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Legislation: 7. Legislation judicially considered

This Guide provides information on how to find Acts, Delegated Legislation, Bills, Parliamentary documents and extrinsic materials for Australian jurisdictions. It also provides information on how to keep up to date with Legislation.

Legislation Judicially Considered by Cases

When you conduct Legal research, you may want to see whether cases have considered any Legislation or a specific section of legislation. 

You can use the subscription Databases Lexis Advance and / or Westlaw AU for this purpose. Both Databases include a function to enable you to see what Legislation has been considered by the Cases you are researching. To find out more please have a look at the Lexis Advance and the Westlaw AU tabs!

Top tip: You will notice from the example Case, that different pieces of Legislation are considered. This is quite common, so it always pays to look in both Databases, when you are performing this Legal research task!

 

When you search for Cases in Lexis Advance, their CaseBase citator includes a function, that enables you to see what Legislation a Case has considered. 

To perform this function, you will need to click on the "Legislation considered by this case" link in the CaseBase record of the Case. Here is an example:

After you click on that link, you will be directed to the area that displays the Legislation that has been considered by the Case:

You can also perform this kind of research task in Westlaw AU.

In Westlaw AU, this kind of information is located in the Unreported / Westlaw version of the Case. 

To view the Legislation that a Case has considered, you will need to click on the "View Westlaw Version" link:

This will take you to the Unreported version of the Case. Scroll down until you find the Legislation Considered information. (Tip: This is usually located underneath the Digest information): 

This area will list the Legislation that is considered by a Case. 

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