Malaysian law

The Free Access to Law initiative takes many forms. We may already be used to accessing decisions of the Federal Court of Malaysia and Court of Appeal of Malaysia via CommonLII. (This LII also offers a few issues of Journal of Malaysian and Comparative Law (JMCL)  for some commentary.)

If you are interested in something a bit more dynamic, another free access point worth checking in case it can help your researches  is MLTIC (read as M-L-Tick).

Home page of main portals – the topic micro-portals have the same layout

MLTIC  – in full the Malaysian Legal and Tax Information Centre – is a cluster of web portals on Malaysian law and tax. It has been live for about 3 years now. (The website says it will keep an archive for as long as the copyright holders allow.)  MLTIC consists of a main portal (Malaysia Law), with specialist micro-sites according to topic as below

1. Banking & finance
2. Corporate law
3. Competition law
4. Criminal practice
5. Dispute resolution
6. Employment law
7. IP law Malaysia
8. Real estate & construction
9. Transport & logistics
10. Malaysian tax (from Chartered Tax Institute of Malaysia)

The specialist sites follow the same pattern as the main one with a double row of hot links near the top of the page so that you can jump quickly to, for example, judgments.

MLTIC makes available the full original text of selected Malaysian legal and tax developments : news (“full text of news items … sourced from leading newspapers and news agencies, professional bodies, industry newsletters, regulatory bodies and government departments”), legislation (“selected Federal Acts and Amendment Acts, Federal Bills, Federal PU(A)s and PU(B)s, and State Legislation … where possible, the full text of the legislation”), judgments and rulings (“selected judgments and rulings from the Federal Court, Court of Appeal, High Court of Malaya, High Court of Sabah and Sarawak and several tribunals … the full text of the judgments … and commentaries on landmark judgments.”), regulatory guidelines and circulars, events, books and articles, products and services.

 

New Database Review: Supreme Court Cases Online (India)

The Law Library has recently subscribed to a database called Supreme Court Cases (SCC) Online, produced by New Delhi-based publishers the Eastern Book Company. It advertises itself as “an extensive database of Indian law, statute law and other material, with a high performance search engine and our familiar user-friendly interface.”

First impressions

The interface is indeed quite straightforward and user-friendly, as promised. The main options for searching appear on the top menu bar, while the menu box on the left appears to be a list of ‘quick links’ for searching, account details and help pages. The help pages are quite comprehensive, and are clearly divided into the different areas of the site. The option on the main page to look at previous searches could also prove very useful for researchers. The ‘Start Session for a Client’ option in the quick links box is not really relevant to students or researchers, as it is designed to allow legal professionals to track how much time they spend carrying out searches for individual clients (presumably to help them work out how big their bill should be!).

Start page

Search

From this page you can choose easy or advanced search options. Easy search consists of only one search box, where you can search using keywords separated by Boolean operators (and/or/not/near) within the full text of items in the database. You can also use “…” to group words together and search for a phrase (e.g. “intellectual property”). Advanced Search allows you extra options such as date range, proximity searching, type of search area (e.g. citation, party names), and titles of different series available. The date range is from 1850-present, but understandably there are a lot more recent cases available than older ones.

Advanced Search

The results page does look a little cluttered at first glance. The search results appear in a list at the bottom, arranged by date. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be possible to change the sorting order (e.g. to alphabetical), but it is possible to search within your results. It is also possible to access the quick links menu box by clicking on the ‘menu’ tab to the left of the screen.

Search results

Topic Guide

This allows you to browse or search for subject areas and related topics. As shown in this image, if you search for family law, you also get links to Hindu laws, family property, labour laws and service/pension laws. This is useful if you don’t know what keywords to use or are looking for information related to your chosen subject area. The Browse function brings up an alphabetical list of different topics.

Topic Guide

Case Index

You can search or browse (again, alphabetically) cases by party names in this section. It is also possible to narrow your search to particular courts, including some international cases such as those from WIPO. To view a case, highlight the one you want to view and click on ‘go to selected case’.

Case Index

 

Citation Searching

This is useful if you have a specific citation you wish to search for. Choose from the drop down list of publications under ‘journal’, and SCC Online helpfully puts the correct abbreviation in the search box for you. As well as a wide selection of Indian reports series, it also includes some from Canada, Bangladesh and South Africa at the bottom of the drop down list.

Citation search

Statutes etc.

Here, you can search or browse statutes, treaties/conventions, constituent assembly debates and law commission reports.  Use the drop down menu ‘select collection’ to choose the type of material you want to search and type your keywords into the ‘search text’ box. Highlight the document you want to view and click ‘go to selection’ to bring up the full text. You can then go through the document section by section using the list at the bottom of the page or by clicking on the ‘next’ button.

Statutes etc.

Conclusions

Overall, this appears to be a well-designed database. Aesthetically it looks quite basic compared to some of the big legal databases like Westlaw, and it does have some limitations with functionality, but it is user-friendly and each section has a clear purpose. It is also arguably better than relying on the search function on the Supreme Court India homepage. It is under a single-user license, so unfortunately only one person can access it at a time. Users will need to remember to log out when they have finished.

Please let us know if you have further comments or questions about using this database.

 

Calling all constitutional historians

The Bodleian History Librarian has arranged a trial of a new database and she thinks it may be of interest and use to some of the Law Bod’s regulars too!

Note this is just a trial at the moment – the trial period will end at the end of March 2013. As we have such a small window of opportunity to experiment with it, we hope you will forgive our just copying pasting the provider’s details for the moment
Its subtitle is : Sources on the Rise of Modern Constitutionalism
Quellen zur Herausbildung des modernen Konstitutionalismus
Edited by / Herausgeben von Horst Dippel

“This resource provides online access to constitutional documents from all over the world, written from 1776 to the end of the year 1849. It includes about 1,600 constitutions, amendments, human rights declarations, and draughts [sic] of constitutions that never came into force, from this period.”

Constitutions of the World (from the late 18th Century to the Middle of the 19th Century Online)  

On the first page you get to from this link, scroll down to Supplementary Information and click on the Access to Content link on the next page click GO button. Provided you are on the OU network/working through a VPN you should be in!
We would be interested to hear how this compares with HeinOnline’s Constitutions library.

 

Online archive of law journals published in Germany

Up till now,  OU members have been restricted to the Open Access section of a major German online journal database called DZ or  DigiZeitschriften

The good news is that the Bodleian Libraries now have a subscription, making a lot more content available for all holders of an Oxford Single Sign On!

Home page

The database has journals from various different disciplines, including (as of Jan 2013) the legal titles listed below (some are the same journal continuing under a change of name). This equates to online access to 727 individual law journal volumes. We understand that the database is still growing and improving: gaps will be filled and coverage strengthened in due course. (You can subscribe to an RSS feed to be alerted to any developments in your subject area.)
In some instances, for example Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts  the Law Bod also has a current subscription to the title, which means readers have online access from 2003 on via another database. (This is made clear on the Find it @ Oxford screen which appears after you click on View Online.)

Although all the journals are German language publications, they are far from being limited to German law topics – if you have a reading knowledge of German and are interested in, for example, international (public and private) law or Roman law then this will be a very useful resource.

•  Archiv des Völkerrechts AVR 1948/9 to 2002                                           Print copy at Internat 300 A170
• Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts 1911-2003 (For this title the Law Bod also has a current subscription which continues online access from 2003 on.) Print copy at German 300 A120
• Archiv für die civilistische Praxis 1818-2003                                       Print copy at German 300 A170
• Archiv für öffentliches Recht 1886-1910                                                       Print copy at German 300 A120
• Deutsche Rechts-Zeitschrift 1946-1950                                                          Print copy at German 300 D10
• Juristenzeitung JZ 1951-2005                                                                                Print copy at German 300 J100
• Rabels Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht 1961-2000                                                                                             Print copy at Private Int 300 R20
• Süddeutsche Juristen-Zeitung 1946-1950                                                     Print copy at German 300 J100
• Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte / Germanistische Abteilung 1920-2007                                                          Print copy at German 300 Z20
• Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte / Kanonistische Abteilung 1920-2007                                                           Print copies can be requested from Closed Stacks.
• Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte / Romanistische Abteilung 1920-2007                                                         Print copy at Roman 300 Z20

We have added the shelf marks to show you where in the Bodleian you can find at least part of the journal in print. The print copy link will take you through to the relevant SOLO record: if you then click on the Find & Request tab, and, if necessary, expand the Law Library holding by clicking on the + plus symbol you should be able to see which volumes we actually hold.

 

Supreme Court of Canada judgments freely available

The Supreme Court of Canada and LexUM announced just before Christmas that the Court’s Decisions website now contains all decisions since 1907, and judgments in leave applications since 2006. The collection is updated within minutes of the public release of the judgments by the Court.

“All published judgments since 1876 from cases which were appealed to the SCC from the British Columbia Court of Appeal have been added to the database, courtesy of CanLII and the Law Foundation of BC.  Appeals from the Ontario Court of Appeal, also dating back to 1876, were added to the SCC database last year.”

Click to try the SCC Decisions database

The LexUM site has been the main public source for Supreme Court decisions for 20 years, and is a very useful resource if you are away from the Library, where you will find the Supreme  Court Reports (S.C.R.)  1923 -  shelved on the main floor at Cw Can 100 C90.

For Oxford University staff and students, who have access to HeinOnline, Hein includes SCC decisions from 1876-2011 (as at January 2013).  LexisLibrary carries Supreme Court of Canada Judgments from 1876 to date, and on Westlaw, the CANSCC-CS database contains the full text of documents of all reported Supreme Court of Canada cases, from 1876.

To find out more about Canadian legal resources, you might like to use our Guide to Canadian Law.

 

11 pipers piping

Image thanks to conner395 on Flickr.com

The Law Bod fully acknowledges that bagpipes are part of the culture of many nations, but as we are in England the mention of pipes brings our neighbours Scotland and Ireland first to mind.  (The previous links are probably not recommended for exiles whose heartstrings are easily touched over Christmas.)

We have found it impossible to link eleven meaningfully to these jurisdictions – or to divide eleven diplomatically between the two! So we shall resort to humour – but not a joke involving persons walking into a bar. A BBC Scotland comedy sketch available on YouTube  shows voice recognition software struggling with understanding the spoken word eleven.  The difficulty of conveying meaning via language (though written) is one well-known to lawyers and legislators.

As has been mentioned in previous posts, the jurisdictions of the British Isles are at the forefront of the Library’s long-term project to reclassify our  monograph/text-book/treatise (or sources of secondary law from a common law standpoint!) collections according to the Moys classification scheme. Named after Betty Moys, founding member of British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, who developed the scheme to improve the  Library of Congress’s K Classification. The Law Bod is proud  that one of our current staff was on the editorial board of the recently published 5th edition.

• KL12 is the shelf mark for introductions to the Scottish legal system
• KL15 is the shelf mark for introductions to the Irish legal system
• KL402 is the shelf mark for works on Scottish legal history (such as Stair Society volumes)
• KL403 is the shelf mark for works on Irish legal history (including publications of the Irish Legal History Society)

In the public law (KM) and private law (KN) sections, a geographical code is often inserted into the shelf mark to indicate jurisdiction: Ireland is I5 (capital i number 5) and Scotland is S3 (capital s, number 3).

The primary sources (legislation and case law) and law journals for all the countries of the British Isles  are still shelved according to jurisdiction, with old style shelf marks. For example Irish Jurist is Ireland 300 I50, the Edinburgh Law Review is Cw UK Scotl 300 E15.

As Scotland is (at least as this blog is being posted!) part of the United Kingdom, it is obvious for our readers to turn to LexisLibrary and Westlaw UK to find Scottish primary sources and law journals.  They may be less aware of the commentary which is also available to them via these databases.  For example Lexis has the Laws of Scotland Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia. As the example of when an owner’s free right of use of his property may be limited the Encyclopedia has  “if it causes a nuisance to a neighbour, for example, playing the bagpipes at 2 am in a quiet residential area.” (v.18 para. 533.)

As all humans tend to be creatures of habit,  law students can forget there is a world beyond Westlaw,  Lexis – and if it’s a US journal HeinOnline! so we’d like to remind them of the strength of  Justis if they need Irish case law. Compared with the others the drop down menus on the home page/basic search screen of Justis (see below) make light work of finding & selected non-UK cases!

On Quick search screen use drop down menus to see what Irish law reports are available

A search of Justis’s Irish case law  for bagpipes quickly uncovers the case of Murray v Electricity Supply Board [High Court] [2012] 7 JIC 1704 where the loss of the ability to play the bagpipes without pain was considered when assessing damages following  injury at work. The same consideration had come up earlier in Scotland Cruickshank v Perthshire Housing Association Ltd 2009 S.C.L.R. 64.

Returning to the print collection one last time, we should say that the Moys scheme allows a special shelf mark for Celtic Legal History at KE330.

 

6 geese a laying

Goose image thanks to ~Sage~ on Flickr.com

At the Law Bod,  we are used to that look of concentrated abstraction as our readers digest what they have read and then distil all that wisdom – spiked with their own original thought – onto their page or laptop! But when it comes to the birds, it is the sight and sound of Canada geese flying overhead which allows those of us sitting near windows an excuse for a (short) break from matters jurisprudential!

So we’ll use the sixth day to look at 6 important Canadian electronic resources.

OU students are usually unaware that the two subscription databases which they turn to regularly for UK material do also give them access to a considerable number of Canadian sources and titles. Indeed thanks to the rather baffling way both Lexis®Library and Westlaw UK seem to have decided to hide away their libraries of international and foreign law (surely it would be more sensible commercially to shout it from the rooftops?) means that for many it comes as a complete surprise that these databases contain anything beyond UK & EU law.

To see what Canadian (indeed other foreign and international material) is available  in Lexis®Library you  start by clicking on the Sources tab on the home page

Then, on the next page, change the country to Canada (via the drop down menu) – with or without limiting this to either federal or a province – and then clicking on the various hyperlinked letters of the alphabet

To navigate to the foreign and international material from Westlaw UK’s homepage, you have to click on Services first, then Westlaw International

Getting to Canadian material on Westlaw UK

Once through into the international section, the page tabbed Westlaw International has the International Directory where you can discover the Canadian material on offer.

Both Lexis and Westlaw include the Index to Canadian Legal Literature service – greatly appreciated by anyone without a reading list telling you which articles in which law journals need to be read!

That HeinOnline should include Canadian journals seems perfectly logical – once you have been told! But it now also has a library of Canadian Supreme Court decisions (though not the most recent).

Those are the three subscription databases which are accessible to anyone with an Oxford Single Sign On username and password.

To try to help students find their way between these databases, the Law Bod’s website has the Search our Law Reports and Journals tool.  Copy and paste in the full title of either a journal or a report series – and this database should give you both the shelf mark (if the Law Bod has the print version) and which database has it online.  It is also possible to use this tool to find out which national law reports are available in the Law Bod even if you know no titles thanks to the jurisdiction option.

Canada has a very strong and successful free access to law movement so there is no shortage of candidates to supply 3 more online sources to make up 6. It is hard to argue against giving  CanLII (Canadian Legal Information Institute) top spot, with its wealth of legislation and case-law databases and  excellent portal. But after that it seems invidious to select just 2 more! If we limit the range to federal legislation, while acknowledging the usefulness of both the  Canada Gazette website (a source of official texts of statutes and other regulations), and LegisInfo (part of the Canadian parliament website which enables users to track the progress of bills and see the legislative history behind acts), we shall promote Justice Laws, a Dept of Justice website  which offers among other things, consolidated legislation. For the final candidate, although the Maritime Law Books Raw Law site means that the intellectual content of their reporting series are available to all, we feel that the student of  Canadian law (especially if a “native” in exile in England while completing a degree) is as keen on commentary and current awareness as primary sources so we’ll promote the blog portal Canadian Law Blogs List were you can pick and choose across a wide variety of topics, from both the world of practitioners and academia.

A colleague has just completed an online guide to Canadian law for users of the Law Bod which we hope will encourage you to explore this jurisdiction further.

One final link between 6 & Canada:  6th December is their National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. (We hope this counters any impression from our previous post that we don’t treat real domestic violence seriously.) It is a timely reminder of the need constantly to defend human rights and monitor social justice levels even in a wealthy democratic nation in time of peace. The Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki- moon started in 2011 a worldwide Campaign called UNiTE to End Violence Against Women. The fact  that this a problem still without a solution is an uncomfortable message to end with – but Christmas should be a season of hope and re-commital to the goal of peace on earth!

 

3 French hens

Image thanks to Linda N. on Flickr.com

Humming the well-known French nursery rhyme Quand trois poules vont aux champs  could help OU students studying French law remember that they have 3 subscription databases at their disposal!

In this context it is Juris Classeur qui va devant! This a general database – with legislation & codes, case law,  online journals and the very famous Encyclopédie JC. (Users of the Law Bod should be aware that we no longer subscribe to the print version: the volumes on the shelves are caught in the aspic of the early 2000s.)
As Juris Classeur comes out of the Lexis stable it looks reassuringly familiar – and each search screen has its own focussed online Aide link to help one to search efficiently.

La deuxième  is Lextenso a rich source of French law journals :  over twenty titles covering most areas of law and including  Gazette du Palais,  Jurisprudence,  Revue des contrats, and the Revue du droit public et de la science politique en France et à l’Étranger.

En arrière  simply because it is the most specialist is the collection of  French law journals made available via Cairn Revues.  For those with an interest in public law (from an English point of view) this can be a real treasure trove Archives de politique criminelle,  Droit et société, Nouveaux Cahiers du Conseil constitutionnel,  Plein droit,  Pouvoir,  Revue franc. de droit constitutionnel, Revue intern. de droit économique,  Revue internationale de droit pénal and Revue sur le droit et la politique.

With a generosity worthy of Christmas (an expression which we hope will not impugn the secular spirit of la belle France), the French government maintains an excellent free online service Legifrance: le service public de la diffusion du droit , which is both database and  portal – a bright star in the east of which the UK government should take heed! As further gifts to the anglophone world Legifrance even provides translations of important codes and laws : how spoilacious!
Further details about how to access these databases (some of the subscription databases require special passwords even when on the OU network), and what the Law Bod can offer in the way of printed sources are available online via our  Law Bod French law Libguide

 

2 Turtle Doves

Welcome to the second day of our 12 (Legal) Days of Christmas

By Leslie Gray

In the US case of Aiuppa v. United States, 10 Cir., 338 F.2d 146  it was not 2 turtle doves but 560 frozen turtle (or mourning) doves.    The case was brought in the Federal Court by Aiuppa who was appealing on the basis of tainted evidence (through an illegal search and failure to produce records) and also on the grounds of prejudicial publicity created by the local media.

US legal database Fastcase

There are many sources of US legal materials including Westlaw and Lexis Library.  However  here at the Law Bod our newest US database is Fastcase which despite what the name suggests contains more than just cases.  More information on how to use this is contained in our previous post.  We have also just published our US Libguide which not only covers databases but our  large hard copy US collection as well.

Turtle Doves on Fleet Street

Our copy arrived safely at the Law Bod!

In Aiuppa it was alleged that the newspapers published information that was prejudicial to his case.   More recently and closer to home, the Levenson Inquiry  has finally finished looking into various misdeeds of the press and the report was published on 29th November 2012.  The Government is not keen to implement the main recommendation and there is ongoing debate between those looking for regulation and those worried about the freedom of the press.   If you were one of the thousands who waited for the report to appear and want to keep an eye on the evolving situation then it is always worth following newspaper blogs for latest news and official sites relating to the inquiry.

Official Levenson Inquiry (has option to follow by Twitter but no blog), Independent – news feed, Telegraph -blog feed, Guardian  – news feed, BBC – news feed.

There has already been much discussion in Parliament and so if you are interested in following along as it happens then you can watch it on Parliament TV.  Hansard is also available for you to see the debate written down (links through to Today’s Commons Debates but has links to other days as well).

Although available online the report itself is a House of Commons Paper.  Many recent official papers are online through government departments but you may find that older and ‘replaced’ papers are removed from the web. You can check to see if there is a hard copy in the vast Official Papers collection here at the Bodleian Law Library.  There have also been a number of Libguides written to help find Official Papers.  If you need any help then just contact official.papers@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

See you tomorrow for 3 French Hens and  if you missed it yesterday here is  a ‘Partridge in a Pear Tree’.

 

Cutting the chase for US primary sources

Although US primary sources are available via both our Westlaw and LexisLibrary subscriptions I think I am not alone in finding it a bit of a bother having to navigate my way to, and then through them successfully. Some of my attitude is  undoubtedly a combination of laziness and lack of practice: one day I (re)discover the way through …. 4 and 3 quarter months later I can remember that I got there in the end, but not exactly how!
In order to help OU members who share my predicament, the Law Bod now has a subscription to Fastcase  a database and a portal designed for busy practitioners.  

Provided you are on the OU network, it won’t require a username and password. If want access off campus log in to OxLIP+ with your Oxford Single Sign on username and password first.

A wizzy feature of the citation search on the Advanced Caselaw Search screen is the fact that you can put in multiple citations (to different cases) and – provided they are separated one from the other by commas – you will get all the case reports returned after just one click!

For anyone at Oxford in need of help with US legal resources there will be a Law Library class 10-11.30 on 27th November in the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer IT Room on the Lower Floor of the Library. It is a longer than usual session as it deals with both the printed sources available in the Law Bod (we are particularly strong on Federal material) and then with online tools.

Booking is via a Weblearn site – but these classes are generally not full so if you are in the area at the right time it would be worth just dropping in.