Last updated on January 7th.
The Statute Law Database (SLD) is the official revised edition
of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online.
It is maintained by the Statute Law Database Team in London and the staff of the Northern Ireland Statutory Publications Office in Belfast.
Responsibility for SLD transferred from the Ministry of Justice to The National Archives in December 2008.
Responsibility for the publication of all UK legislation
now rests with HMSO.
The database offers users a range of advanced search and navigation functions across over 45,000
items of UK primary and secondary legislation. The database contains primary legislation that was in
force at 1 February 1991 and primary and secondary legislation that has been produced since that date.
The integration of recent legislation into consolidated legislation is however not
up to date and it is not yet known when it will be.
BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute)
provides access to the most comprehensive free and up-to-date collection of British and
Irish primary legal materials on the internet with 74 databases covering 7 jurisdictions.
A user can pick individual courts, tribunals or collections of legislation to search or search across the whole
seven jurisdictions in one go. Some of these are the Court of Appeal of England and Wales; the Irish Supreme Court;
the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal; Scottish Court of Session and High Court; Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council and the House of Lords and the European Union as well as full-text legislation databases from Ireland,
Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Also on BAILII are Law Commission publications and tribunal decisions
from tribunals such as the Employment Appeals Tribunal, the Immigration Appeals Tribunal and VAT & Duties Tribunals.
In many instances BAILII has these documents available days before any other source.
BAILII is legally constituted as a public trust incorporated in the UK.
It is hosted in the UK and Ireland by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies,
London and the Law Faculty, University College Cork.
The databases on BAILII are derived from a number of sources. Some of the data comes
from existing free sites. Most of the databases are based on published and unpublished
CD-ROMs or rely upon direct and indirect feeds by relevant courts, government departments
and other organisations. All of the data has been converted into a consistent format and
a generalised set of search and hypertext facilities have been added.
JustCite 2.0 is a multi-source legal search engine and citator service from independent publisher
Justis. It is the only provider-neutral service that
links to content from a range of publishers and includes extensive links to full-text material on leading
online services, including BAILII, Casetrack, Informa Law, Justis, LexisNexis and WestLaw.
Further information on the facilities provided by the new version JustCite 2.0 can be found
here.
There is a free version of JustCite 2.0 (designed to be genuinely useful whilst not provided so many resources in the
search as the full version) below.
The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting offers a service called
WLR Daily (previously called Daily Law Notes) with summarised reports of cases heard at House of Lords
and Privy Council, Court of Appeal - Criminal and Civil Divisions, Chancery Division, Queen's Bench
Division, Family Division and Court of Justice of the EU. There is also a monthly index but, once they have
been reported in the printed (and paid for) WLR, the free summary seems to be withdrawn.
There is also a free facility on the ICLR site called "Industrial Cases Reports Express" with previews of the Industrial
Cases Reports before they are available in printed form. The reports cover employment law, discrimination
and competition.
The Scottish Courts Web Site
provides many recent Court Opinions of importance. As it says in more details:
"This site provides an access point to information relating to all civil and criminal
courts within Scotland, including the Court of Session, the High Court of Justiciary,
the Sheriff Courts and a number of other courts, commissions and tribunals as well
the District Courts. The information includes location details, contact numbers,
advice and details of recent significant judgments. The site is regularly updated with
any changes and other relevant information."
The Scottish Council of Law Reporting is now
providing a database of important Scottish cases from 1873 to 2007, as an open access resource.
They have previously provided the law-teaching universities in Scotland with a CD-ROM
of this material as a learning aid to their students but in this new form, the archive is available to
everyone. The cases, specially elected by leading academics, cover
the full range of legal subjects. It is the Council’s intention to expand this selection by adding new cases each year.
The archive is available here.
The council has teamed up with Justis to run the archive using their award-winning search engine and interface JustCite
(see above for more on this).
CaseCheck offers registered users free access to a continually
updated archive of Scottish Court case summaries and also summaries of UK Employment Appeal Tribunal cases.
Presently the archive contains summaries dating back to 2005.
The archive is split up into a number of clearly defined categories and each case summary links directly to the
full, original judgment. The content of the site is user generated and the current reports are drafted
by an advocate, an employment lawyer and a professional support lawyer.
Registered users can add comments and can also receive a weekly email bulletin with details of recently
added reports. They have recently linked up with
Law Brief Publishing to give users free access to a database of
more than 5,000 case summaries from the UK and EU.
Law Brief Update is a free email newsletter which provides a brief introduction to recent
case law in all the major areas of law. It is written by around 20 specialist barristers,
and goes out approximately once a month.
The Northern Ireland Court Service
was established in 1979, by the Judicature (Northern Ireland) Act 1978, as a separate civil service in
Northern Ireland. The Court Service reports to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for
Constitutional Affairs. There are selected Judgments and Practice Directions on the site.
House of Lords Judgments are available since 1996, sorted by title within year. The most
recent judgments are shown at the top of the page.
Care Standards Tribunal relates
to the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults under various Childrens Acts and related legislation.
There are decisions on the site.
Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) is a specialist judicial body
with cross-disciplinary expertise in law, economics, business and accountancy. Under United Kingdom law,
the function of the CAT is to hear and decide appeals and other applications or claims involving competition or
economic regulatory issues. It came into force on 1 April 2003.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) is designed
to consider appeals from decisions made by Employment Tribunals. An appeal must be on a point of law,
i.e. it must identify flaws in the legal reasoning of the original decision.
They will not normally re–examine issues of fact.
EAT is a 'court of record' i.e. its judgments set precedents and may be used in support of Employment Tribunal claims.
The database contains all judgments transcribed from full hearings since 1999 plus selected judgments from other hearings.
There is also a section for latest judgments (from the last month).
EAT judgments are available on this website as Microsoft Word files or on the
BAILII website in html format.
Finance and Tax Tribunals include the
Vat and Duties Tribunals, Special Commissioners and Financial Services & Markets Tribunal.
The site has been designed to meet the needs of those wishing to appeal against decisions of HM Customs
& Excise and the Inland Revenue or to refer matters relating to certain decisions of the Financial Services Authority.
The Tribunals are part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. There are decisions on the site which
can be searched by categories of VAT, Customs Duties, Excise Duties, Insurance Premium Tax,
Landfill Tax and Special Commissioners.
Immigration Services Tribunal
is part of the Court Service, an executive agency of the
Department for Constitutional Affairs. The site provides information on how to appeal and procedures generally.
There is also a database of decisions.
The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal is the successor to the Immigration
Appellate Authority and the Immigration Appeals Tribunal. The Tribunal was set up under the Asylum and Immigration
(Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004 and came into being on 4th April 2005. The purpose of the Tribunal is to hear
and decide appeals against decisions made by the Home Office in matters of asylum, immigration and nationality.
The site contains the information needed to pursue an appeal to the Tribunal and also provides information
about procedures and hearing centres, daily court lists, a case law database and links to related legislation.
The case law section includes Country Guideline Determinations and a List of Starred Determinations (although
this is not complete yet).
Lands Tribunal Website is designed to assist
claimants and their representatives. It includes information on the functions and powers of the Lands Tribunal,
an explanation of our rules and procedures and a searchable database of decisions.
The Lands Tribunal was established by the Lands Tribunal Act 1949 to determine questions of disputed
compensation arising out of the compulsory acquisition of land; to decide rating appeals; to exercise
jurisdiction under section 84 of the Law of Property Act 1925 (discharge and modification of restrictive
covenants); and to act as arbitrator under references by consent. Under the 1949 Act other jurisdictions
may be added, and a number have been since the Tribunal came into existence on 1 January 1950.
The Tribunal’s jurisdiction is exercised in England and Wales.
Pensions Appeal Tribunals hear appeals
from ex-servicemen or women who have had their claims for a War Pension rejected by the Secretary of State
for Defence. The jurisdiction of the Tribunals only includes England & Wales - Scotland and Northern Ireland
have separate Tribunals. The Pensions Appeal Tribunals are independent of the Veterans Agency.
The Tribunals have been set up in their present form since 1943, although they have been in existence as
part of the Lord Chancellor's responsibility since the War Pensions Act 1919.
Selected Decisions are due to go on the site during April 2005.
Social Security and
Child Support Commissioners, the specialised part of the Judiciary appointed to
determine appeals on law under the Social Security and Child Support Acts. Decisions since
1972 are on the site.
Transport Tribunal has three jurisdictions.
It was originally set up to hear appeals against decisions of Traffic Commissioners in connection
with the Heavy Goods Vehicles & Public Service Vehicles Operators Licensing Systems. It also hears
appeals against decisions of The Registrar of Approved Driving Instructors. In addition, it is able to
resolve disputes under the Postal Services Act 2000.
Members of the Transport Tribunal also act as the London Service Permit Appeals Panel.
The site has decisions since 2000.
Competition Commission
is an independent public body established by the Competition Act 1998. The Commission replaced the Monopolies
and Mergers Commission ("MMC") on 1 April 1999. The Commission has taken on the former MMC role of
carrying out inquiries into matters referred to it by the other UK competition authorities concerning
monopolies, mergers and the economic regulation of utility companies.
The Privy Council is online -
take the Judicial Committee link from the front page.
As it says on the site
"The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is the court of final
appeal for those Commonwealth countries which have retained
the appeal to Her Majesty in Council or, in the case of Republics,
to the Judicial Committee. It is also the final appeal court for the
Channel Islands, Isle of Man and United Kingdom overseas
territories. It also has certain domestic jurisdiction within the
United Kingdom, including the function of being the court of final
appeal for determining devolution issues under the United
Kingdom devolution statutes of 1998."
The Times provides the Law Reports online in association with
LexisNexis. The reports are available free for 21 days but for access to older reports, a subscription
is required. The (subscription) reports go back to 1988 and can be searched in various ways.
The Law Society Gazette
provides its Law Reports on the site in the "In Practice" section although it does
not seem to be possible to search for past reports.
David Swarbrick, now a consultant to Wrigley Claydon,
provides an index of case reports from 1991 to 1999 (take the "Law-index" link").
This can be searched by statute, area of law, date and by
court.
There is now also a "professional" (and charged) version called
Lawindexpro with additional features
such as links to 35,000 full text decisions and 12,000 head-notes.
However, the basic free area is still available in a limited form.
CaseLaw.me provides free case law summaries
of popular recent court cases in England and Europe covering property case law,
contract, english, liability, police case law, company, criminal, tort, administrative, european, civil,
defamation, negligence, sports and other popular topics. The reports are organised with a large number of
tags, all of which can be made into an RSS feed (just click on a tag and click ‘Feed Me’ for the feed).
The site is compiled by Jen Wiss who is a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives specialising in Property,
Company and Civil litigation, and a Commissioners for Oaths. She has a first class honours degree in law (LL.B)
and a Diploma in English Law.
Other law reports and news services covering particular areas of law,
and available free on the web, include the following:
elawstudent.com is a small
company developing law courses and in particular, so far,
an 'A' Level Law software programme (GCSE law and the core subjects for
the first year of the LLB degree will follow later in the year). In the meantime,
barrister Richard Priestley is making his database of significant edited
transcripts of case judgments available to anyone interested.
Take the Library option (you have to register). You can
then search by keyword (e.g. negligence) or by name or part of name.
I asked how the cases were chosen. Richard said
"I choose the cases in accordance with the syllabi of AQA and OCR, who are
the only two examining boards offering AS/A LEVEL LAW. Unfortunately, the
areas covered are huge: crime, contract, tort, consumer protection, human
rights and els. Frankly, in terms of depth, I would equate the course with a
first-year LL.B."
Historical resource
|
||||||||||||
