 | AustLII Guide to Legal Research on the Web |
| AustLII Guide to Legal Research on the Web |
This section reviews other internet websites that contain significant collections of Australian primary and secondary legal materials or provide value-adding.
Findlaw Australia <http://www.findlaw.com.au/> contains comprehensive
information on Australian legal issues. It offers a range of free services
including current awareness newsletters, primary law, an events calendar and
extensive links to other primary and secondary legal material and research
resources. There are also articles covering around 50 areas of law sourced from
lawyers, firms, government and non-profit organisations. These are divided into
resources for legal professionals, students, business and the
public.
FindLaw Australia home page
The website of the Law & Justice Foundation of New South Wales
<http://www.lawfoundation.net.au/> provides comprehensive coverage of
primary legal resources. The Legislation & Parliament pages provide links to
the full text of Commonwealth, State and Territory legislation and other
parliamentary material. The Judgments and Courts pages provide links to
Commonwealth, State and Territory court and tribunal judgments, home pages and
related material. In addition, the site also includes court lists: some lists
are automatically posted to the Law & Justice Foundation, others are links
to court or tribunal web sites that publish their own lists. The Law &
Justice Foundation also includes free discussion group facilities for
law-related user groups.
Law & Justice Foundation of NSW home page
The NSW Attorney General’s Department website, LAWLINK NSW at
<http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au> provides many Australian legal resources
and links including access to NSW case-law, lists of agencies, NSW courts and
tribunals, reports and submissions from the A-G's Department as well as general
community legal information and assistance with problem searching, going to
court, crime information, disability and individual legal rights.
LAWLINK NSW home page
Australian Law Online <http://www.law.gov.au/wotl.html> is the Australian Government entry point to Australian Government legal resources. This is the official gateway to the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department and portfolio and provides access to Australian legislation and judgments of courts.
The site provides:
| • | an overview of the Australian legal system |
| • | all Australian Commonwealth legislation |
| • | most current Commonwealth court and tribunal decisions |
| • | some Australian State and Territory legislation and case law |
| • | information about the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Office, portfolio and Department |
| • | links to the Family Law Online website, and |
| • | links to all Attorney-General's portfolio agencies currently publishing on the internet |
Australian Law Online home page
The ACT Government’s website, City-State Law
at <http://www.dpa.act.gov.au/ag/> provides information and links to Acts,
Regulations, case law, legal texts and press releases, the ACT electronic legal
library, the Tenancy Tribunal, ACT law agencies and courts as well as
information on recent legislative events: exposure drafts and explanatory
papers, law reform papers, policy review papers, codes of practice etc.
City-State Law home page
All Australian Federal, State and Territory legislation and case-law is also either published or available through the individual parliamentary counsel offices or the various government websites. See:
These sites also include general legal information, bulletins, exposure drafts of legislation, bills, press releases, FAQs, Hansards and related links.
The UTS Library has major online subscription legal resources on its Library
home > Finding Information > Journal Databases > Law page at <http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/cgi/dbgenerate2.cgi?db_name=&dbsubject=law>.
All these databases are accessible through the Library's computer
network.
UTS Library - Law Databases
This section indicates the main types of Australian law resources which are well represented on the web, often on sites other than the main servers mentioned in this Chapter and earlier Chapters. AustLII’s ‘Australia’ pages on the WorldLII Catalog are used to illustrate the diversity of material available.
On the WorldLII Catalog ‘Australia’ pages, materials are organised by jurisdiction of the court or tribunal, and by other categories:
Australia ‘Courts & Case-Law’ front page
Materials are then indexed according to the courts and tribunals within each jurisdiction:
Courts & Case-Law ‘Commonwealth’ page
Another valuable index by jurisdiction is the ‘Judgments & Courts’ page on the Law & Justice Foundation of NSW website <http://www.lawfoundation.net.au/judgments/> which also provides links to Commonwealth, State and Territory court and tribunal judgments, home pages and related material.
The wide range of materials which can be found concerning some courts - including full text decisions from various publishers, decision summaries from the Court, court home pages, various forms of court lists, guides to court practice, speeches by judges, academic journals about decisions of the court, professional abstracting services - is exemplified by the High Court page in AustLII’s index. The index contains similar pages (usually shorter!) for dozens of courts, organised by jurisdiction.
An example of the range of material available concerning the High Court
The range of available legislative materials is as broad as the range of
case-law. For each Australian jurisdiction, the range of available legislative
materials can be found in WorldLII Catalog ‘Australia’ pages under
the ‘Legislation’ category for that government, as shown below for
the ACT government. Alternatively, access can be obtained from the
‘Legislation’ page or by searching for
‘legislation’.
An example of legislative materials available concerning the ACT
All Australian Parliaments now have their Parliamentary debates (Hansard) available on the web, and a very varying range of other information about Parliamentary procedure, votes etc.
For example, the following information is now available concerning the Commonwealth Parliament.
The Commonwealth Parliament page
The Commonwealth Parliament’s pages contain a variety of publications by the House and the Senate concerning the workings of Parliament and democratic institutions.
However, it is the daily availability of the Parliamentary debates of both Houses (the daily Hansards), and other constantly changing information (Notice Papers, Orders of Business, and records of Votes and Proceedings) that make this resource unique and invaluable.
The full text of Odgers' Australian Senate Practice (Tenth Edition to 31 December 2000), edited by Harry Evans, Clerk of the Senate is available from the Senate’s publication page <http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/pubs/Html/index.htm>. This is an invaluable resource.
Either the full text or details of law reform Commission or Committee reports from the Commonwealth, ACT, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia are available on the web. Browsing the WorldLII >> Categories >> Countries >> Australia >> Law Reform page will provide a list of agencies. A search over this category will again list the agencies but also list the titles of most available reports which have been indexed by AustLII's web spider. The full text of the Australian Law Reform Commission reports, draft recommendation papers, background papers, discussion papers and issues papers, can be accessed and searched from AustLII at <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/alrc/>.
The Australia ‘Law Reform’ page
There are many Australian law journals and other periodicals now available on
the web. Some provide full text, but some only provide abstracts or subscription
information.
Australia ‘Law Journals’ page