Incorporated Council of Law Reporting online

The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR) has, since 1866, met the challenge of providing high quality law reports of cases before the superior courts of  England & Wales and the UK.  Recently it has started providing its report series online via its own platform.  With the generosity befitting a charitable institution, the ICLR has offered free access to UK universities – and Oxford has been happy to accept!

ICLR online: if you are on the OU network this will take you straight to the search page

Which reports are we talking about? As the academic year is nearing its close, we are confident that the abbreviations  found in citations are now meaningful to all Oxford law students so will use them to list the series included.  (As the online service offers complete coverage, back to 1865, the earlier citation forms are given in round brackets – full stops expunged  as the search system on this database doesn’t cope with them.)

• AC  (LR HL/HL; LR Sc & Div/HL  Sc.; LR App Cas; LR PC)
• QB (LR QB; QBD; KB)
• Ch (LR Ch App; LR Eq; ChD)
• Fam (LR A & E; LR P & D; PD; P)
• LR CP ; CPD
• LR CCR.
• LR Exch. ; ExD.
• WLR Weekly Law Reports 1953 – Cw UK 120 W20
• ICR Industrial Cases Reports 1975 – Cw UK 120 I41
• BLR Business Law Reports 2007- Cw UK 120 L135
• PTSR Public and Third Sector Law Reports 2009 – Cw UK 120 P95

The only ICLR series not included (at the moment) are the short-lived Reports of Restrictive Practices Cases  (LR [n] RPC) 1958-1972 (many but not all of these cases can be found in the WLR).

Of course, these law reports  have been available online via third party subscription databases – and will continue to be.  Thanks to their  Westlaw UK subscription,  current Oxford students (with an Oxford Single Sign On username and password) already have online access to all of these report series (once again with the exception of the LR RPC), while LexisLibrary  supplies the The Law Reports series – ie the first 7 in the above list.

We cannot see that current OSS holding students would want to change to this new database, as the alternatives offer easy routes to related online content such as law journal articles and commentary.However, the advantage of the ICLR platform is that,  while on the OU network,  or if off campus when logged into SOLO/OxLIP+ or using a VPN,  no username and password is required.  This will mean registered users of the Bodleian  – such as our Visiting Academics while in the LawBod – will be able to access the most authoritative sources of English case law online for the first time.

TIPS ON SEARCHING ICLR Online

The ICLR online editors have tried to keep using the database as intuitive and simple as possible.

The database opens on the search screen below. Note that there is a Quick Find search box just under the green banner on the dark grey strip into which you could put a very distinctive party name – with or without the ICLR series abbreviation and/or year if you know them. Curiously it does not understand citation searches.

Perhaps fortunately therefore,  it is in the Simple Search screen which is most prominent – and we suspect the less frustrating way to go. (The Advanced Search option which adds fields to search by Subject Matter (aka keywords), Date of Judgment, Courts and Judges.)

You can copy and paste in a citation here : if it is a neutral citation be careful to put it in the right box. If you are using a citation of a printed report, it must be to one of the ICLR’s own series (see list above) Enter the complete citation – with volume numbers and/or years in square brackets were appropriate, but without any full stops after or between letters  eg [2011] 1 WLR 1985, [1894] 1 QB 133, LR 3 Exch 107. (As well-trained OU students you would know that a date which is in round brackets is superfluous, thanks to the words of the LRSMP trainers/OSCOLA para 2.1.1 engraved on your hearts!)

A curious feature of the search screen is that you must not combine a law report citation with any other term in another search box.

If you are trying to search by party names take note of this warning from the suppliers:  “The search looks for individual words or part words set out in a case report header: thus entering simply Forsik will find Forsikringsaktieselskapet Vesta v Butcher.  To prevent implied truncation, enclose word or letter with quotes, eg “A v B”" to avoid finding words merely beginning with A or B.”  The system understands the wildcard  * for variant spellings/missing letters but expects you to use ? for individual letters or foreign accents, eg Soci?t? Anonyme.

In a free text search, you must use ” ” to make a phrase eg “love your neighbour.” (The search box otherwise assumes Boolean AND between your terms. You can use OR or NOT to construct a more sophisticated free text search.)

Results screen

Results are returned initially with the most recent case at the top of list. Small red pointers to the right of the names of the sections of the results fields (case name, neutral citation, ICLR citation, court and date) all enable simple (alphabetical/chronological) resorting. For example clicking the arrow to the right of date brings the oldest report/the first case to the top of the list.

Hovering over first three catchwords should bring up the full subject matter of each entry.

Initial results screen: use red triangles to resort

A click on the citation will open the report you want to read in “dynamic view” (HTML) – while the pdf is simply a click on an icon away. The Index Card section of the results page also opens when you have clicked to view a case.

Having chosen a report by clicking on the citation this view appears

The left hand Index Card column brings up the CitatorPlus information for the case you are reading.  Click to open (+) or close (-) tabbed sections showing subject matter, appellate history, subsequent consideration and cases, words & phrases and legislation considered.

Showing part of Index Card information

The Briefcase icon is the way you can save your bundle of either case reports or index cards.

When you have finished reading one report and wish to go back to another revealed in your initial search, click on“Case Results” on the grey Toolbar.

 

What’s UPSO at OUP, and the Oxford Index..

I’d like to draw your attention to a resource called the Oxford Index. It is a free resource available to everyone, and it may have a usefulness beyond the usual legal research sources we are familiar with.
The breadth of online materials on the OUP platforms can be quite difficult to identify easily, because the digital resources vary in format and purpose. Bibliographies and journals and e- monographs covering many subjects and titles can be discovered via Google and other search engines, and there are records in institutional online catalogues. But the introduction of this new free search and discovery portal makes it all so much easier to find what’s there.
The Index searches well over two and a half million abstracts from OUP publications such as essays, journals and chapters from monographs and reference works, and the results provide summaries from the resources identified by the search. The abstracts are very informative, and include chapters within books. It is possible to set up free personalised accounts, so searches can be saved and results bookmarked. Results include related content links, broadening the usefulness of the results.
As subscribers to OUP’s online resources, the result links to the full text of the item irrespective of where it is located within the Oxford contents. The index is not restricted to law, but covers all OUP online subject coverage, so this can also be rewarding, as other types of material may be retrieved that can still be relevant to a query.

Search for International Law on the Index

And now we come to UPSO. OUP ‘s  academic publishing arm provides a wide range of online monographs and journals. A couple of years ago OUP decided to broaden its offering of scholarly titles by bringing together some of the leading University Presses which may not have been able to provide their own online platforms. The aggregated monographs are easily accessible via University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO), with content from the following presses:

The American University in Cairo Press;  University of Chicago Press;  University of California Press;  Edinburgh University Press;  University Press of Florida;  Fordham University Press;  Hong Kong University Press;  The University Press of Kentucky;  Manchester University Press;  Policy Press; and launching this year:  Liverpool University Press ; The MIT Press ;  Stanford University Press and Yale University Press.

We  subscribe to these OUP resources, so the range of resources indexed includes UPSO titles, as well as Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) which contains 886 law titles, all searchable via the index.

OUP’s  law database materials, which are mainly in the field of Public International Law, are not included in the Oxford Index search. This includes the Max Planck Encyclopaedia of International Law and the  Oxford Law Reports on International Law.  Both these have their own search interfaces on their home page, to search within their content. And don’t forget that updates to the ORIL, via RSS feeds, are free, and may act as a useful alerter to new cases as they are added.

 

Indigenous Peoples and the law (and a useful new LibGuide!)

I thought that I would take the opportunity, having done a lot of research for my soon-to-be-published LibGuide on the topic, to share a few interesting pieces of international legislation and highlight a significant case concerning indigenous peoples that I discovered along the way. Also, it may be a (not so subtle) attempt draw attention to the new guide! The LibGuide focuses on physical and electronic resources for indigenous peoples in a public international law dimension, as well as having pages devoted to resources on indigenous peoples in the jurisdictions of Australia, Africa, Canada, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, New Zealand and the USA.  These include physical resources held in the Law Library, and online res0urces, which are either free or available through library subscription using an Oxford Single Sign On username and password. Through working on the guide, I came to understand how the legislation affecting, and the social and political position of, indigenous peoples varies considerably between jurisdictions. Take a look, and see if you find anything useful! Note the OED definition of indigenous: ’ born…naturally in a land or region; native or belonging naturally to’ .

The struggle of indigenous peoples throughout history and today, to lay claim to their human rights as the natural peoples of lands across the world has become an important concern in international human rights law in recent years. The implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has highlighted their push for rights and representation in areas including land, language, culture, education, health and housing. United Nations also has several bodies which advise on, support, and monitor indigenous rights. The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues informs the UN Economic and Social Council on matters relating to indigenous peoples. The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples advises the UN Human Rights Council on indigenous issues, and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples promotes and reports on issues of concern. Additionally, there is a be a UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples in 2014. The LibGuide has links to numerous titles held in the law library and electronic resources, discussing United Nations in relation to indigenous issues.

Photograph by David Jackmanson. Depicts the Australian, Queensland, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags at the Queensland parliament.

A famous, historic High Court case involving Australian Aboriginal land rights is Mabo v. Queensland [No.2], which is available electronically on Westlaw AU (access through OxLIP+) and in hardcopy in the Commonwealth Law Reports, (1992) 175 CLR 1. The case involved five Torres Strait Islander Aboriginals of the Murray Islands, headed by Eddie Mabo, arguing for their rights to the land on which they lived, given their traditional ownership and connection to it. (They have been self-sufficient, with their own laws for centuries.) In 1879, the land was assigned to the Queensland government under terra nullius, further confirmed by the Queensland Coast Islands Declaration Act 1985. However, Mabo v Queensland No 1 in 1988 found this act to be in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. The case was brought to court again in 1992, and it ruled that, given their connection to the land and their traditional ownership, the land was not terra nullius, and native title (Aboriginal right to traditional land because of historical connection)  should be and could be recognised under common law.  It had a profound impact on legislation in relation to land in Australia, resulting in the Native Title Act 1993.  The Act recognises and protects native title. Notably, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander Aboriginals are still not recognised in the Australian Constitution, although this looks set to be rectified in the near future, as the Australian House of Representatives has recently passed an indigenous recognition bill.

This just one example (and a brief overview at that) of numerous high-profile (and not so high profile) cases of indigenous peoples fighting discriminatory laws. The challenge for indigenous peoples across the world is an ongoing one, and much material can be found in the Law Library documenting this. Remember, you can always contact the library at law.library@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for any research help (and take a look at the Lib Guide – look out for a tweet announcing its publication!)

 

What links tattoos, hackney carriages and water …

Byelaws that’s what!

by Hannah Chandler

A lengthy search for byelaws recently prompted us to delve further and do a bit of research….

Byelaws are effectively local laws to deal with local issues. They are made by a body, such as a local authority, using powers granted by an Act of Parliamentm and so are a  form of delegated legislation. Some byelaws are made by private companies or charities that exercise public or semi-public functions, such as airport operators, water companies or, for example, the National Trust.

Byelaws generally require something to be done – or not done – in a particular location. As the non-observance of a byelaw result in a criminal offence tried in a Magistrates’ Court, they must be approved by central government before they can come into force.

They are usually restricted to a physical location such as a park (no cycling or skateboards for example) or a particular activity such as  tattooing or hair dressing. See http://www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/decCD/Byelaws.htm for examples from the Oxford City Council.

How are they made?

Once the byelaw has been made under the common seal of the authority the byelaw has to be published in a relevant local newspaper as notice of the Council’s intention and the byelaw must then be kept in on deposit at the offices of the Council for at least one month before it can be put before the Secretary of State for approval and date of enforcement.

A slippery customer?

Byelaws can be quite hard to track down as they are not formally deposited in any one place.  Here are some useful information sources in order of relevance.

• Local council, authority or private company relevant for creating the byelaw
• Local library or record office
• Newspaper archives
• London Gazette
• The government department responsible for approving the byelaw

A useful archive collection is held at the National Archives who has a set of printed copies of local authority byelaws dating from 1872 to 1977.

For more information the Bodleian libguide ‘United Kingdom Law’ guide has a page dedicated to byelaws.

 

Legal databases and how to get at them

Kat here – Information Resources trainee at the Law Bod. Since starting work here last September, I have had lots of chances to delve into some of the weird and wonderful resources the Bodleian Law Library and the Bodleian Libraries generally have to offer. Despite doing my undergraduate degree here in Oxford, there were lots of new things to me. So when it came to thinking of things to blog about, I decided that, if they were new to me, chances are they would be new to plenty of our readers! I came up with quite a long list of things, but today I’ve picked password-protected legal databases, and how to get at them.

Password-protected legal databases

Law students and readers, I’m sure, are quite familiar with using Westlaw, LexisLibrary, HeinOnline and others to look at legislation, law reports and journals online. They probably get to them by a variety of routes. Personally, I like to use OxLip+, search for ‘Westlaw’, and click on the link to Westlaw UK. Then I’ll need to sign in with my Oxford Single-Sign-On (SSO). Alternatively, I can just go straight to Westlaw UK, mouse-over the ‘Log in to your service’ button in the top right, choose ‘Organisation Name’, type in Oxford, and login from there, still with my SSO. It’s up to you, and it’s the same for LexisLibrary. Simple. You can also go via the Law Bod’s own list of databases, which is a great page to bookmark if you use a lot of databases for your work. By the way, if you’re not sure about your Oxford Single-Sign-On, it’s what you need to put into any screen that looks like this: If you’re a member of a college, or have been in the past, the username often looks something like ball1234 or quee4567 (for Balliol and Queen’s).

Not everyone has an Oxford Single-Sign-On, and if you don’t, you won’t have access to all of our electronic resources, unfortunately. However, many of them are free anyway, and can be found on OxLip+ as well, so don’t despair! Subject librarians spend lots of time compiling lists of e-resources by subject for OxLip+, so it’s definitely worth having a look. You can watch out for those which always require Single-Sign-On because they have the little flag next to them. On the Law Bod website list of databases, they have [OSS] in square brackets next to them.

However, some online resources don’t require your Oxford Single-Sign-On, they require another password. In law, examples of these are Manupatra (legal database of Indian law), All South African Law Reports (via LexisNexis but needing a different password), De Jure (Italian language website containing cases and journals), Lextenso (French language website with journals and legislation), Funmi Quadri Online (Nigerian Supreme Court reports) and LawNet (the Singapore Academy of Law, which contains Indian Supreme court cases from 1969 onwards). All of these require their own special passwords.

To find out these mysterious passwords, you need to navigate your way to Weblearn and, naturally, log in. Luckily, to do that, you just need your Oxford Single-Sign-On, so that’s easy. Then you can either follow this link to the correct page, or navigate it by selecting from the left-hand navigation column: ASUC (Academic Services and University Collections), then Libraries and Information Resources, then E-resources, and there you are! Out of your difficulty at once. You can tell which databases need a special password on OxLip+, because they have a little key by them. And if you’re looking on the Law Bod website’s list, they have [P.WORD] next to their name.

A final note – if you’re on a university network, you’ll find that you won’t have to sign in at all to a lot of our resources. It’s only special ones like LexisNexis and Westlaw which require it regardless of where you are.   If you’re not on an Oxford University internet network, for example if you aren’t living in university or college accommodation for any reason, then you will always need your SSO to get access.

You can tell which on the Law Bod website list because they have [EXTERNAL: OXLIP+] next to them. Then you will have to log in with your SSO when you are off campus.

If you are still having problems with an online resource and you’re not on an Oxford network (for example, where the website keeps asking you to log in when you already have), but you are a member of the university, you might want to set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network). This is also useful when you go home for the holidays and you encounter an Oxford website which says (Oxonly). It lets you tell websites that you are affiliated with Oxford. To get it, follow the link and download the software to your computer, following It Services’ instructions. You will also need to register for a Remote Access Account if you don’t already have one (you will already have this if you use the Eduroam wireless network).

You shouldn’t really need to use your VPN to access library resources, even if you’re not on the Oxford network – just using your SSO should work. However, as a last ditch attempt to get something working, it’s worth a try. Personally, I’ve used it for Cambridge Companions Online, where I’ve had this problem.

Hopefully this post has clarified how to get to our various legal databases on online resources! Remember that, if you’re still having problems, you can always ask a member of library staff (if you’re in a library), or consider emailing us at law.library@bodleian.ox.ac.uk if you’re elsewhere within normal working hours.

 

Insight on Westlaw

Those of you who are avid Westlaw UK users will have noticed a new Insight tab now appears on the homepage and has moved the ‘Cases’ tab along.  This may have annoyed a few of you (who out of habit clicked on it expecting to do a case search),  but it is a useful new ‘encyclopaedia’ that analyses legal topics and points you in the right direction of key cases and legislation.

Westlaw say:

Westlaw UK Insight is an ever-evolving and growing online legal encyclopaedia that aims to provide a comprehensive statement of the law in the United Kingdom. Covering England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and delivered via an intuitive topic-based interface, it reflects the way you think. What’s more, it enables you to find solutions quickly, by providing succinct up-to-date, and expert guidance on the law.

You can search it by clicking on the tab or you can include it in a more general search from the box on the homepage.

Like with all Westlaw sections you can search using keywords or use the broad legal topics to browse.  At the bottom of this screen, unlike the other sections, are the latest additions and updates.

The entries themselves are quite straight forward to navigate, starting with an overview and then moving to more detailed analysis of the topic.  Those used to using  Westlaw and other databases may notice that the links to the different parts of the entry are on the right rather than the usual left hand side but other than the page is clear and not overly complicated.

There are the usual links through to cases, legislation and articles available on Westlaw but what is very good about Insight is that the author of the entry is clearly indicated.  There is a link to information about the author as well as contact details which allows for more interaction and feedback.

Westlaw have indicated that more topics are being added over this year.

If you want more information (or indeed if you want to be an author yourself) then you can click on the ‘More information’ link on the right hand side of the home page.

If you want help using Westlaw or a refresher then you can find information and tutorials on our Libguide or if you contact Kate Jackson at katharine.jackson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

 

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.

 

Mobile Apps for Mobile Lawyers

Mobile technology is becoming ever more ubiquitous, so it seemed the right time to take a look at apps for law students and lawyers. For the purposes of this blog post I selected three apps to road test.

I was ably assisted with these reviews by my husband, Alec, who obtained a first in Law at Staffordshire University in 2005, and an LPC from City University in 2006. I asked him to participate in the hope that a non-librarian perspective would be useful to our readers. I’d like to thank him for his contributions to this post (and for letting me use his iPad!).

The Law Guide App (free) was designed by New York-based company TheLaw.com. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, iPad (iOS 3.1.3 or later) and Android devices.

Alec: The Law Guide App is a handy glossary for most terms that any student or practitioner could be expected to come across.  While it lacks specific citations, the definitions are easy to understand without becoming patronisingly facile.  For the princely sum of precisely zero pounds you can get a hold of a quick reference guide to almost any legal term a student is liable to stumble across.

Beth: The interface is extremely basic, and it took me a minute to realise that it wasn’t just one long list of index terms, as the A-Z links down the right hand side of the page were a bit on the small side. However, once I got to grips with it I thought it was very comprehensive for a free resource, provided people are aware of the U.S. bias. It’s particularly useful for looking up unfamiliar Latin terms.

OUP’s Family Law Concentrate (£2.49) part of their ‘Concentrate’ revision series, is one  of 14 different subject-specific law revision apps aimed at undergraduates, and is compatible  with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad (iOS 4.0 or later).

Alec: The OUP’s Family Law Concentrate is a revision aid, asking questions and providing explanations when you get one wrong.  There are a variety of near identical apps from the OUP, all doing virtually the exact same thing.  As an aide memoir it proved two things: namely that I forgot a lot of section numbers and case law citations since graduation and also that I haven’t kept up with the last 3 years of developments in the field.  How much a user gets out of this probably depends on how much he/she enjoys having revision turned into a single-player version of University Challenge.  It covers the basics well, but a ten minute session quickly threw up several repeated questions, suggesting a worryingly limited number of questions.

Beth:  I agree with Alec that the questions are a little limited, but the interface is nice and simple and is very straightforward to use. I think that the ‘progress report’ feature is a nice addition to show students how their revision is going. It would be interesting to compare the content to the print versions of the Concentrate revision guides, which currently retail at £11.99 each on OUP’s website.

LawSauce (£2.99 from iTunes, £3.10 from Android) was designed by Natalie Wieland, founder of Bliss Consulting and CPD Interactive; Legal Research Skills Adviser, Melbourne Law School, and our own Bodleian Law Librarian, Ruth Bird. It is compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad (iOS 3.2 or later) and Android devices.

Alec: LawSauce is a rather handy app to help find a specific source or publication.  The program itself is basic enough and is very much “what you see is what you get”.  If you want to know where on the Internet to find a specific journal or law report the app will very quickly direct you to the correct site.  For a busy academic or practitioner it may likely be invaluable.  For a student, its desirability will depend on: a) whether you have 3 quid to spare, and b) whether you can be bothered to get to the library.

Beth: This app has a bright and welcoming interface, and is very simple to use. It’s a good time-saving app to help people find the resources they need. According to their website, it is also updated on a regular basis, which is very important for both students and legal professionals. Some resources it links to (e.g. Fastcase) are not free access though, so users will need to watch out for that.

This is just a very small selection of the legal apps available through the iTunes and Android app stores. There are dozens of apps out there, ranging from £0 to £40 or more. However, it pays to be careful about which ones you download. Here are a few tips:

• Although the number of legal apps developed in the UK and Europe is increasing, the majority are still from the U.S. so you will need to bear that in mind if you only want information on UK or EU law.

• Look at when the app was created or last updated – is the information current enough?

• Who created the app? Finding out about the company or individuals involved in producing the app will give you a clue about the quality of information, and whether it is likely to be biased in some way.

• Who was it created for? Sometimes this is clearly stated in the description (as with the Concentrate series), but others are less specific. Read the descriptions carefully and look for reviews online to make sure it’s going to be helpful to you.

If you have any suggestions or recommendations for other legal apps, do please send us your comments and ideas.

 

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.

 

10 Drummers Drumming

Photo by MJ-TR on flickr.com

Welcome to the 10th day of our 12 (legal) Days of Christmas, if you have missed the previous nine then either have a scroll through the blog or follow the links in our introductory blog post.

Noise can be a nuisance both in the common use of the word and the legal meaning and 10 drummers drumming would indeed be noisy (between 102 – 125 db each depending on the type of drum).  Noise pollution is recognised as an environmental hazard and depending on where it is happening it is governed by different provisions, sometimes under statutory nuisance but there is also the common law of nuisance.  So if you were looking to see how to combat it then where would you start your research?  A really good place if you are not sure is Halsbury’s Laws.

Halsbury’s Law is a multi-volume encyclopedia of law and is available in hard copy and on Lexis Library (available to OU members via Oxlip+ ).  If you are searching by subject you can either browse by broad subject or if you are not sure what your topic will fall under there is an index.  So what can we find out about the 10 drummers using the online version….

10 Drummers drumming next door (at 3am in the morning)

So you want to know if this constitutes a nuisance and if so, what is the relevant legislation/cases? Well you can start by browsing the volumes.   From the Lexis Library homepage Halsbury’s should be listed on the right hand bookshelf and looking through the volumes under ‘browse’ there is a ’Nuisance’ volume and so this may be the obvious place to start.  Using the plus symbols you can narrow it down further, the way the work is arranged means that it start off generally (and with an introduction) and gets more specific.   Using this method you can find paragraph 125 Noise and Vibration.

If you are not sure what it will fall under, rather than searching the whole of the work you can just search particular volume(s)  by clicking on the tick box and using the search box at the top.  For instance ticking the Nuisance box and then searching for ‘noise’ brings up 42 results.  If you sort by relevance (on the left hand menu) then you get the same paragraph 125 coming at the top but about 7th on the list is one with just the heading ‘noise’.

As you can see this gives a brief statement on the law relating to nuisance and noise but also gives comprehensive footnotes letting you follow the leads to relevant legislation and case law.

What the footnotes also suggest is that some of the situations fall under Environmental Quality and Public Health volume and so you can take a look at this volume as well.  Going to the Environmental volume you will find that the paragraph 848 deals with noise coming from a dwelling.

So back to those drummers next door.  This paragraph states that noise coming from a dwelling place could be held to be statutory nuisance under the Noise Act 1996 and so depending on how loud, how long and what time of day those drummers are drumming you could do something about it.

Of course this is likely to be  only the start of your research, but as you now have an act and some background to the subject then you can use this to search for relevant books, articles, and cases.  This is just a very brief run through of how to use Halsbury’s Laws online for a more comprehensive demonstration (and with clearer screen shots!) you can see a video at http://www.lexisauditorium.com/default.aspx?c=216&t=634910180583000074

Join us on Monday for 11 Pipers Piping.