|
|
Lesson 2: Legal researchYou are here: AustLII >> Technical Library >> Teaching Materials >> Online Tutorial >> Lesson 2: Legal research |
Now that you know How to Use Netscape, we are ready to begin using the Internet to conduct legal research. In this lesson, we will briefly discuss the legal research tools available to you on the Internet and the main means of accessing them.
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
Know the World Wide Web (Internet) address for AustLII;
Computerised legal databases are not new, however the increasing popularity of the Internet has made them more accessible to lawyers, students and lay people alike. In Australia, one of the largest of these legal databases is the Australasian Legal Information Institute (click the link to open the home page below).
AustLII is a facility run jointly by the University of Technology, Sydney and the University of New South Wales. It was established by funding from the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) and the two host universities. The Law Foundation of New South Wales, the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and other bodies continue to provide additional funding. Governments and courts make their materials available to AustLII for free distribution over the Internet. You can read more about AustLII on the About AustLII Page.
To access AustLII, enter its URL (Universal Resource Locator, or "Location") into your Browser. AustLII's address is
www.austlii.edu.au
(Of course, you don't need to do this right now, because you are already on AustLII and using this tutorial!)
There are two basic methods of finding information on the Internet:
Browsing (Hypertext)
Browsing is the basis of the Internets' World Wide Web (WWW, or "the
web"), and is more technically referred to as hypertext. The basis of
hypertext is essentially that the user navigates through connected
items of text to find information ("browsing"). In other words, you
click on the links (that look like
this). On AustLII, we've started calling browsing "contents",
since that's really all it is -- a table of contents.
Searching (Information Retrieval)
Text retrieval is the more traditional way for lawyers to use
computers to find information. The user specifies which combinations
of words, if found in a document, are likely to make that document
relevant. Users perform a search, and the search results (called a
"hit list") are displayed.
Select AustLII Databases to see AustLII's main contents page. Note that it contains a list of all the databases stored on AustLII (use the scrollbar to move down the entire page). Click on some of these to get a feel for how browsing works. Each link you select will take you deeper into the database hierarchy, getting more specific.
Return to the top-level Databases. Let's begin researching some Commonwealth Acts. To see a list of Commonwealth databases, chose Commonwealth (you'll find the word "Commonwealth" hypertexted on the AustLII Databases page as well as on the front page (or "home page") when you first start AustLII).
You should now be looking at the list of Commonwealth databases. The major databases are (click on any of these links to see their pages):
There are numerous Commonwealth tribunals also represented, as well as High Court transcripts. The databases are "sourced" from many different places, so update frequency is not uniform across the databases. For example, the High Court database is updated on the day new decisions are handed down. However Consolidated Legislation is updated less regularly, usually daily or weekly.
Let's browse for the Commonwealth Crimes Act. We'll want the consolidated version, so click on Commonwealth Consolidated Legislation (like right now).
The lower frame should now be showing the page for Commonwealth Consolidated Legislation. At the top is the AustLII image. You would click on it if you wanted to return to the AustLII Home Page. Next to the image is the database title (in this case, "Commonwealth Consolidated Acts") and under that is a description of where you are on the AustLII web site (click on the links to jump around). Down the left hand side is the navigation menu. Let's examine this in some detail.
Related Links
Popular Acts
Supported by
You'll also notice the alphabet to the right of the navigation items down the left of the screen. Click A to get a list of acts beginning with the letter "A". Click C to get a list of acts beginning with the letter "C", etc.
For the purposes of this lesson, we will browse for the Crimes Act. So click the letter "C" (if you haven't already). The practice frame should now display a list of acts beginning with the letter "C". Use the scroll bar to move down to the Crimes Act, and click on it. You should now have the title page for the Commonwealth Crimes Act.
To view a section, click on the section number. To go back to the table of provisions, use the Back button.
Searching AustLII can be very simple. The quickest way to do a search is to go to the Home Page (do it now - click on this link). At the top of the page is a small general search form.
Notice that there is a box, which you can click on and start typing into. Click on the box with your mouse, and type the phrase Crimes Act 1914. It's not the most ideal of searches (for reasons we'll discuss in a later lesson) but it's a start. After typing, press Enter (or click the Search button).
If the system is heavily loaded, you may need to wait some seconds. When AustLII has finished, it will return a list of documents which match with "Crimes Act". Click on the document names to view the documents themselves. The list of found documents is the "hit list."
You'll probably get "over 10,000" results and AustLII will caution you not to panic. But at the top of the list should be the Crimes Act. Click on it, then click "Table" to get the Table of Provisions back up. Congratulations -- your first search completed successfully.
AustLII isn't the only provider of legal information on the Internet. Others may be available from the AustLII Links Pages. This is a selection of hypertext links that point to "off-site" (non-AustLII) resources. On AustLII, these are referred to as Other Australian Law.
From the Home Page, go to Other Australian Law. Note that you can search across the links for specific words - the search syntax is exactly the same as for regular AustLII searches. You can see that the index is organised hierarchically. Click on Subject Index for a list of subject headings that you may find material grouped under.
There are other legal databases available too. For example, the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department runs SCALEplus, a database of Commonwealth and Territory cases and legislation (click the link to see the SCALEplus Home Page now). SCALEplus is part of the Window on the Law project.
Butterworths, CCH and the Law Book Company all run commercial sites.
(Note: The Law Book Company's web site is http://www.lbc.com.au. But don't go there during this tutorial. It has an absolutely awful JavaScript feature that makes it impossible to get back to the tutorial. If you don't know what JavaScript is I'll tell you: it's a Very Bad Idea! The Law Book Company site can be very useful, so keep it in mind.)
That's the end of this lesson. You should have a good idea now of what browsing is, and of the fundamentals of searching (you type words in, press Search, and get a list back). You can also start browsing the indices to find out what other sites are out there.