Legal Research Jumpstart: Primary Legal Materials

1
Legal Research Jumpstart Primary Legal Materials

• Daniel Perlin
• Reference Librarian
• Tuesday May 29, 2007

2
Primary Materials

• Introduction to Primary Materials
• Canadian Legislation
• Canadian Case Law
• Foreign and Comparative Law

3
Canadian Legislation

• Statutes
• How to track current legislation
• How to find historical statutes
• How to see if a statute is being judicially
  considered
• Regulations
• How to find historical regulations
• How to find current regulations

4
Canadian Statutes

• How to track current legislation
• Parliament or Legislative Assembly websites
• Canadian Legislative Pulse
• Committee reports
• Searching for history of statutes (amendments)
• Table of Public statues at end of most recent
  statutes
• Statute citator
• QL point in time (only back to 1998)
• Parliamentary Debates

5
Canadian Legislation

• Statutes judicially considered
• Carswells Statutes Judicially Considered in
  print
• QL
• Westlaw

6
Canadian Regulations

• How to find historical Regulations
• Use Consolidated Index of Statutory Instruments
  to learn title of enabling statute up until the
  last year (federal)
• How to track current regulations
• Look in Canada Gazette Part II
• Justice Canada website
• E-laws

7
Canadian case law

• How to find unreported cases
• QL eg. Bank of Montreal v. Unified Homes Ltd.
  1990 O.J. No. 875
• Westlaw-ecarswell
• All Canada Weekly Summaries in print and QL
• How to find cases by subject
• Canadian Abridgment
• QL
• Westlaw-ecarswell

8
Canadian Case Law

• How to note up cases
• QL Quickcite
• Westlaw-ecarswell
• Canadian Case Citations
• How to track current case law
• QL
• Westlaw
• By a specific case
• Go to court websites

9
Foreign and Comparative International Law

• QL- in Source Directory each country
• Westlaw-ecarswell
• LIIs (Legal Information Institutes)
• Global Legal Information Network
• Database of laws, judicial decisions submitted by
  member countries in their original language
  summaries in English