4 November 2004. Law: Access Canada is a portal compiled and maintained by the Library and Resources Group of the British Association for Canadian Studies. The legal section refers researchers to a number of useful sources of legal and government information, including courts, regulatory and statutory sources. The association annotates each source listed. 21 October 2002. The Inner Temple Library offers a collection of resource annotations for Web-based legal sources covering the United Kingdom and several other countries. The subject arrangement is simple and easy to use. The site also offers a search feature powered by Google. 18 December 2002. The Asian Law Centre of the University of Melbourne offers this bibliographic database of English language publications on Asian laws. It covers books, book chapters, journal articles and theses. Search by keyword, title, author, publication year, subject or country to find bibliographic references to published works and theses. 2 November 2004. The site offers a useful collection of annotated links to legal resources in Asia, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. There is also a collection of international law resources. For each jurisdiction, the guide covers legislation, case law, government, lawyer finders and major research starting points, when available. 19 March 2000. Also known as AustLII, this Web site publishes Australian primary and secondary legal documents. Some of these materials include:
Australian case law from many courts
Australian legislation
Australian High Court transcripts and bulletins
Australian Capital Territory case law
Australian Capital Territory legislation
New South Wales case law
New South Wales legislation
New South Wales awards
New South Wales Law Reform Commission Reports
New South Wales Office of State Revenue Rulings
Northern Territory case law
Northern Territory legislation
Queensland case law
Queensland legislation
South Australia case law
South Australia legislation
Tasmania case law and legislation
Victoria case law and legislation
Western Australia case law and legislation
New Zealand case law
South Pacific case law 22 November 2004. The Australian Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner provides information about the privacy legislation, regulations, codes, determinations and guidelines that affect private sector business, health service providers and Commonwealth and ACT government agencies. You will find the text (or links to external sites with full-text) of the laws, principles and guidelines. You will also find information relevant to various aspects of privacy; for example, credit reporting and tax file numbers. 2 November 2004. The Australian Attorney General’s Department offers a portal to law and government information. It covers resources on many legal issues, including accidents and compensation, banking and finance, consumer law issues, employment, housing and property, intellectual property, taxation and more. You can browse or search the directory of resource entries. Information provided includes the title of the resource, a description, the jurisdiction covered, relevant subjects, the author or authority, and Web address. 20 July 2005. Find an English translation of the Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People' s Republic of China. It includes Annex I on the selection of the Chief Executive and Annex II on the formation of the Legislative Council. The version was adopted on 31 March 1993 and put into effect on 20 December 1999. It is hosted on the Web site of the University of Macau. 30 August 2001. British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service (BOPCRIS) offers a bibliographic database of information about British Official Publications published during the period 1688-1995. Many records contain detailed abstracts while others provide TIFF or GIF images of the complete publication. 19 March 2000. Introduced during early March 2000, this Web site serves two purposes: It provides free British and Irish legal materials and tests software for the Australasian Legal Information Institute. Currently, legal materials include:
United Kingdom House of Lords Decisions
United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal Decisions
United Kingdom Social Security and Child Support Commissioners' Decisions
Court of Appeal of England and Wales Decisions
High Court of England and Wales Decisions
Scottish Court of Sessions Decisions
Scottish High Court Decisions
Scottish Sheriff Court Decisions
Northern Ireland Court of Appeal Decisions
Northern Ireland High Court Decisions
Northern Ireland Legislation
Irish Supreme Court Decisions
Irish High Court Decisions
Irish Legislation
During the next few weeks, the site promises to add:
UK Legislation
UK Statutory Instruments
Scottish Legislation
Scottish Statutory Instruments
Irish Statutory Instruments
The site enables searching for data only through the home page link, Search Databases. If you enter an individual database, you may browse it, but not query it. Search Databases permits querying all or single databases.
20 May 2002. This site offers both free and fee-based information. For free, visitors may locate solicitors and obtain basic information about British employment laws. These include commentary with references to applicable law. The fee-based section provides more detail, including extensive commentary, additional references, and references to case law. The site also tracks new developments and provides an extensive set of links to helpful resources. 10 June 2000. While the primary purpose of Butterworths ONLINE is to sell Butterworths publications, the site offers much of potential interest to legal researchers. Find, for example, Australian Legislation Tracker, a research aid for locating sources of bills, acts, and regulations on the continent. The Tracker includes tips to assist researchers in obtaining current and complete law.
Other worthwhile information at the site includes annotated law links, a legal research guide (how to conduct legal research in Australia), Text Updater (tool to update information within Butterworths publications; some updates offer the text of legislation and other government documents), a database of pre-1900 decisions from the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and tables of contents for the current issue of several Butterworths serial publications.
The Depository Services Program of Canada offers this annotated research guide to high quality resources offering information pertaining to Canadian government. Find laws and legislation as well as recommendations for resources in many other topics. The site covers federal as well as provincial and municipal information sources. 21 June 2002. Originally designed by LexUM for the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, CanLII offers the laws and regulations of Canada, decisions rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada (1985-present), the Federal Court of Canada (1993-present), the Canadian Tax Court (1997-present), and the Competition Tribunal of Canada (1990-present). Additionally, it offers the text of, or links to, the legal documents of many of Canada's provinces. 3 March 2003. Available in both French and English, the Canadian Library of Parliament's LEGISInfo provides information about pending legislation. Find the text of a bill at various stages, government press releases and background information for government bills, legislative summaries and status information, select speeches, voting information and more. Search for relevant bills by bill number or words appearing in the title. Bill status includes information about enactment. 31 January 2001. The government of Canada along with two universities (one in the U.S., the other in Montreal) offer this collection of bilateral treaties established between the United States and Canada from 1783 to 1997. Researchers may search the collection, browse it by subject category, or retrieve treaties by their citations. In addition to supplying the text of the treaties, the site offers its citation, date of enforcement, names of the officials who signed, and information about related documents. 21 December 2001. No longer updated, this database offers judgment information and transcripts from the British Court of Appeal, Civil and Criminal Divisions and the Crown Office. For current fee-based access see CaseTrack. 12 January 2004. Revised 1 August 2007. The University of Richmond hosts this directory maintained by students of the University of Richmond School of Law. You may select the country of interest from a pull-down menu or display an alphabetical listing. Results show the constitution/s available, the source, when it was last updated, and the language of the document. Links take you to the document at the source. 17 December 2003. FindLaw provides an alphabetical listing of links to the constitutional documents of several foreign countries. There is also a small collection of references to similar resources at the bottom of the page. 19 August 2004. Subtitled "The Law of the Internet in South Africa," this Web site pulls together primary documents and commentary about Internet-related legal issues. The commentary has also been published in book form--now in the second edition--by academic publisher Van Schaik. Excerpts from all 15 chapters of the second edition appear online (see link on bottom left side of the home page). Additionally, you will find the full-text of the first edition (published in 2000). Written by several different authors, and edited by Francis Cronjé, 1st edition chapters cover copyright, trademarks and domain names, electronic commerce, contracts, security, taxation, online banking, online gambling, free speech, privacy and Internet-related crimes. For the most part, the site links to other sources, which provide the full-text primary documents. 19 January 2004. Revised 25 September 2007. The European Commission maintains this site on data protection law. It provides information for lawyers and consumers alike. Find relevant legal instruments, including directives, regulations, treaties and case law, the implementation status of Directive 95/46/EC on the Protection of Individuals with regard to the Processing of Personal Data, related international instruments, model contracts for the transfer of personal data to third countries, news and more. A handy country chart provides access to information about the rights of citizens of member states. The site is available in available in French, German and English. 10 August 2004. The United Kingdom Department for Work and Pensions offers this Web site, which provides policy information concerning the rights of the disabled as well as information about U.K. disability legislation. It outlines legal rights (with links to appropriate laws), provides the text of legislation and offers policy-related background information. It's a good place to start when researching U.K. law on disability issues. 27 June 2002. Revised 25 September 2007. The European Industrial Relations Observatory Online offers news items, commentary, studies, and other documents pertaining to industrial relations in the member states of the European Union. Helpful features at the site include the ability to browse documents by country, level (EU or transnational), or industrial sector. Also find an extensive collection of related external links. 27 June 2002. Revised 25 September 2007. This database is the online version of the European Employment and Industrial Relations Glossaries, which define industrial relations concepts within the member states of the European Union. The glossaries cover Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Search by keyword. You may limit results by country.
Another resource at the site, the European industrial relations dictionary, is a collection of the most commonly used terms in employment and industrial relations at EU level. 4 December 2002. Revised 25 September 2007. Find current European Union legal documents in many different languages via this site. The database covers texts published in the Official Journal of the European Union L (Legislation) and C (Information and notices), including legislation, international agreements, preparatory acts and parliamentary questions. You will also find the judgments of the European Court of Justice and of the Court of First Instance, as well as the opinions of the Advocates-General, as published in the European Court Reports and as provisional texts disseminated earlier by the Court of Justice. Also available are the Commission documents (the COM series and a selection of the SEC series), the collection of consolidated legislative texts and the texts of the Treaties of the European Communities and later the European Union. 25 September 2007. Find information on eight consumer law directives - the Doorstep Selling Directive 85/577, the Package Travel Directive 90/314, the Unfair Contract Terms Directive 93/13, the Timeshare Directive 94/47, the Distance Selling Directive 97/7, the Price Indication Directive 98/6, the Injunctions Directive 98/27, and the Consumer Sales Directive 99/44. In addition to reviewing the directives, you can discover their transposition into the law of member states, relevant case law, and citations to relevant research materials.
Database access is available in English, German and French. 5 March 2001. This new section of the European Commission Web site offers "press releases [as well as] live access to press briefings and EU events and news pictures from the Commission." In addition to reading the latest news, researchers may search a database of press documents. 21 October 2002. Revised 28 September 2007. European Environmental Law offers a database containing "the full text of the most relevant decisions, including those delivered by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Court of First Instance (CFI), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and some national courts." You can search the database by keyword, case number, parties, decision date, or environmental sector. The cases I retrieved appeared in full-text in English and with a note indicating the original language of the case.
6 December 2001. Find key figures on EU15 and Euro-zone, the Member States and their partners, summaries of statistical surveys, studies and analyses, news, research papers, and more. Some items at the site are for sale. 22 July 2003. Several U.S. agencies partner to provide information about exports and trade practices. Find a guide to the basics of exporting, trade leads, information about trade shows, a market research database and more. The market research database provides search access to several types of reports, including the Country Commercial Guides. The type of information covered includes country and industry reports, agricultural market research, country information, trade agreements and reports on specific regions like Russia and Central and Eastern Europe. 31 March 2005. The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London hosts this gateway to the holdings of foreign, international and comparative law in UK universities and national libraries. Search by title, subject, country, or other criteria, to find bibliographic information about books and other sources, as well libraries that hold the material. 27 January 2005. A joint effort involving several major law libraries, the FLARE project works to improve access to legal materials and how people use them. It offers extensive research guides to the law in several countries, training courses and a list of library holdings for European legal gazettes. Currently, the research guides available cover Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, the Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the topic, public international law. 15 November 2005. The Institute for Transnational Law at the University of Texas at Austin provides English translations of select primary law materials in French, German, Italian, Austrian and Israeli. There is not a lot of content here yet, but the site looks promising. 7 March 2001. Revised 22 August 2003. Although no longer updated, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade maintains this bilingual (English/French) site devoted to providing information about religious tolerance worldwide. Find international legal instruments as well as excerpts of the constitutions of foreign countries (many with links to the full-text in English), and summaries of human rights reports (with links to the full-text). Also find a database of human rights organizations, human rights documents prepared by the United Nations and other organizations, regional reports and instruments, relevant news stories, and more. 16 November 2000. The University of Oxford hosts this CMS Hasche Sigle Eschenlohr Peltzer sponsored database of German laws and legal documents in English translation. Find select judgments of the Constitutional and Labour Courts, the Federal Court of Justice, Higher Regional Courts, and decisions from other courts on German law. Also find the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, excerpts of German civil law, the text of various commercial, environmental, intellectual property, broadcasting and other statutes. The site further provides commentary on German legal issues. 18 April 2005. The Hauser Global Law School Program at the New York University School of Law maintains a number of research guides on foreign and international law issues. Written by librarians specializing in foreign or international law, the guides help researchers find legal information relevant to a particular country. They outline the political structure and legal system, and when available, link to primary sources (mostly) of information. The guides currently cover Brazil, Georgia, China, Germany, Lithuania, Nigeria, Spain, small jurisdictions in Europe, Italy and South Africa. There is also a guide on the harmonization of international commercial law. 4 December 2003. The Documents Center at the University of Michigan compiles information about foreign government gazettes. It provides bibliographic information about them, including a link to their location on the Web. The resource also offers descriptive information about the contents of the gazette (e.g., proposed regulations, official appointments, etc.). 4 December 2002. Revised 1 November 2007. Mirela Roznovschi, New York University School of Law Library, authors this guide published by LLRX.com. Current as of May 2000, it provides coverage of European law sources available on the Internet. 23 May 2000. Revised 17 January 2003. Mirela Roznovschi, New York University School of Law, maintains this excellent collection of international and foreign law databases. Look for databases by topic, jurisdiction, or type. Also, don't miss her article and checklists for evaluating the content for foreign law databases. 9 January 2006. Librarian Mirela Rozajac authors this guide on finding Bosnia and Herzegovina legal resources. It covers the government structure, legal authority, the courts, legal education and legal publishers. 10 June 2000. The Parliament of Australia offers free full-text access to the Hansard reports of the proceedings in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and to the Hansard transcripts of public and some private hearings of parliamentary committees. Coverage of the proceedings extends back to 1981 while transcript coverage varies depending on the committee. 25 June 2002. The redesigned Web site of the Parliament of Greece informs visitors of the Parliament's workings and decisions. Obtain information about session schedules, the daily records, the curriculum vitae of the MPs, as well as on proposed legislation. Her Majesty's Stationery Office published United Kingdom parliamentary legislation, statutory instruments, draft statutory instruments and measures of the General Synod of the Church of England. Researchers will also find Northern Ireland acts, statutory rules, orders in council, acts of Scottish Parliament, Scottish statutory instruments, Wales statutory instruments, and more. 24 February 2005. A project of the University of Hong Kong, this site provides free access to primary and secondary legal materials pertaining to Hong Kong law. Find court and tribunal judgments, legislation, decisions by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre Panel, and publications of the Hong Kong Law Reform Commission. You may browse the databases, or search them by keyword in English or Chinese. 10 August 2004. Legal information company Legal Media Pvt. Ltd. offers this free Web site for searching and retrieving the full-text of court opinions issued by the Supreme Court of India. Search by keyword, party name, decision date or description (subject) to find the text of the opinion as well as citation information. The site offers some indices automatically generated by their database. However, the subject index will be useful only to those with a good handle on the names of statutes. For example, a case described as pertaining to an injury or permanent disability is indexed under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, Section 166. 27 June 2001. Global Law Review, by a Mumbai, India solicitor, offers a hyperlinked outline of Indian legal information resources. It covers basic principles, the courts, major research resources, government, and Web-based sources of Indian law. 17 October 2000. The Commonwealth of Australia offers information about patents, trade marks, designs ("the shape or appearance of manufactured goods"), copyright, circuit layout rights ("the 3-dimensional configuration of electronic circuits in integrated circuit products or layout designs"), plant breeder's rights, trade secrets, and business, company and domain names. The site also provides search access to Australian patents, trade marks and designs. 18 December 2002. The Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law of The School of Oriental and African Studies provides a bibliography of legal resources available at the school and elsewhere on the Web. Some resources appear in full-text. Topics include family law, public law, commercial law, water, and others. Also available are references to sources of primary and secondary law. 3 August 2004. This volunteer organization disseminates information about Japanese environmental issues and laws. The section on laws provides English translations of basic environmental law, environment corporation law and impact assessment law as well as laws pertaining to material reduction, ecology, energy and transportation, air pollution, water, chemical substances and other types of pollution. Other sections of the Web site offer environmental reports, a monthly newsletter summarizing the latest environmental trends and news articles. 28 September 2005. Legal information portal, Jurist, provides information about the practice of law, government, court structure and constitution of more than 15 countries. Currently, researchers will find summaries for China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, North Korea, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sudan, the United Kingdom and Venezuela. 28 September 2005. Karel Frielink, a corporate law attorney with Spigthoff Attorneys at Law & Tax Advisers, comments on legal issues relating to Aruba & the Netherlands Antilles (Curacao, St. Maarten, Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba). Current commentary pertains to the European Union directive on cross-border mergers of companies, cross-border conversion of a Netherlands Antilles company into a foreign corporation, voluntary dissolution of an Aruba limited liability company, and tax issues concerning undistributed profits of a Netherlands Antilles company. Frielink writes that he also "compare[s] parts of the U.S. legal system with our system in order to show the differences and help to understand how things work 'the Caribbean way.'" 23 February 2001. While marketing legal research services, this site offers useful guidance in how to find New Zealand law. LawHawk News covers current events of interest to New Zealand researchers. LawHawk Library offers annotated links to New Zealand legal resources, research guides, articles, government, treaties, current awareness services, and more. 20 July 2005. Novexcn.com, a portal for Chinese legal resources, makes available in English information about the laws of Vietnam. Find English translations of decrees, regulations and directives, where available. Although the site provides citation information for laws on many topics, few contain full-text translations. Those that do cover agriculture and forestry, arbitration and inspections, banking and finance and family law. 21 June 2002. The Faculty of Law at University of Montreal offers this collection legal resources covering Canada and Quebec. Find, for example, the Civil Code of Quebec, case law, and a collection of links to useful related resources. 21 June 2002. The Faculty of Law at University of Montreal offers this collection legal resources covering Canada and Quebec. Find, for example, the Civil Code of Quebec, case law, and a collection of links to useful related resources. 29 April 2000. LLRX.com, a webzine on law and technology issues, publishes numerous articles on foreign law resources.
This free Web-based newsletter offers articles about research issues, legal technology, law firm management, and Internet-related legislation. Researchers will also find annotated links to sites of interest, summaries of information industry articles appearing in other publications, an intranet knowledge center, and a bookstore.
3 August 2004. A document translation service sells English translations of Mexican laws, regulations and standards. You can browse translations in several categories including labor, environment, transportation, commercial, health and others. A free downloads section provides samples of their work. Free translations include information about minimum wage law, employee compensation, testing laboratories, environmental legislation, free trade agreements and more. A newsletter keeps you up to date with changes in Mexican law. 24 September 2003. Mondaq Ltd. publishes brief legal articles by law and accounting firms around the world. Browse or search this site to find commentary on legal, regulatory or financial issues in about 70 countries. Topics include accounting, banking, intellectual property, litigation, offshore banking, commercial law and more. You must register with the site to access, but much of the content is free. 14 December 2004. The Environment Agency, the agency responsible for environmental policy and regulations in England and Wales, provides this resource for businesses. It explains environmental legislation and guidelines and how companies can comply with it. You can click through industry sectors to find an explanation of the applicable law, review management guidelines for information about different business aspects (e.g., air emissions, packaging), or examine legislation by jurisdiction. Available jurisdictions include England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. 27 January 2005. A joint project of the University of Otago Faculty of Law, the Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law and the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), this Web site provides free access to New Zealand legal information. Find case law, legislation, law review and journal articles, treaties, government reports and more. You can search one or multiple databases by keyword. 24 October 2007. Revised 25 October 2007. The government of Ontario, Canada makes available e-Laws, a database of statutes and regulations, both consolidated and source law. You may search or browse the laws. The database supports advanced proximity connectors and wildcard searching, so be sure to review the help documentation (called Designing a Search).
When you review search results, or browse the laws, you may go back and forth between hits or adjacent documents. Search terms are highlighted. Citations to the latest amendment, as well as information about the last database upload, appear at the beginning of each law. You may also download laws in Word format.
Please note: To experience the full functionality of the site, you must enable javascript. 24 February 2005. A project of the University of the South Pacific School of Law, this site provides free access to primary and secondary legal materials pertaining to the law of the South Pacific. Find case law, legislation, constitutions, procedural rules, articles on the structure of government, articles from the Journal of South Pacific Law, and select South Pacific treaties. You may browse the databases, or search them by keyword. 30 March 2001. The British House of Commons offers this site for watching video tapes of current parliamentary discussions and for searching an archive of previous tapes. Search by keyword to find videos matching your terms. Search results include a few words surrounding your key terms and the video, which begins near your matching terms. 14 February 2005. The Pollution Inventory (PI) is an annual record of pollution in England and Wales from select activities regulated by the Environment Agency. It records pollution that is released into the air, discharged into rivers, the sea or the sewerage network, or transferred off site as waste. It includes data from major industrial sites back to 1998. A special feature lets you review emission data from sites near a specific postal code.
In addition to the PI data, you may obtain background information as well as contact information for the PI team. The Web site also offers reporting forms and guidance, a list of substances in the PI and information about them, and a list of abbreviations and acronyms.
12 January 2004. The Library of Congress offers this portal to information about foreign countries. For each country, it provides a mini-research guide with links to Web sites offering information about the country's government, economy, trade, health, history, media and more. Use it to find foreign constitutions, government officials, embassies and more. 14 April 2004. Technology attorney Michael Geist maintains this Web site on Canadian privacy law. It provides summaries of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner's decisions under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) as well as search features unavailable through the Commissioner's official Web site. You will also find privacy law related news, links to federal and provincial privacy legislation and related documents, and more. The site offers an email alert service as well as an RSS news feed. The news feed contains the full text of all postings. 15 November 2005. Law librarians Amanda Barratt and Pamela Snyman outline South African legal structure as well as online and print sources of legal information. They include several noteworthy free legal information Web sites. In addition to sources for general law, they provide references for topical law issues. This useful bibliography and pathfinder is hosted by the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University School of Law. 23 May 2000. This official site of the Australian Attorney-General's Department offers Australian Commonwealth legislation, current Commonwealth court and tribunal decisions, and some Australian State and Territory legislation and case law. Search or browse the content of most of the databases. Download documents in rich text format (.rtf) or read them online. Search results show highlighted keywords. The site also offers an email notification service for new database content that matches your query. 5 November 2001. The Attorney-General's Chambers offers access to the full text of all current Acts of Singapore. According to information at the site, the database will be updated monthly. Searchers may browse by title or subject index, or conduct keyword queries. For newer laws, see Current Notices at the eGazette. Revised 17 January 2003. Jane Williams, University of Illinois College of Law, offers this useful guide to English language sources of foreign law. It covers individual countries as well as sources of law topics. The guide also includes sources not published on the Internet. 4 December 2007. The Southern Africa Litigation Centre maintains a database containing judicial decisions on HIV/AIDS-related issues from in Botswana, South Africa, Nigeria, India, United Kingdom, Canada, United States and other countries. You may browse the database (it's small) by date or search it. Search criteria include the case name, country, subject category, date or keyword.
The full-text of matching decisions appears behind the "link to case" entry in the search results. Formats include HTML and PDF.
Technical note: The date search option did not work during our visit. 31 March 2005. A joint project of the University of Witswatersrand Law School and the Australasian Legal Information Institute, the Web site provides access to some primary and secondary legal material. Researchers should take note that the site is still in development and may be incomplete. You will find some South African court decisions and legislation, as well as journal articles, reports and discussion papers. 18 December 2002. GlobalCourts compiles a list of links to Supreme Court decisions in foreign countries. 9 January 2006. Law librarian Ingrid Kabir authors this guide on finding sources of Swedish law. It covers the Swedish legal system, constitution, legislative and case law sources, legal gateways and portals, and more. 5 November 2001. While not an official source under S48 of the [Singapore] Interpretation Act (Cap 1), the site offers an electronic edition of the Government Gazette. The Government Gazette publishes government notices and legal advertisements. Visitors may display editions for the past five days for free. Access to the archive requires a paid subscription. 11 December 2000. Commissioned by the U.K. Office of the e-Envoy for the Cabinet Office, this portal site strives to facilitate access to government information and services in the United Kingdom. Currently, it offers three major paths to information: a keyword search (called "Quick Find"), directories of links (called "Life Episodes"), and a browsing area for discovering information relating to the democratic process and public services (called "CitizenSpace").
Like its counterpart in the U.S. -- FirstGov, UK Online is not particularly easy to use. How should citizens go about finding information about their right to privacy, for example? CitizenSpace (my first guess) offers three categories of information -- finding elected representatives, voting and elections, and complaints about public services. No go.
Life Episodes, which purports to offer "directories of links," provides only four such collections. They deal with traveling, having a baby, crime, and moving. "Quick Find" is the only remaining option. Fortunately, a search for "privacy" without quotations retrieves a couple of links to informative documents. But they're white papers -- not something the average citizen wants to read.
Finding information about your right to privacy involves this process: Enter Quick Find. Locate the button at the bottom of the page labeled "Legal Overviews." Click it to find a page of broad categories. Follow the "sale of goods" link. Note that you have come to another Web site (ukstate.com).
The ukstate.com article pertains to "sale of goods." In the search box, type "privacy." Go to the bottom of the search results page to find a link to an article entitled "What are my rights to privacy?"
Gee, I hope you weren't in a hurry.
14 December 2004. Hans Zell Publishing offers a pilot edition (September 2004) of this guide for free. It provides an introduction to Google, including information about how page ranking and indexing works. It covers Google's "answer" service, how to search Google, and other Google services (e.g., News, Alerts, Groups). It also provides examples of how to search for information about specific topics in African studies. 17 December 2003. The Venice Commission, also known as the European Commission for Democracy through Law, provides information in English and French about the Commission and its publications. Researchers will find CODICES, a Commission publication that provides summaries of constitutional case law around the world. Its print counterpart is the Bulletin on Constitutional Case-Law. Also available in CD-ROM, the Web site provides database access. Searchers unfamiliar with Folio databases may find it difficult to use. Other primary documents, including opinions by the Commission, are also available at the site. 19 August 2004. The BBC offers a special report on the constitution of the European Union, which was agreed on in Brussels on 18 June 2004. It provides the full-text of the constitution in PDF as well as brief commentary about its provisions. The commentary covers the powers of the EU, division of responsibilities, decision making, qualified majority voting, the president and foreign minister, foreign and defense policy, reform, the European Parliament, fundamental rights, legal supremacy and leaving the EU. 18 June 2002. British publisher Asset Information Ltd. offers news, commentary, case law summaries, and more on various U.K. workplace issues, including health and safety, disability and building management, property and premises law, and more. This fee-based site offers a 14-day free trial. 22 July 2003. A global legal research facility comprised of several organizations, World LII offers numerous databases containing legal documents and information from several countries. The site consists of three parts: Databases, Catalogs and Websearch. Databases provides a single search interface for several Legal Information Institutes, including Australasian, British and Irish, Canadian, Hong Kong, Pacific Islands, Wits University School of Law and Cornell. The databases provide access to case law, treaties, legislation and other legal information. Catalogs offers links to law-related Web sites for all countries. Websearch makes many of the sites appearing in the catalog searchable. |
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