This document provides an overview of UK common law research resources, including: - The structure and hierarchy of the UK judicial system and courts. - The evolution and purpose of law reports and how to cite them. - How to research legislation, including the types of legislation, how bills become acts, and how to cite acts and statutory instruments. - Major legal databases for researching case law and legislation.

1. Introducing UK Common Law Research Resources Ruth Bird 2010

5. Court Structure Reference can be made to the European Court of Justice from any court in the system. The European Court of Human Rights enforces the European Convention on Human Rights .

33. lexis@library search page The lexis page allows narrowing by court, and results refer to related cases and commentary, cross refs to legislation etc.

34. westlaw Westlaw offers case analysis, transcript, narrowing to selected law reports, hypertext, etc.

35. justis Justis offers parallel citations, cases considered, subsequent cases, legislation cited, related articles and often a pdf version

36. lawtel Lawtel has an alerting service and case notes link back to Westlaw. Rss feeds available

37. bailii

38. The Law Library’s law Reports & Journals database enables you to locate the database where a law report series or a journal can be found http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/law/collections/lawreports_and_journals

46. To receive updates - OPSI

47. Legislation.gov.uk

48. Locate an act Search by title or limit search with Advanced option

49. Result set

50. Features of the act

51. The original version of the act

53. The Commencement Order

55. Current legal information (CLI); parliament’s site

63. Example of Annotation in Westlaw- note exclamation mark next to the section:

64. Once section is selected, a warning note appears