Legal Research - Fundamentals of Law - Lecture Slides, Slides of Law

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Legal Research

 Legal research usually starts with secondary and other sources , which are used as a guide to identifying the primary sources

Sources of law

 Primary sources

• legislation (statutes, Acts of Parliament)
• case law (common law)

 Secondary sources

• textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, journals, periodicals, loose-leaf services

Case law research

 Case law is published in authorised reports

 Each court has its own law report series, e.g. the High Court has the Commonwealth Law Reports (CLR)

 Various publishers also publish law report series dedicated to particular areas of law, e.g. the Australian Torts Reporter (ATR)

Case law research

 Consult textbooks or the Internet for relevant case law

 Internet research tools, e.g.

 http://www.austlii.edu.au  http://www.findlaw.com.au

Legislation

 The Act may be divided into Parts and Divisions

 The operative provisions are sections , sub-sections , paragraphs and sub-paragraphs  Amendments may result in section numbers like s160A … or s159GZZZZE [a section of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (Cth)]

Corporations Act 2001 (Cth)

name of the statute ( in italics )

date the statute was passed by parliament or last consolidated

name of the parliament

Case law - civil

 In a State court, Smith is the plaintiff , Jones is the defendant  In a Federal court, Smith is the applicant , Jones is the respondent

 On appeal, Smith is the appellant , Jones is the respondent  The ‘v’ is read as ‘and’  ‘Smith & Ors’ or ‘Smith et al ’ means that Smith is the first of a number of plaintiffs

Smith v Jones

The case report

 The date is the year of trial  The letters are the abbreviation for the law report series  The number after the round brackets is the volume number of the law report series  Square brackets around the date indicate that the law report series volumes are by year  The final numbers are page numbers

Mabo v Queensland (1992) 175 CLR 1 Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562