Acts, Cases & the Library Catalogue

Bodleian Law Library4 & 5 August 2009

Structure of session

Part One : Acts

Part Two : Case law

Part Three: The library catalogue

Part One

Introduction to Acts of Parliament

How an Act is made Bill (draft legislation - debate)

Act (when the Bill receives Royal Assent)

Commencement (the date when Act becomes law)

1. Bills Drafts of Acts: the text will change

Debated in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords

Listed on the UK Parliament website:http://services.parliament.uk/bills/

List of Bills

List of Bills

Procedure for passing Bills First reading Second reading Committee stage Report stage Third reading Passage through the other House Royal Assenthttp://www.parliament.uk/works/newproc.cfm

2. Acts of Parliament When a bill is adopted it receives the

Royal Assent

When a Bill receives the Royal Assent it becomes an Act and is given a Chapter number

3. Commencement An Act is not law until it has been

brought into force = “Commencement”

Date of commencement = the date that an Act becomes law

Always remember to check that an Act is in force

Where to find statutes (1)

Printed volumes in the Library

Chronological order

Without amendments

Where to find statutes (2)

Halsbury’s Statutes

Arranged by subject

Amendments included

Where to find statutes (3)

UK Statute LawDatabase

Free online source

Amendments included

UK Statute Law Database

http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/

Search by:

TitleYearNumberLegislation type

Example of searchSearch for

Title:Human Rights Act

Year:1998

Type the title of the Act here

Click Go

Type the year of the Act here

Click here for the Act

Click here for the first Commencement Order

The Act

The Commencement Order

Useful web sites United Kingdom Parliamenthttp://www.parliament.uk/

Information on bills at:http://www.parliament.uk/bills/bills.cfm

UK Statute Law Databasehttp://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/

Part Two

Introduction to Case Law

Case Law Case law - body of law made up of court

judgments

Cases interpret the law

Doctrine of Precedent Earlier judgments are important in deciding

later cases In general the decisions of higher courts bind

lower courts

Court structure

Taken from HMCS website

Law Reporting The most important cases are

published

The Law Reports - available in print and online

Less important cases are not reported and are referred to as unreported.

However, recently many unreported cases have been published online

Finding Law Reports in Print To find a law report in print you need to

know the citation e.g Pepper v Hart [1993] AC 513

You will find this report in the 1993 volume of the Appeal Cases starting at page 513

The year of publication is also the volume number. You need this information to choose the correct volume

This tells you which series of law reports to use. AC stands for Appeal Cases. Other abbreviations include:Ch – ChanceryFam – FamilyQB – Queens bench

This is the page number on which the report starts

Finding cases onlineBailli – http://www.bailii.orgFree web siteIncludes: UK cases 1996 – Key historic judgments – the

most important judgments from British history

Cases from the European Court of Justice 1954-

Cases from the European Court of Human Rights 1960-

Quick search box – searches the full text of all the materials on Bailii. Can be useful but returns lots of hits!

Cases listed by party names (useful if you’re not sure of the exact spelling)

Case law search - more flexible search options for finding cases by party name, citation and subject

Subject lists of key cases

Links to legal materials from around the World

To search for a case by party names use the case name search box e.g. Searching for Reynolds v Times Newspaper

Choose the correct result from the results screen.Some cases are heard by several courts e.g. This case was heard first by the Employment Appeal Tribunal. It then went on appeal to the Court of Appeal. Finally it went on appeal to the House of Lords.In this example I have chosen the House of Lords case.

Court

Date of the judgment

Judges

Parties

The judgment

Options for searching by subject

You can use the tick boxes to restrict your search to a particular court e.g. The European Court of Justice

Lists of cases organised by subject

Part Three

The Library Catalogue

The Library Catalogue The Law Library’s collection is

catalogued The catalogue is called “OLIS” “OLIS” covers other Oxford

University libraries “OLIS” can be searched via a system

called “SOLO”: http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk

When to use SOLO

Use SOLO to locate booksNOT for the cases that you need to read – these are in the big black folders in the Library

Quick guide to SOLO

Search by title, author, subject heading

Look for books in the Law Library:

Law LibraryLAW Reserve

Law Library orLAW Main Libr

Put your search terms here

Click GO

Here is the record for the book

Click Get It to find out where to

find it

Scroll down

There is a copy in the Law

Library at the Law Reserve

If you need more help…

The Bodleian Law Library website:http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/law/

Please ask the Law Library staff!