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Graduate Research in Law

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

United Kingdom

Parliamentary Bills (Open Access)

Bills are proposals for new laws. If they pass every stage of scrutiny in the House of Commons and House of Lords, and receive Royal Assent they become Acts of Parliament, and Law.

Legislation (Open Access)

Legislation (Acts and Statutory Instruments) that is currently in force can be located here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/. The search screen allows you to browse legislation by jurisdiction, and search based on title, year, and document number. The advanced search (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/search) allows for a number of filters to be applied prior to searching.

Caselaw (Open Access & Subscription)

BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) is an open repository of legislation, caselaw and tribunal decisions.

ICLR (Independent Council of Law Reporting)

European Union

Euro-Lex is the online portal to European Union law. Under EU Law you will find Treaties, Acts, Agreements and preparatory documents. Under EU Law-Cases you will find information on cases before the EU courts as well as databases of reports from the courts. Under National Law you can find national case-law and national case-law references in the field of European Union law both from member and a number of non-member European nations.

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United States

Bills and Legislation

Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. It is presented by the Library of Congress (LOC) using data from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, Congressional Budget Office, and the LOC’s Congressional Research Service. The Technology Timeline on the Legislative Branch Innovation Hub highlights similar and complementary legislative branch agency efforts.

Case Law

American Law Reports is available in the library and via WestLaw Edge.  A.L.R. annotations (articles) provide a very useful summary and analysis of the law in a specific area, and include citations to relevant primary law and other secondary sources.

Corpus Juris Secundum is a legal encyclopedia containing summaries of the law and relevant cases.

Other Nations

Globa-Lex (Open Access)

This is a leading guide to International, Foreign, and Comparative legal research covering a wide range of resources and topics. It is hosted and maintained by NYU Law.

WorldLII (Open Access)

The World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) is a free, independent and non-profit global legal research facility developed collaboratively by the many Legal Information Institutes such as CanLII and other organisations. This site provides links to open access legal resources where they exist for many countries .

HeinOnline (Subscription)

Although known for its law journal collections, Hein offers a wealth of international and foreign law resources such as the International Law Association Reports, World Treaty Library, U.S. International Treaties, and the World Constitutions collection.