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Law and Justice

This guide provides access to major Australian and international legal resources and help on searching them.

Hello!

Welcome to the Law and Justice subject guide. This guide will help you find legal information to use in your studies as it provides links to subject specific information.

Use the tabs on the left to navigate through this guide.

If you can't find what you're looking for, head to Ask the Library and our friendly library staff will assist you.

What are the types of legal information?

Primary sources are the law as it is created by Parliament and the courts.

Secondary sources are resources that assist you in locating and understanding primary sources.
 

Primary sources include:

 Bills

 Acts of Parliament

 Explanatory memoranda        

 Regulations

 Law reports / judgments

 Parliamentary debates (Hansard)

Case citators

Secondary sources include:

 Books

Textbooks

Legal dictionaries

 Encyclopaedias

Journal articles

Commentary


Information on how to find secondary sources is available on the Journal articles and Legal encyclopaedias tabs of this guide. Information on how to find primary sources is available on the Legislation and Case law tabs of this guide. 

Key databases for legal research

Here are the databases that are most used when doing legal research.

Getting started with legal research process

Analyse the problem and identify the key legal issues *Gives you a starting point for your research

What are the key concepts? *The key concepts can be your search terms or keywords

Use secondary sources *Get an overview of the issues and identify relevant areas of law

Use primary sources *These are the key focus of your research

Test your knowledge of primary and secondary sources

Further Support