various Restatements. Available online from 1999. Reports 1988-1998, are available in the Reading Room KF 294 .A5 A14 .
• Proceedings of ALI Annual Meetings The Proceedings contain proposed amendments, an index of sections discussed, and records of discussions. Meetings take place in May and the Proceedings are usually available by March or April of the following year. Available online from 1997 Available on Westlaw from 2000 For additional and older material, see: Reading Room KF 294 .A5 A3 Microform Room Drawer 812

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An literature review examples on law literature reviews is a prosaic composition of a small volume and free composition, expressing individual impressions and thoughts on a specific occasion or issue and obviously not claiming a definitive or exhaustive interpretation of the subject.

Some signs of law literature reviews literature review:

• the presence of a specific topic or question. A work devoted to the analysis of a wide range of problems in biology, by definition, cannot be performed in the genre of law literature reviews literature review topic.
• The literature review expresses individual impressions and thoughts on a specific occasion or issue, in this case, on law literature reviews and does not knowingly pretend to a definitive or exhaustive interpretation of the subject.
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The goal of an literature review in law literature reviews is to develop such skills as independent creative thinking and writing out your own thoughts.

Writing an literature review is extremely useful, because it allows the author to learn to clearly and correctly formulate thoughts, structure information, use basic concepts, highlight causal relationships, illustrate experience with relevant examples, and substantiate his conclusions.

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Would a change in the law on assisted dying be ethically permissible?

Introduction.

As with most ethical debates, the question posed above creates a divide between two distinct schools of thought: those authors who are in favour of proposed change and those who are not. Nevertheless, each of these groups can be divided into subgroups, each presenting their own individual reasoning. It should also be noted that since the status quo of the law involves the effective outlawing of assisted dying, the 'change' mentioned above is implicitly the legalisation of at least some substantial form of assisted dying. For the purpose of clarity, 'assisted dying' refers to active voluntary euthanasia. Whilst the issue of assisted dying is by no means new, particular attention has been paid to relatively modern resources, on the basis that any change to the law would by definition be made in a modern context. Furthermore, recent attempts to change the law can be regarded as having placed a useful energy into the debate. Indeed, there even exists a subsection of the topic dedicated to examining why change might be more likely than ever, as demonstrated by the work of Saunders on the media's role in the debate. [1]

Arguments in Favour of Changing the Law on Assisted Dying

Autonomy in general.

Unsurprisingly, the concept of autonomy (as described by Beachamp and Childress [2] ) holds a central position in the debate at hand. Authors such as Young [3] and Gray [4] note that there should not be a distinction between the plethora of actions which any given individual might take in their day to day life in the name of autonomy and the act of arranging and following through with an assisted death, at least as far as the right to self-determination is concerned. In this manner, the question of assisted suicide can be located within wider debates of the limits of bodily integrity and self-determination. [5] This means that even if autonomy does not form the central theme of a given text arguing for alterations to the law, it forms an essential part of the background to that text. Nevertheless, as noted by Schermer [6] just because a particular action can be described in terms of self-determination, this does not make it a given that that action is permissible. Instead, the limits of autonomy are poorly defined and amorphous. Thus, whilst there appears to be consensus that assisted dying is a matter of autonomy, this does not make it a given that it should be legalised. [7] Indeed, it can be countered that without access to philosophically watertight defences of the concept of autonomy, that all arguments that flow from the idea that autonomy is a universal good can be considered at least somewhat flawed. Keown notes that as appealing as autonomy arguments are, that they lack substance as a result of the fact that there are many restrictions placed upon autonomy by any given society, and therefore that the law on assisted dying can simply be regarded as being part of a continuity of restricted self-determination. [8]

Rights Based Arguments

Since the acceptable limits of autonomy are by no means hard, a series of authors have attempted to deduce whether assisted dying might be considered to be within or without the boundaries of legitimate behaviour. Manson and O'Neill [9] note that the right of an individual to guide themselves towards a desired end can in fact already be found in the autonomous right to refuse treatment (even if this might result in death) and thus that there is nothing patently wrong with an individual making active (as opposed to passive) decisions to hasten the end of life, especially since such decisions are by definition confined to situations in which terminal illness is largely present. Dahl and Levy [10] build on this argument, noting that autonomy is having an increasingly large presence within end-of-life decision making in recent years, as demonstrated by phenomena like advance directives. Such arguments can be considered meritorious, if only because they are based on objective evidence: the law and use of advance directives has indeed developed substantially in recent years, as has the debate on the matter of a right to die (as demonstrated by the number of assisted dying bills which have emerged in recent years. [11] )

The rights-based arguments can also be seen in a number of high profile cases regarding assisted dying. In particular, Pretty v UK (2002) [12] , R (on the application of Nicklinson and another) (Appellants) v Ministry of Justice (Respondent), R (on the application of AM)(AP)(Respondent) v The Director of Public Prosecutions (Appellant) [13] and R (on the Application of Debbie Purdy) v Director of Public Prosecutions [14] have all been based heavily around the idea that there is a significant incompatibility between the rights provided to an individual under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the status quo of the law on assisted suicide. Even within this small group of cases, it should be noted that there exists another divide, between those cases which challenge the law itself, and those which challenge the way in which the law is applied. In the former category fall Pretty, Nicklinson and AM , whilst Purdy falls into the latter category. Regardless of the theoretical merit of the arguments in these cases, the repeated lack of success of these lines of argument suggests that as of yet the use of human rights law does not provide a practical avenue by which the law might be changed.

The Unequal Application of the Law

Others seek to examine the legal status quo as a means of establishing acceptable uses of autonomy. One particularly notable line of reasoning involves examining the differences in the law on suicide and those on assisted suicide. Jackson [15] notes that the current law does not seem to have any sweeping or absolute effect on the ability of an individual to hasten the end of their own life - instead, it simply creates a split between three different groups: those who do not require assistance to take their own lives, those who possess the means or support to leave the country to jurisdictions in which assisted dying is accessible, and those who do not fit into either of the two previous categories. Jackson argues that this means that the law has no substantial quarrel with the idea of suicide, but instead merely disproportionally affects a small minority of patients. [16] Again, the merit of this particular argument can be seen in its relatively objective nature: the law indeed entirely makes suicide accessible to the vast majority.

There also exist arguments which revolve around the idea that rather than a loose right to self-determination, that patients in fact have a distinct right to control their own mortality, even if this right is used in a way which brings about the end of life. Friedman [17] in particular advances this view heavily, arguing that individuals have a level of property rights in their own body, and that this therefore extends to the right to affect that body as the individual might see fit (including, by implication, the right to consent and have another take their life.) This argument can (again) be seen as fitting into wider discussions of autonomy, with authors like Narveson [18] noting that without a right to suicide (even if assisted), no individual can be regarded as having properly realised bodily integrity. Whether such arguments hold water can be regarded as being based on whether the concept of the body as property is accepted or not. If not, such arguments lack weight (and vice versa.)

If you need assistance with writing your literature review, our professional Literature Review Service is here to help!

Arguments on Changing the Law on Assisted Dying

Coercion of the vulnerable.

The main argument which can be seen to be tabled against altering the law is that to change the law would be to open the floodgates to a series of abuses of the system, in which vulnerable members of society are coerced or bullied into making use of assisted suicide. Gabriel [19] notes that as well as the most obvious argument (that allowing assisted suicide might result in coerced deaths) that it can also be argued that in providing an alternative to palliative care that the quality of palliative care will diminish on the basis that it is resource intensive and can often involve painful procedures being performed on patients.

Interestingly, Gabriel also notes the lack of evidence to support the slippery slope argument. This can be regarded as not particularly sound reasoning - before a change in the law can be seen to have a negative effect, it stands that a change in the law must first be made. Nonetheless, it might be argued that there is evidence to suggest that the slippery slope will not emerge. Quill [20] notes since assisted suicide remains de facto available overseas, and no cases have emerged in which this phenomenon has occurred, that this demonstrates that at least contemporaneously, the risks feared by anti-change parties have not been realised. Furthermore, as with any slippery slope argument, it can be countered that any change in the law would merely need to be tempered with appropriate safeguards and oversight in order to prevent the end result of the slope from ever occurring. [21]

Further nuance can be seen to be added to the slippery slope arguments by examining those writers who consider which parties might be disproportionately disadvantaged by a change in the law. First and foremost are arguments that disabled individuals will be overly affected by a change in the law. Indeed, Gill notes that this is why there is a significant tendency for disability rights groups to oppose any changes in the law, out of fears of abuse. [22] Even if a patient is not explicitly disabled, Wolf [23] notes that proper consent will be difficult to ascertain, since those suffering from terminal diseases will very often be in significant amounts of pain and distress, with far higher rates of depression in terminal patients than in the general population. Nevertheless, such an argument should arguably be taken cautiously, since its logical conclusion would be that no patient suffering from an illness should be regarded as making an autonomous decision. Biggs [24] puts forward an argument that any change in the law might disproportionally affect female patients as a result of the marginalised position of older women within society (i.e. a misplaced perception that a woman's advancing age correlates with her reduced utility.) These specific arguments are arguably more secure in their reasoning than generalist slippery slope arguments, since it is sensible to suggest that traditionally marginalised groups will be more vulnerable to abuse than majority groups.

Corruption of the Position of Physicians

It is also sometimes argued that a change in the law will cause an irreversible negative change in the patient-doctor relationship. The reasoning for this change varies. Simpson, [25] for example, argues that there is a direct dichotomy between the traditional role and goals of a doctor and the act of assisting in another's suicide. Indeed, this is a theoretically solid argument: it is largely expected that a doctor will act to preserve life, rather than take it. In contrast, however, Hall, Trachtenberg and Dugan [26] state that their own research demonstrates that, at least as far as can be garnered from an opinion poll, that patients would not have their trust in their physicians harmed in any significant way.

In summary, as can be seen above, the binary yes/no nature of the discussion hides significant nuances with the discussion. Whilst it is of little surprise that autonomy finds itself at the centre of a discussion about letting people do something previously outlawed, of particular interest are the ways in which the current body of work seeks to establish the acceptable limits of autonomy (lest they fall foul of Keown's criticisms.) Any further work would need to both establish these limits, then balance this autonomy against the concerns of critics. Finally, it is of note that particular attention needs be paid to establishing the set of ethical standards that might be applied to a change in the law. Without first establishing this, any following discussion would be largely moot.

Bibliography

Legislation.

Human Rights Act 1998

Dignity in Dying, Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill (Dignity in Dying 2015) < http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/lord-falconers-assisted-dying-bill/ >

Beauchamp TL, Childress JF, Principles of Biomedical Ethics (OUP, 2001)

Cholbi M, Varelius J (Eds.) New Directions in the Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (Springer, 2015)

Emily Jackson, Medical Law: Texts Cases and Materials (OUP, 2015)

Keown J, Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy (CUP, 2002)

Manson N, O'Neill O, Rethinking informed consent in bioethics (CUP, 2007)

Schermer M, The Different Faces of Autonomy (Kluwer, 2002)

Sheldon S, Thomson M(Eds.) Feminist Perspectives on Healthcare Law (Cavendish, 1998) 279-295

Dahl E, Levy N, 'The case for Physician Assisted Suicide: How can it ever be proven?' (2006) 32 Journal of Medical Ethics 335-338

Friedman RF 'It's my body and I'll die if I want to' (1995) 12 Journal of Contemporary Health Policy 83-213

Gabriel M, 'Physician-assisted suicide: the right to life or the right to death?' (2011) 4 Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Student Medical Journal 84-86

Gill C, 'Health professionals, disability, and assisted suicide: An examination of relevant empirical evidence and reply to Batavia (2000)' (2000) 6 Psychology, Public Policy and Law 526-545

Gray W, 'Right to die or duty to live?' (1999) 16 Journal of Applied Philosophy 19-32

Hall M, Trachtenberg F, Dugan E, 'The impact on patient trust of legalising physician aid in dying' (2005) 31 Journal of Medical Ethics 693-697

Narveson J, 'Self-Ownership and the Ethics of Suicide' (1983) 13 Suicide and Life Threatening Behaviour 240-253

Saunders P, 'The Role of the Media in Shaping the UK Debate on Assisted Dying' (2011) 11 Medical Law International 239-259

Simpson B, 'Euthanasia for Sale' (1986) 84 Michigan Law Review 807

T Quill, 'Legal regulation of physician-assisted deaths - the latest report card' (2007) 356 New England Journal of Medicine 1911-1913

Wolf SM, 'Pragmatism in the Face of Death: The Role of Facts in the Assisted Suicide Debate' (1998) 82 Minnesota Law Review 1063

Young R, 'Existential Suffering and voluntary medically assisted dying' (2014) 40 Journal of Medical Ethics 108-109

[1] Peter Saunders, 'The Role of the Media in Shaping the UK Debate on Assisted Dying' (2011) 11 Medical Law International 239-259

[2] Tom L Beauchamp, James F Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics (OUP, 2001) 12

[3] Robert Young, 'Existential Suffering and voluntary medically assisted dying' (2014) 40 Journal of Medical Ethics 108-109

[4] William Gray, 'Right to die or duty to live?' (1999) 16 Journal of Applied Philosophy 19-32, 21

[5] Emma C. Bullock, 'Assisted Dying and the Proper Role of Patient Autonomy' in M Cholbi, J Varelius (Eds.) New Directions in the Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (Springer, 2015) 13

[6] Maartje Schermer, The Different Faces of Autonomy (Kluwer, 2002) 1

[8] John Keown, Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy (CUP, 2002) 54

[9] Neill Manson, Onora O'Neill, Rethinking informed consent in bioethics (CUP, 2007) 17

[10] E Dahl, N Levy, 'The case for Physician Assisted Suicide: How can it ever be proven?' (2006) 32 Journal of Medical Ethics 335-338, 338

[11] Dignity in Dying, Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill (Dignity in Dying 2015) < http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/lord-falconers-assisted-dying-bill/

[12] Pretty v UK (2002) 25 EHRR 1

[13] R (on the application of Nicklinson and another) (Appellants) v Ministry of Justice (Respondent) and R (on the application of AM)(AP)(Respondent) v The Director of Public Prosecutions (Appellant) [2014] UKSC 38

[14] R (on the Application of Debbie Purdy) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2009] EWCA Civ 92

[15] Emily Jackson, Medical Law: Texts Cases and Materials (OUP, 2015) 928

[17] RF Friedman 'It's my body and I'll die if I want to' (1995) 12 Journal of Contemporary Health Policy 83-213

[18] J Narveson, 'Self-Ownership and the Ethics of Suicide' (1983) 13 Suicide and Life Threatening Behaviour 240-253

[19] Maria Gabriel, 'Physician-assisted suicide: the right to life or the right to death?' (2011) 4 Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Student Medical Journal 84-86

[20] T Quill, 'Legal regulation of physician-assisted deaths - the latest report card' (2007) 356 New England Journal of Medicine 1911-1913

[22] Carol Gill, 'Health professionals, disability, and assisted suicide: An examination of relevant empirical evidence and reply to Batavia (2000)' (2000) 6 Psychology, Public Policy and Law 526-545

[23] Susan M Wolf, 'Pragmatism in the Face of Death: The Role of Facts in the Assisted Suicide Debate' (1998) 82 Minnesota Law Review 1063

[24] Hazel Biggs, 'I Don't Want to be a Burden' in Sally Sheldon, Michael Thomson (Eds.) Feminist Perspectives on Healthcare Law (Cavendish, 1998) 279-295

[25] Brian Simpson, 'Euthanasia for Sale' (1986) 84 Michigan Law Review 807, 809

[26] M Hall, F Trachtenberg, E Dugan, 'The impact on patient trust of legalising physician aid in dying' (2005) 31 Journal of Medical Ethics 693-697

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How to Write A Literature Review - Steps with Examples

This is something, as a student, I remember very well: writing literature reviews. They were always assigned, yet few of us knew how to write anything really impactful. For me, a good literature review is not the mere act of summarizing; rather, it is analysis, synthesis, and illumination all about discovered knowledge gaps. So let us break it down step-by-step and notice exactly how WPS Office can be used as your secret weapon in getting this one right.

What is a Literature Review & What are the Parts of it? 

It's not a book report for adults—a literature review is a critical examination of research that is already published, which plumbs deep into the scholarly conversation around your topic. Think of it this way: you are giving a guided tour through the general intellectual landscape, and you're not only pointing at landmarks but also explaining their importance, their relations to one another, and where the unknown areas can be.

The Blueprint: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion

Any well-constructed literature review will be built around the clear structure of an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Introduction: This is your opening act. Here you introduce your topic and lay out the central question or thesis your review will address. You might also give a sneak peek at the key themes or sources you'll be exploring, should you do a stand-alone review. This will also be a good place to explain how you picked and analyzed sources.

Body: This is the meat of your review. This is where you are going to put together the information from your sources in such a way that it makes sense. Again, do not just summarize, but also include your own ideas pointing out strengths as well as weaknesses of each document and relating the different studies. You will need to write clear paragraphs with effective transitions so that your reader can easily follow through the material.

Conclusion: Time to wind up: According to your literature review, there is a need to summarize the major findings and explain how they relate to your question. What are the big takeaways? What remains unanswered? Your conclusion should leave the reader with a great sense of evaluation about the present state of knowledge on a subject area and indication of where future research in this area might lead.

This framework will help you to structure a good literature review. Once more, this is only a rough expectation—remember, it is not etched in the stone. While the basic structure will usefully be applied as it is for most of the assignments or projects, sometimes maybe you will need to slightly adjust it according to the concrete needs of the assignment or project. The key is the following: Your review needs to be reader-friendly and organized, and it needs to communicate clearly the research findings.

How to organize the literature review [4 approaches]

Now that you have collected your sources and extracted their key insights, you are well on your way to developing a well-structured story. In many ways, this is akin to choosing the appropriate lens for a camera—the literature review snaps into focus. There are four common ways to approach literature review organization:

1. Chronological: This approach is almost like a timeline of ideas. You will trace the development of a topic in chronological order, so you will center on central milestones, swings in ideas, and influential debates.

2. Thematic: View this as thematically organizing your research. This will allow exploration of the subject under study in a more systematic way.

3. By Method: If you are dealing with research that utilizes a variety of methods, then this can be a revealing approach. You will draw out comparisons and contrasts between studies based on their methodology, where appropriate, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

4. Theoretical: This is commonly used within the humanities and social sciences, where theories are key. You will look at some of the several theoretical frameworks scholars have reached for to grasp your topic at hand, debating their strengths, limitations, and how they relate to each other.

The best approach for you will depend on what kind of research question you're asking and the body of literature involved. Don't be afraid to experiment and find the structure that works the best. You could also use a combination in your approach—like a primarily thematic approach with chronological elements there to help provide additional context for each theme.

How to Write a Literature Review Faster in 3 Steps

This type of strategic planning and effecting proper organization distinguishes an efficient literature review. The process of streamlining it is as follows:

Step 1: Gathering and Evaluating Relevant Sources

Research credible sources on academic databases like Google Scholar. Use specific keywords in order to find recent and influential publications that contribute to the topic at hand. Appraise every source according to your criteria of relevance and credibility.

Step 2: Identification of Themes and Literature Analysis

Skim through your selected sources in the search for emerging themes, debates, or gaps in the literature. Secondly, summarize key findings and methodologies for each source. Find the patterns or recurrent discussion which will help you categorize your review well and organize it.

Step 3: Outline and Structure Your Literature Review

Devise a clear structure for your literature review: introduce the topic and the thesis in the introduction, develop sources cohesively in the body, and summarize key findings in the conclusion. You could make use of organizational strategies such as chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical in representing your topic.

Use tools like WPS Office to plan your literature review and keep all of your sources well-organized. This will save you much time and guarantee that your literature review stays organized while you remain focused on your research objectives.

Remember: Do not simply list and summarize, but analyze and synthesize. Your literature review is not just a compilation of sources but one that critically relates the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of research, identifies the important debates in the area under consideration, and makes links between diverse pieces of research. WPS AI can help you to do this, through its identification of key terms, concepts, and relationships within the literature.

Bonus Tips: How to Perfect your Literature Review with WPS AI

Want WPS AI to be that magic weapon to help you make an extraordinary literature review? Here is how this intelligent assistant will supercharge your effort.

Annotation and Highlighting: WPS AI  permits direct annotation and highlighting of parts of interest within its software. This is quite useful to facilitate the marking of key findings, interesting quotes, or even areas in which authors have differed. By annotating through WPS AI, all critical points will be easy to refer to while you compose your review.

This WPS AI summarization tool will give you a condensed version of the long article or paper. It saves time by putting together exactly what the point or argument is from each source. On this, you will have a digest of several studies at your fingertips. This helps you easily compare and synthesize in your literature review.

Writing Assistance: Use WPS AI's writing tools to build your literature review section. These allow you to check the grammar, refine the sentence structure, work on the text length, and basically improve clarity. With these, you then ensure that it is well-written and easy for the readers to understand.

Build in these WPS AI features into your process of writing a literature review for refining workflow and bringing about a polished and insightful review that answers to academic standards.

FAQs about writing a literature review

Q1. what is the step before writing a literature review.

You must choose a topic, research existing literature, gather sources, determine themes, and make a defined scope of review before you begin writing your literature review.

Q2. Where should the literature review be placed within a dissertation?

Place the literature review after the introduction and before the methodology section of your dissertation.

Q3. Why do we need to write literature reviews?

Literature reviews would hence be a summary of earlier research on a topic, identification of gaps, building a context for fresh research, and devising credibility in an academic writing.

A literature review is one of the most critical steps of any research project. This aids in the placement of knowledge, pointing out the gaps, and placing one's research in a certain field. With accurate tools and strategies,or msg like WPS Office and WPS AI, the process can be streamlined in the production of quality literature reviews.

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