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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+ 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+ 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+ 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 Case references, you can use the LawNow Legislator in Lexis+. We have provided two methods below, to help you perform this legal research task. 

Method 1:

  1. Click on the Jurisdiction you require, from the list that is provided, on the LawNow homepage
  2. Select the All Acts by Title link in the Acts column
  3. Browse alphabetically, to the letter of the Act you wish to research
  4. Select the relevant Act you are researching - tip: use Control F to find this quickly
  5. Scroll down to the section / provision you are interested in
  6. Click on the blue View Legislation Citator link to display Cases citing the provision - NB: the Cases are listed in the Cases Activity area.

Bonus information: When you conduct this search, you may also be able to find relevant commentary in relation to the section!

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. So it is best to take your research one step further and ensure that the Legislation / the provision are still in force.

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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 Except for logos, Canva designs, AI generated images or where otherwise indicated, content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.