Skip to Main Content

Graduate Research in Law

A guide to the library resources for the graduate programmes at Dalhousie Law School.

Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (McGill Guide)

The preferred citation style for legal writing in Canada is the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 9th ed published by the McGill Law Journal. The McGill Guide, as it is commonly called, is available in print at the Law Library, and through student subscriptions of Westlaw Edge Canada.

Other Citation Guides

Perma.cc for Link Archiving

In order to avoid “Link rot” or “broken link” in which a hyperlink referenced in a document no longer leads to any site or content, writers are expected to create an archived version of the website being cited.
 
The McGill guide, rule 1.6, directs that writers "refer to an archived URL in addition to the original URL. Place the archived URL in brackets at the end of the citation. The Perma system is strongly recommended (see the examples in section 1.6.2).
If the original URL is long and unwieldy, and an archived URL is included, indicate only the root original URL of the website."
 
A free account are limited to 10 archived links. The Sir James Dunn Law Library acts as a registrar for the Perma.cc System, and consequently students and faculty registered through the library have unlimited archived links. Contact the library in order to have your account affiliated with the Law Library account.

Plagiarism Regulations

What is plagiarism?

Dalhousie University defines plagiarism as "the submission or presentation of the work of another as if it were one's own."

Some examples of plagiarism:

  • Failure to attribute authorship when using sources such as written or oral work, computer codes/programs, artistic or architectural works, scientific projects, performances, web page designs, graphical representations, diagrams, videos, and images.
  • Downloading all or part of the work of another from the Internet and submitting as one's own.
  • The use of a paper prepared by any person other than the individual claiming to be the author.

The following website provides information on Academic Integrity and Plagiarism as well as resources on how to write ethically:

https://www.dal.ca/dept/university_secretariat/academic-integrity.html

Zotero for Citation Management

Zotero is an open-source reference manager with syncing capabilities that stores, manages, and cites bibliographic references. It is supported by numerous plugins, including browser extensions that will allow you to capture references for online sources, such as web pages, blog posts, video or audio files, PDFs, etc.

Below is a link to a guide to downloading and using Zotero to manage your research citations:

https://dal.ca.libguides.com/c.php?g=707703&p=5037655

Subjects: Law