On this page:
6.1 Legal Resources
6.1.1 Pacific
General
- http://www.paclii.org PacLII collects and publishes legal materials from 20 Pacific Island Countries. The materials consist mainly of primary materials such as court decisions and legislation but also include decisions of various tribunals, panels, Ombudsmens’ reports or secondary information such as court rules or bench books.
- https://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/c.php?g=508236&p=3476280 University of Sydney Asia Pacific library guides, provides resources on Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu
- https://www.loc.gov/law/help/guide/nations.php US Library of Congress annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online
Legislation
- Cook Islands – http://www.paclii.org/countries/ck.html
- Fiji – https://www.fiji.gov.fj/Fiji-Laws/2017-Acts.aspx
- FSM – http://www.fsmlaw.org
- Guam – http://guamlegislature.com/index/
- Marshall Islands – https://rmiparliament.org/cms/legislation.html
- Nauru – http://ronlaw.gov.nr
- Kiribati – https://www.parliament.gov.ki/acts-of-kiribati/
- Palau – http://www.paclii.org/pw/indices/legis/
- PNG – http://www.parliament.gov.pg/bills-and-legislation
- Pitcairn Islands – http://www.government.pn/Laws/
- Samoa – http://www.samlii.org and http://www.palemene.ws/new/parliamentbusiness/acts-regulations/
- Solomon Islands – http://www.parliament.gov.sb/index.php?q=node/237
- Tokelau – http://www.paclii.org/tk/indices/legis/
- Tonga – https://ago.gov.to/cms/
- Tuvalu – https://tuvalu-legislation.tv/cms/
- Vanuatu – https://parliament.gov.vu/index.php/icons
Journals
- Journal of South Pacific Law – http://www.paclii.org/journals/fJSPL/index.shtml
- Hawaiian Pacific Journal Index – https://hilo.hawaii.edu/library/hawaiian-collection/pacific-journal
6.1.2 Australia
Legislation
- legify.com.au Legify helps you find the authoritative version of almost 14,000 Australian Acts and Regulations, instantly and direct from the legislative publishers of the Commonwealth, States and Territories.
- Commonwealth: https://www.legislation.gov.au
- NSW: https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/
- Victoria: legislation.vic.gov.au/
- Queensland: legislation.qld.gov.au
- South Australia: https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/
- Tasmania: https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/
- Western Australia: https://www.slp.wa.gov.au/legislation/statutes.nsf/default.html
- Northern Territory: https://legislation.nt.gov.au
- ACT: http://www.legislation.act.gov.au
Case law
- austlii.edu.au Austlii provides access to case law from most superior Australian courts and tribunals, as well as current and past Federal, State and Territory legislation.
- http://jade.barnet.com.au Jade is a free subscription service for searching, annotating and sharing Australian legal judgments and decisions. Delivers tailored results to your inbox daily of the latest superior court decisions.
Journals
- http://www.nla.gov.au/app/eresources/list/free National Library of Australia free eResources includes journals and databases
- http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ A large range of free journals can be accessed through Austlii
6.1.3 New Zealand
Legislation
- legislation.govt.nz New Zealand government website provides access to full text of acts, bills and regulations.
Case law
- http://www.nzlii.org/ NZLII provides free access to New Zealand’s legal materials.
Journals
- http://natlib.govt.nz/collections/a-z/subscription-e-resources National Library of New Zealand eResources (some free)
- http://www.worldlii.org/catalog/53183.html provides range of free NZ law journals
6.1.4 Canada
Legislation
Case law
Journals
- http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/sclr/ Supreme Court law review
- https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/ Osgoode Hall Law Journal
- https://rdo-olr.org/en/home/ Ottawa Law Review
- https://www.queensu.ca/lawjournal/issues Queen’s Law Journal
- https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/uwojls University of Western Ontario’s Journal of Legal Studies
6.1.5 United States
Legislation
- https://www.fdlp.gov/file-repository/outreach/events/interagency-depository-seminar/2012-interagency-depository-seminar/2171-federal-digital-system-fdsys/file Federal Digital System (FDsys) (USA): Official website of US government Printing Office (GPO). FDsys provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal government. Eg: United States Courts Opinions, Code of Federal Regulations and United States Codes
Journals
- https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/nyls_law_review/ New York Law School Law Review: This portal lists about 150 journals where, at minimum, the latest edition is freely available online. There is also a Google powered search box
- https://www.americanbar.org/groups/journal/ American Bar Association portal: This is a portal to free law reviews and journals. There are links through to the journals as well as a Google powered search engine
Case law
- https://www.law.cornell.edu/ LII: Legal Information Institute providing free open access to US Federal and State case law and legislation, coverage includes Supreme Court decisions from 1990, legislation, and also the CFR
- https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ FindLaw: searchable database from FindLaw offers U.S. Supreme Court opinions since 1893. FindLaw also maintains a database of case summaries for lower court opinions since 2000
6.1.6 United Kingdom
Legislation
- https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ This government-sponsored site provides free access to legal materials from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom
Case law
- https://www.bailii.org/ Bailii: British and Irish Legal Information Institute
- https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldjudgmt.htm House of Lords Judgments: Archive: Full text judgments of the House of Lords delivered from 14 November 1996 to 30 July 2009 are archived in this section of the UK Parliament web site
- https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/ Courts and Tribunals Judiciary: Judgments: Selected judgments from the Court of Appeal, High Court and First-tier and Upper Tribunals, and also sentencing remarks from the Crown Court, judgments of district judges (magistrates’ courts), and County Court and Military Court judgments, late 2011 onwards. The database can be searched and filtered by court or jurisdiction. Judgments from 2009 to 2011 are available via an archived site.
- https://www.jcpc.uk/decided-cases/index.html The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) is the court of final appeal for the UK’s overseas territories, crown dependencies, and military sovereign base areas, and for several Commonwealth countries. Includes details of JCPC’s role and powers, lists of relevant legislation, procedural information (forms, rules and practice directions), details of current cases and future sittings; live television coverage of hearings; and judgments November 2009 onwards.
6.1.7 Other resources
Legal dictionaries
- http://thelawdictionary.org/ Black’s Law Dictionary
- http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/
- http://dictionary.law.com/
- http://www.nolo.com/dictionary
General resources
- https://doaj.org Directory of Open Access Journals – links to scholarly journals which can be accessed for free
- http://www.lawcite.org/ LawCite: automatically generated international legal case and journal article citatory which is being developed at AustLII. Over 18,000 law report and journal series are currently indexed, and the database includes over five million cases and law journal articles from around the world
- https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/ GlobaLex: This site includes sections on foreign, international and comparative law. The section devoted to foreign law includes excellent summaries of legal research in a wide range of countries and jurisdictions including links to resources where available
- http://www.worldlii.org/ WorldLII: This site collects laws, treaties, cases, journals and other materials from around the world. It covers both foreign and international law
- http://www.commonlii.org/ CommonLII: provides free access to the legal materials of 59 Commonwealth and common law jurisdictions
- https://www.loc.gov/law/find/global.php Global and Comparative Law Resources – Library of Congress includes the Global Legal Information Newtowk (GLIN), Global Legal Monitor, Guide to Law Online, Global Legal Information Catalogue
- http://www.legalabbrevs.cardiff.ac.uk/ Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations: search for the meaning of abbreviations for English language legal publications and law reports
- http://www.unimelb.libguides.com/australianlaw-freeonlineresources This guide outlines free legal resources to conduct Australian legal research (legislation, case law and secondary sources), followed by links to research guides covering the Australian, and foreign/international/comparative context
- https://academic.microsoft.com Top authors in field, conferences, journals
- https://scholar.google.com Web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature
6.2 Australian Attorney-General’s Department Legal Policy Development Course
To help understand and navigate policy development, the Australian Attorney-General’s Department (AGD) runs the ‘Legal Policy Development Course’.
The Course uses 7 ‘policy steps’ as a framework to understand and describe the policy process, including guidance on how to identify the root cause of the policy problem and different approaches to solve that problem (including law reform as only one option among others).
This Course has been delivered for over five years throughout the Pacific using a train the trainer approach, under the AGD ‘Legal Policy Champions Program’. The Legal Policy Champions Program aims to build the capacity of Pacific law and justice officers to develop rigorous public policy proposals and enable them to be champions for good policy development practices.
To find out more about the Legal Policy Development Course, please refer to the following website: https://www.ag.gov.au/international-relations/pacific-law-and-justice-program/legal-policy-development-course
6.3 Additional resources
- Administrative Review Council, What decisions should be subject to merit review? https://www.arc.ag.gov.au/Publications/Reports/Pages/Downloads/Whatdecisionsshouldbesubjecttomeritreview1999.aspx#law
- C Althaus, P Bridgman and G Davis (2018, ed 6) The Australian Policy Handbook, https://books.google.com.au/books?id=HKEtDwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_book_similarbooks
- Australian Attorney-General’s Dartment, Australian Administrative Law Policy Guide, https://www.ag.gov.au/LegalSystem/AdministrativeLaw/Documents/Australian-administrativelaw-policy-guide.pdf
- Australian National Audit Office (2001) Developing Policy Advice, http://www.anao.gov.au/uploads/documents/2001-02_Audit_Report_21.pdf
- Australian Public Service Commission (2007) Tackling Wicked Problems: A Public Policy Perspective, http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications-and-media/archive/publications-archive/tacklingwicked-problems
- Australian Public Service Commission (2007) Changing Behaviour: A Public Policy Perspective, http://www.apsc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/6821/changingbehaviour.pdf
- Australian Public Service Commission (2009) Smarter policy: choosing policy instruments and working with others to influence behaviour, http://www.apsc.gov.au/publications-and-media/archive/publications-archive/smarter-policy
- G Banks AO, (2008) Evidence-based policy making: What is it? How do we get it?, http://www.pc.gov.au/speeches/cs20090204
- Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel Drafting Manuals, http://www.calc.ngo/drafting-manuals
- Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australian Government Guide to Regulation, https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/Australian_government_Guide_to_Regulation.pdf
- Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australian Government Legislation Handbook, https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/legislation-handbook-2017.pdf
- Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Australian National Audit Office (2014), Better Practice Guide: Successful Implementation of Policy Initiatives, http://www.anao.gov.au/~/media/Files/Better%20Practice%20Guides/2014%202015/ANAO%20-%20BPG%20Policy%20Implementation.pdf
- Dr M Lalotao, (2017) Legislative Drafting in the Pacific Context National Archives of Australia, Records Management pages, http://naa.gov.au/records-management/getting-started/
- New Zealand Legislation Design and Advisory Committee website, http://www.ldac.org.nz/
- Queensland Government, Role of instructing officer in providing effective drafting instructions, https://www.premiers.qld.gov.au/publications/categories/policies-and-codes/handbooks/legislation-handbook/drafting-process/instructing-officer.aspx
- Solicitor-General’s Legislative Drafting Directives for the Cook Islands, http://pilonsec.org/images/stories/Documents/LegislativeDraftersForum/ci_sg_legislativedirectivesfinal%20170712.pdf
- Tasmanian Government, Tasmanian Government Project Management Guidelines, http://www.egovernment.tas.gov.au/project_management/tasmanian_government_project_management_guidelines
6.4 International model laws, legislative guides, explanatory notes etc
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/legal-tools/model-treaties-and-laws.html, for resources on:
- Trafficking in persons
- Money-laundering and financing of terrorism
- Smuggling of migrants
- Illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms
- Terrorism
- Extradition
- Mutual assistance in criminal matters
- Child victims and witnesses of crime
- United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, https://uncitral.un.org/en/texts, for resources on:
- International commercial arbitration
- International commercial mediation
- International sale of goods and related transactions
- Procurement and infrastructure development
- Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises
- Electronic commerce
- Insolvency
- Security interests
- Online dispute resolution
- International payments
- International transport of goods
- Council of Europe, https://www.coe.int/en/web/cybercrime/guidance-notes, for resources on:
- Cybercrime guidance notes
- Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/PublicationsResources/Pages/Publications.aspx, for resources on:
- Human Rights
- Model law on Racial Discrimination, https://ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/Discrimination962en.pdf
- Commonwealth Secretariat, https://thecommonwealth.org/commonwealth-model-laws, for resources on:
- Electronic transactions
- Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments
- Implementation of the Rome Statute of the
- International Criminal Court
- Measures to combat terrorism
- Mutual assistance in criminal matters
- Evidentiary provisions
- Criminal disclosure and prosecution disclosure
- Judicial service commissions
- Competition
- Freedom of information
- Protection of personal information
- Privacy
- Integrity in public life
