An Introduction to Legal Literature and UCL Law Library

An Introduction to Legal Literature and UCL Law Library

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this guide is to introduce new law students to the main categories of legal information with notes, where appropriate, on the holdings of UCL Library. In this introductory guide, the emphasis is on the legal materials of England and Wales.

The study of law is primarily the study of legal literature. It is important, as a law student, that you are able to find this material without difficulty in both print and electronic form. You need to become familiar with the law library, its holdings and layout, and to master the basic skills of legal research.

A lot of the printed material in the library is also available online, which is easier to use. However, it is important to learn how to use the printed sources in order to have the skills to find information that is not online, or is not available to you once you leave UCL.

You won't use all of the sources described here when you first start your course, but they will prove valuable when you need to carry out serious research on your own for a moot or an extended essay.

LAW REPORTS

A law report contains the judgment delivered by the court in a particular case. It is not a complete account of a hearing; rather it is a record of the legal issues involved and the decisions of the court for use as a precedent in subsequent cases. Not all cases are reported, only those which extend, modify or reinterpret the law. Although some law report series are considered more authoritative than others, there is no official series of reports. Using unreported cases in court is not encouraged.

Parts of a Law Report

Fig.1 reproduces the first page of a case from a series called the Weekly Law Reports and shows the format of a typical law report in print or pdf format:

(1)Title. This includes the name of the case, the date of the hearing, the name of the court and the name or names of the judges presiding.

(2)Catchwords. These show, at a glance, the subject of the case.

(3)Head-note. This is a summary of the case prepared by the reporter and, following the word "Held", a record of the court's decision.

(4)List of cases cited in argument and referred to in the judgment.

(5)Facts and previous history of the case.

(6)Names of counsel. In some law reports a summary of counsel's argument may also appear here.

(7)The judgment or, in appeal cases, judgments.

Citation of Cases

A reference to a case, called a case citation, contains the following elements: the name of the case, the year the report of the case was published, the volume number of the report series, the abbreviated name of the report series, and the page number. For example, the case:

Gallagher v Post Office [1970] 3 All ER 712

can be found on page 712 of the third volume of the All England Law Reports for 1970. Each different series of law reports has its own abbreviation. You will soon become familiar with the most common abbreviations; others can be traced through the dictionaries of abbreviations referred to on p.21 below.

As your studies progress, you will notice that some case citations give the date of the report in square brackets and some in round brackets. If the date is given in square brackets, this means that it is an essential part of the citation. For example:

Cohen v Nessdale Ltd [1981] 3 All ER 118

There is a volume 3 of the All England Law Reports published every year, so it would not be possible to find the report of this case without knowing the year of publication. Where the date is given in round brackets, the case could be traced without it. For example:

Rex v Kingston (1948) 32 Cr App R 183

The Criminal Appeal Reports only has one volume 32, which means that this case could be found from the volume and page number alone.

Important cases may be reported in more than one series of law reports and the citation will normally reflect this. For example, the case:

McIlraith v Grady [1968] 1 QB 468, [1967] 3 WLR 1331, [1967] 3 All ER 625

can be found in The Law Reports: Queen’s Bench Division, the Weekly Law Reports and the All England Law Reports.

Since 2001 a ‘neutral’ style of citation has been adopted by the courts to reflect the fact that transcripts of judgments are increasingly made available online before they are reported in a published series. It also makes it easier to identify the correct case if the parties have common names, such as Smith, Patel or Jones. These neutral citations consist of the case name, the year judgment was given, the abbreviation for the court hearing the case, and a case number assigned by the court. For example, the citation:

Jones v Whalley [2006] UKHL 41

indicates that the case Jones v Whalley was the 41st judgment handed down by the House of Lords in 2006. It is important to realise that a neutral citation is not a series of law reports – it is simply a method of uniquely identifying a case. Where a case is reported in published series, the neutral citation will be given first, before any print citations unless the case is pre-2001.

For further information about using legal citations in your essays and assignments, you should consult the 4th edition of the Oxford University Standard for Legal Citations (OSCOLA) which is available online at:

Early Series of Law Reports

Before 1865, reports were written by private reporters and usually published under their own name; for example, Barnewall and Alderson’s Reports, Coke's Reports, and Espinasse's Reports. For this reason they are sometimes referred to collectively as the nominate reports. There are a large number of different series each covering only a few years. The most important of these have been reprinted in a series called the English Reports. When you are referred to a pre-1865 case, it will frequently be in the English Reports, even if this is not reflected in the citation. Volumes 177-178 contain an alphabetical list of cases in the series.

The library has a printed set of the English Reports in the law library in the law reports section on the left hand side. The English Reports are also widely available online, including through Westlaw UK, Lexis®Libraryand on the free online source See the section on Online Sources at p.23 for information on how to access these databases.

General Series

In 1865 the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR) commenced publication of a semi-official set of reports called The Law Reports. This is the most authoritative series of reports. Originally The Law Reports were divided into eleven sub-series, each covering a particular court or courts. As the court structure was simplified, the number of parts was reduced, to six in 1875, and then to four from 1881. The present four parts comprising the series are:

• Appeal Cases (AC)
• Chancery Division (Ch)
• Queen's (or King's) Bench Division (QB or KB)
• Family Division (Fam)

Appeal Cases contains cases heard by the Supreme Court (formerly the House of Lords) and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; the other three series include both judgments at first instance, appeals to the Court of Appeal and references to the European Court of Justice. Fig. 2 is a table of The Law Reports series listed in the order they appear on the shelves, with their abbreviations in brackets.

The ICLR also publishes the Weekly Law Reports(WLR) which is published weekly and at the end of the year bound into 3 volumes. Volumes 2 and 3 contain cases that will later appear in greater detail in The Law Reports; cases in Volume 1 are not republished.

TheAll England Law Reportsis the best known and most important of the other series of law reports and dates from 1936. It appears weekly and is bound in 3 or 4 volumes per year. A companion series, the All England Law Reports Reprint, contains selected cases from 1558-1935.

All three series areavailable in the law reports section of the law library and on several online sources. See p.23 below for further details. If citing a case in a moot use reports from one of these series in preference to other series.

TABLE OF THE LAW REPORTS
APPELLATE SERIES
1865-1875 / English and Irish Appeals / (LR … HL)
Privy Council Appeals / (LR … PC)
Scotch & Divorce Appeals / (LR … Sc & Div)
1875-1890 / Appeal Cases / (App Cas)
1891- / Appeal Cases / (AC)
EQUITY SERIES
1865-1875 / Chancery Appeal Cases / (LR … Ch App)
Equity Cases / (LR … Eq)
1875-1890 / Chancery Division / (Ch D)
1891- / Chancery Division / (Ch)
COMMON LAW SERIES
1865-1875 / Common Pleas Cases / (LR … CP)
Exchequer Cases / (LR … Ex)
Crown Cases Reserved / (LR … CCR)
Queen’s Bench Cases / (LR … QB)
1875-1880 / Common Pleas Division / (CPD)
Exchequer Division / (Ex D)
Queen’s Bench Division / (QBD)
1881-1890 / Queen’s Bench Division / (QBD)
1891- / Queen’s (or King’s) Bench Division / (QB or KB)
OTHER SERIES
1865-1875 / Admiralty and Ecclesiastical Cases / (LR … A & E)
Probate and Divorce Cases / (LR … P & D)
1875-1890 / Probate Division / (PD)
1891-1971 / Probate Division / (P)
1972- / Family Division / (Fam)

Fig. 2

Specialist Series

Certain series of reports only contain cases on a particular subject, for example, Lloyd’s Law Reports (shipping), the Industrial Relations Law Reports(employment) and the Family Law Reports(family).Many of these are available in the law library, and some are available online through the various databases to which the Library subscribes. See p.23 for further details.

Notes of Decisions

Summaries of legal decisions appear in a number of newspapers and legal journals such as Criminal Law Review, Solicitors' Journal and the Law Society's Gazette. Since 1990, cases from The Times newspaper have also been published as a separate series called the Times Law Reports. Many cases summarised in newspapers and journals are not reported elsewhere.

Indexes to Cases

Indexes to cases are useful for:

• locating a case if you know nothing more than the names of the parties involved (useful if your lecture notes are incomplete or incorrect!)

• tracing the judicial history of a case - i.e. the names of later cases which have considered, distinguished, applied or overruled the original case.

• finding cases on a particular subject (useful for moots)

The indexes listed below can all be found in the Law Reference area. This is on the right as you enter the UCL law library. There is some overlap of coverage between the different series, but each has its particular strengths.

Current Law Case Citator. This is a list of cases reported or cited in court since 1947. The original volume covers the period 1947-1976, a second volume covers 1977-97, a third 1998-2001, and a fourth 2002-04. More recent cases are listed in annual paperback supplements.

Cases heard or cited since the period covered by the Citator can be traced through the Cumulative Table of Cases in the most recent monthly part of Current Law (see below). A copy of the bound volumes of the Citator in the Library is entitled Scottish Current Law Case Citator but don't be misled by the title - the Scottish Current Law Case Citator is so called because it lists both English AND Scottish cases. The Citator can be used to:

• trace cases from an incomplete reference (including cases from before 1947 if they have been cited since then). If you do not know the date of the case you will have to check each volume of the citator, starting with the oldest volume

• trace the judicial history of a case since 1947(but note that this may involve consulting a number of different volumes to ensure that your information is up-to-date).

Fig. 3 shows a typical page from the Citator.

* The case Forsyth v Philips was digested (i.e. summarised) in the Current Law Year Book for 1964, paragraph(not page!) 3218

** The case Fortescue v Lostwithiel & Fowey Rly. Co. has been applied in a later case which was digested in the Current Law Year Book for 1972, paragraph 520

Fig. 3

Current Law is a monthly publication which summarises all new developments in the law including cases, statutes, statutory instruments and periodical articles, and is arranged by subject. Italso includes a table of recent cases which cumulates monthly and updates the information found in the Citator listed above. It is a useful way of keeping up with changes inthe law. At the end of the year the monthly partsare replaced by an annual volume or Year Book. At UCL we have a mixture of bothScottish and English Year Books; the Scottish Year Books can be used to trace English legal developments as they contain BOTH English and Scottish materials, the Scottish cases appearing in a separate section at the end. Current Law is useful for:

• finding recent cases (and other legal developments) on a subject

• updating the information in the Citator; i.e. locating new cases from an incomplete reference and tracing the recent judicial history of a case.

The Law Reports Index. This index covers not only The Law Reports themselves, but also other major English series as well. The permanent index volumes (covering a period of 10 years in most cases) are kept up-to-date by annual volumes. Each volume includes a table of statutes judicially considered and a subject index. The Index is useful for:

• locating particular cases

• tracing the judicial history of a case

• finding cases on a particular subject

It only covers the main series of law reports and can be tedious to search for older cases because of the number of volumes you need to check. However, it is more user-friendly than the Citator, particularly for tracing cases judicially considered.

The Digest (formerly The English and Empire Digest) is a multi volume work that provides brief summaries of all leading cases, including many from the Commonwealth and the European courts. It is arranged by subject. Particular cases can be found through the consolidated table of cases, although this only indicates the Digest volume and subject title for each case. To find the case summary itself (including the citation), you then consult the table of cases at the front of the appropriate volume. This gives the exact case (or paragraph) number. There is a consolidated subject index to the whole series. The Digest has a wide coverage but it is not an easy work to use; its particular strengths are:

• tracking down old and obscure cases (and because it summarises them it can be useful if we don't have the actual report in the Library)

• tracing the judicial history of a case before the period covered by the Citator (i.e. before 1947)

• finding cases on a particular subject. This is its main strength, but you may need to check other sources (Current Law or Law Reports Index) for recent cases.

STATUTES

A statute, or Act of Parliament, is a legal document that expresses the will of Parliament. It is introduced into Parliament as a Bill and becomes an Act once it has been approved by both Houses of Parliament and has received the Royal Assent. Each Bill passes through various stages and, during these stages, may be considerably altered by Parliament. You will not normally need to read Parliamentary debates on Bills but if required they can be found in Hansard which is available online on the UK Parliament website 1803 onwards. Printed volumes of earlier years are held in the Library Store. There are two series, one for the House of Commons and one for the House of Lords.

Parts of an Act

Each Act is made up of a number of distinct parts (see Fig. 4.):

(1)Short title.

(2)Official citation.

(3)Long title. This describes, in more detail, the purpose of the Act.

(4)Date of Royal Assent. This is the date that the Bill became an Act - it is not necessarily the date that the Act came (or comes) into force (see (7) below).

(5)Enacting formula.

(6)Text of the Act. An Act is divided into sections, subsections and paragraphs. There may also be schedules at the end of some Acts containing additional information which would otherwise make the main text of the Act excessively detailed. They may include repeals of earlier legislation.

(7)Commencement and extent. This information is often found in the last section of the Act. If the Act does not come into force on the date of Royal Assent, then the commencement section will state a subsequent date or grant the Minister power to bring part of, or the entire Act into force by means of a statutory instrument.

Citation of Acts

Statutes are usually referred to by their short title, e.g. Highways Act 1980. Alternatively the reference will take the form of an official citation which currently comprises the year in which the Act was passed and a serial number, called a chapter

number. Thus, the Highways Act was the 66th Act to receive Royal Assent in 1980

and is officially cited as: 1980 c 66 (i.e. 1980 chapter 66).

Before 1963, however, Acts were cited not by calendar year but by the year of the monarch's reign, orregnal year. They were numbered consecutively through the parliamentary session (which normally runs from November to the following October) and then cited according to the regnal year in which that session fell, e.g.