Occupational Safety and Health Law: Home

This guide introduces you to available resources on Occupational Safety and Health law. When doing research, keep in mind that you will often need to look at many different sources of law and guidance to formulate a complete answer to a research question.

Many of the electronic resources on the guide are for the use of NUSL students, faculty, and staff only.

Administrative Law is a complex topic. This chart is meant to diagram some of the common actions that agencies do, to give you a sense of the processes that generate the documents you find when doing legal research. It would take a semester-long Administrative Law class to delve into why and how all of this happens.

If the picture is too small, try downloading the image to your computer, or contact Elliott Hibbler for a .pdf copy.

OSHA data base:

The data search page in OSHA (https://www.osha.gov/data) provides links to various search possibilities in the “IMIS”(integrated management information system) database. You can follow the links from this page to do searches using a variety of queries [e.g. by establishment name, but SIC (standard industrical code), etc.]. There is also a helpful though somewhat dated blog posting on the Pump Handle blog (a blog specifically focused on public health with a frequent OSH focus) that tells you some tricks: https://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/interpreting-oshas-on-line-data/ . If you want to subscribe to the Pump Handle blog, it is now part of Science Blogs (http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/).

If you are interested in this, play around with it before March 20. Class guests will be able to answer questions about these kinds of searches: Jim Mulligan from OSHA on March 20, Chris Eskilson from SOL on March 27, and Eric Frumin from Change to Win on April 10 should all be able to be helpful.

MSHA data:

Go to this page in data.gov: http://www.msha.gov/OpenGovernmentData/OGIMSHA.asp.

If you are looking for an explanation on how an aspects of Occupational Health and Safety law works, start with Secondary Sources.

If you need the exact language from a statute or a case, start with Primary Law Sources.

Reference Librarians are available to help you with your research questions.

3rd Floor Law Library at Info Desk

Scholar One Search Library catalog

Law Library Homepage

Law Research Databases 

Lexis Access restrictions apply

Westlaw Access restrictions apply

Bloomberg Law Access restrictions apply