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Legal research guide: Criminal Law: Judicially considered legislation

A Guide to help you look for Primary and Secondary resources in relation to Criminal Law.

Legislation judicially considered by Cases

Use Lexis Advance and Westlaw AU, to find Australian cases that consider a particular statute or provision in a statute

Example: Finding Australian cases that have considered the Criminal Code Act Compilation Act 1913 (WA) s. 27​ 

Judicially considered legislation

In the CaseBase search form, type the title of the Legislation in the Legislation Title field, and the provision / section in the Provision Number field

NOTE: because citation abbreviations are not standardised, don't use "s" or "ss" or "section" as part of the search.

 

Alternatively, you can use the single search box on the home page of Lexis Advance and conduct this search: "criminal code act compilation act 1913" w/s 27

At times you may want to explore if a section of an Act has been considered / cited in cases by the Courts. This can be done very easily in Westlaw AU.

To find out how, please have a look at this video, by clicking on the image. Please note: after you click on the image, you will be taken to Westlaw AU's Training Support page. To watch the video, click on the white play button. 

 

For more information on how you can search for cases that cite a section of an act, you can also check out this Westlaw Guide. 

LawNow Legislation in Lexis Advance offers links to information in CaseBase and Halsbury's Laws of Australia. You can link directly from a legislative provision to cases considering that provision.

To locate references you can use LawNow in Lexis Advance for whole acts or specific provisions.

Method 1:

  1. Click on the addition sign situated next to the word Legislation under the search bar
  2. Click in the blue Jurisdictions link 
  3. Select the Jurisdiction you require from the list that is provided
  4. Select All Acts by Title in the Acts column
  5. Browse alphabetically for the Australian Act you wish to research
  6. Select the relevant Act you are researching
  7. Scroll down to the Section / Provision of interest
  8. Click on the  blue View Legislation Citator link to display cases citing this provision as well as relevant commentary

NOTE: Please keep in mind the relative age of the case in relation to the legislative provision. The current provision may have been amended since it was considered by the case/s.

Method 2:

Banner image source:  Image 1 licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license.  Images 2, 3, 4, 5 licensed under a CC0 Public Domain license.

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