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Legislation: 8. Articles considering legislation

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.

A step by step guide to locating articles considering legislation in two key databases.

Lexis Advance journal articles considering legislation

  1. Go to Lexis Advance
  2. Above the search bar, click Advanced Search and, select Secondary Materials from the drop-down menu
  3. Enter the legislation title or provision number into the References to Legislation by Title box or References to Legislation by Provision Number box (eg; Criminal Code Act 1913)
  4. This locates all types of secondary sources.
  5. To limit to journal articles, on the left menu, open Content Type and select Journal Citators.
  6. If the full text of the article is not present, then follow the instructions below under What if it's Not There!

Westlaw AU journal articles considering legislation

  1. Go to Westlaw AU
  2. Click on the Secondary Sources link on the database home page
  3. Select the Advanced link located to the right of the single search box
  4. Scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced search form and enter the title of the Legislation in the Legislation Cited (Title) field (eg: criminal code wa) and the legislative provision in the Legislation Cited (Provision) field (eg: 27)
  5. Browse the results list for relevant articles

Some results will be full text while others will be Australian Legal Journal Index (ALJI) abstracts. To locate the articles mentioned in these abstracts then follow the instructions below under What if it's Not There!  

What if it's not there!

If you find a reference to the perfect journal article in a database, as often happens in CaseBase, for example, here is the process you use to check if full text is available somewhere, anywhere!

  1. Make a note of the full citation. For example, Aboriginal land rights after Mabo (1992) 66 LIJ 1105.
  2. Identify the full title of the journal from the abbreviation. In this example LIJ  is the abbreviation representing the full title of the journal. To find the full title you will need to check an abbreviations list.
  3. If you are in CaseBase go to: Help > Abbreviations and browse the alphabetical list for the correct full title. In this example, LIJ is Law Institute Journal (Vic).
  4. If you are not in CaseBase, then use either the Legal Research Guide: Abbreviations or Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations and search By Abbreviation. In this instance, if you knew the publication was from Victoria,  that would help in locating the correct title in Cardiff.
  5. Go to OneSearch and enter the title of the journal e.g. Law Institute Journal. Use the drop down menu to limit the search to Journal titles.
  6. If you find an entry for the journal, click on Check Availability to see volumes held or View Online if an online version is available. In this case the journal is available on the shelf. The holdings indicate that volume 66 (1992) is available
  7. This article would be located in the Law Journals collection on level 3 of the Beasley Law library. Locate volume 66, page 1105, and read or photocopy the article

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