A few years ago, Andrew mentioned the possibility of adding a page where users could browse by jurisdiction among our different content types. Our content types include In Custodia Legis, the Guide to Law Online, the Global Legal Monitor, Legal Reports, and other content materials such as research guides. We are adding more content in the coming months including the historical U.S. Reports, Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, U.S. Treaties, and the Code of Federal Regulations.
In order to help find subjects or jurisdictions when the content type doesn’t matter, you can still use the facets on our search page or now use our newly created browse page.
The first category on this page is “Topics.” We have arranged topics that we often use into 43 categories. For instance, under “Immigration” are 12 different terms that fit under that category. Clicking on “Naturalization” pre-populates a search with over 65 results. You can then narrow down further using the facets on the left or browse results.
This list of topics and keywords is curated by a team from the Law Library that includes different backgrounds, specialties, and divisions so that when choosing terms, we have a global and varied perspective. This list is used whenever posting legal content to the website, so clicking on the terms yields similar content across different content types.
Below the topics list is a list of jurisdictions. This list is also curated by the Law Library. The first drop-down includes 19 regions of the world into which we divide up the countries. This will help to locate similar countries in the same area and expand your search when one jurisdiction may not yield enough results.
The last section includes frequently used keywords, places, and collections that are not a part of the official lists. When adding keywords, we use the keyword list or “topics” as much as possible, but are also able to add other keywords that would help find or group similar material together. The “Collections” drop-down is a quick or alternative way to reach all the items in a particular collection.
What other improvements would you like to see on law.gov? Comment below!