LibGuides: Law: Specialist resources

Specialist resources for Law

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
The IFLP is a multilingual index to articles and book reviews appearing in more than 500 legal journals published worldwide. It provides in-depth coverage of public and private international law, comparative and foreign law, and the law of all jurisdictions other than the United States, the UK, Canada, and Australia.
International Commercial Law
International Commercial Law (ICML) provides integrated and fully searchable digital access to some of the leading works relevant to international business law. It contains a library of titles on the law of sale and includes related areas such as the laws of contract and agency, insurance, shipping and the carriage of goods.
Investment Claims
Investment Claims brings you materials and analysis in the field of international investment law and arbitration.
Kluwer Arbitration
KluwerArbitration.com from Kluwer Law International is an online resource for international commercial arbitration research. It contains a wealth of commentary from expert practitioner authors and an extensive collection of primary source materials.
Climate Change and Law Collection
This comprehensive collection of climate change and law documents contains original source, non-edited and non-redacted grey literature (non-peer reviewed) in English, centered on climate change and the law. Incorporated in the category of law is any discipline of law which addressed climate change, including corporate law, environmental law and human rights law. Materials in the collection originate from a wide range of organizations in the public and private sector, institutions, and/or individuals, world-wide.

The two main law databases, Westlaw UK and Lexis+ both have extensive reference sections and glossaries of legal terms. In Westlaw UK, this is the Insight section and the Index of Legal Terms. Lexis Library has Halsbury's Laws of England and a separate Lexis-Nexis Legal Glossary. These can be used to define terms and gain a basic outline of a particular topic.

The Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations is essential for finding the correct ways of abbreviating titles of journals and various types of legal documents as required by the OSCOLA referencing system.

Among the other useful reference works are:

Oxford Handbooks Online: Law
Each Handbook takes an aspect of its discipline and explains the key issues, the classic and contemporary debates on those issues, and how those debates might evolve.
Oxford Handbooks Online: Criminology and Criminal Justice
Each Handbook takes an aspect of its discipline and explains the key issues, the classic and contemporary debates on those issues, and how those debates might evolve.
Max Planck Encyclopedias of Public International Law
A comprehensive reference work in the field of public international law containing peer-reviewed articles on every aspect of the subject.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd edition) - Elsevier
Major reference work.
SAGE Knowledge This link opens in a new window
SAGE Knowledge is home to an expansive range of SAGE eBook and eReference content including reference works, academic books, professional development titles and more.

UK Law

The two main law databases, Westlaw UK and Lexis Library are the best sources to find case reports and text of legislation with the most up to date commentary on them. Both have tabs for Cases and Legislation respectively on their home page.

There is an online tutorial on using these resources at: https://canvas.bham.ac.uk/enroll/KYKRAC

Other resources you can use are:

vLexJustis This link opens in a new window
vLexJustis is a database of case reports and legislation from the UK, Ireland and the European Union. Our subscription includes access to: England and Wales Civil Appeal Judgements; England and Wales Criminal Appeal Judgements; English Reports; Irish Reports and Digest; Session Cases Archive; State Trials; UK Statutes - as enacted; UK Statutory Instruments - as enacted; Aspinall; Singapore Law Reports.
ICLR Online
This is the database of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales. It provides access to authoritative law reports with links to relevant previous and subsequent case reports.

International Law

EUR-Lex
Gives access to a comprehensive range of documents relating to European Union law including EU treaties, directives, case law, international agreements and EFTA documents. It also links to the texts of preparatory documents such as legislative proposals and reports, as well as the full text of the Official Journal of the European Union.
WorldLII
Website of the World Legal Information Institute providing free, independent and non-profit access to worldwide law. Includes links to full-text cases, legislation and some journals from many jurisidictions.

GOV.UK This link opens in a new window
Provides access to information from the websites of all UK government departments and many other agencies and public bodies: news and communications, statistics and consultations.
Public Information Online
Includes Command Papers, House of Commons Papers, House of Lords Papers, Bills of both Houses, Explanatory Notes and Public Bill/Standing Committee Debates. Begins with 2006/07 session and updated daily.
UK Parliamentary Papers This link opens in a new window
Contains searchable full text of House of Commons Papers, Command Papers, Bills, Reports of Committees and Commissioners.
Hansard Online This link opens in a new window
Hansard is a verbatim report of what is said in both Houses of Parliament. Hansard also reports decisions taken during a sitting and records how Members voted to reach those decisions in Divisions. Records of debates are available from the early 19th century to the present.
Legislation.gov.uk This link opens in a new window
This website is managed by The National Archives on behalf of HM Government and contains most of the legislation and accompanying explanatory documents published by the Government. Please note that the current legislation may not be completely up to date. For current legislation, please use Westlaw or Lexis+ instead.
Europa
Portal of the European Union with access to Web sites of EU institutions and large numbers of EU publications.

Box of Broadcasts (BoB) This link opens in a new window
BoB is an off-air recording and media archive service which stores recorded TV and Radio programmes in an archive indefinitely.
British Universities Film and Video Council Databases This link opens in a new window
BUFVC sources databases on dvds, News on Screen, Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching TRILT, Researcher's Guide Online - RGO and Moving Image Gateway.