United Kingdom
This is a selective guide to United Kingdom and Ireland legal and government web sites. The selection criteria require that a site either includes primary legal information or provides a comprehensive overview of law-related sites for the relevant jurisdiction.
Legislation | Case law | Government | Legal profession | Legal publishers | Directories & portals
Listed below are some key sites for UK and Irish legal material and research guides.
British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII)
Launched in March 2000 and modelled on AustLII, this site provides free access to unofficial copies of legislation, statutory instruments and case law from courts and tribunals for England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the European Union. Material is divided into databases according to material type and source but has uniform data formats which allows for searching across single, multiple or all databases. The search engine is Sino and recognises Boolean, Lexis, Status, and Info-One search syntax.
legislation.gov.uk
This site is the official place of publication for newly enacted legislation. All legislation from 1988 and most pre-1988 primary legislation is also available. Most types of primary legislation (e.g Acts, Measures, N.I. Orders in Council) are held in ‘revised’ form, meaning that amendments made by subsequent legislation are incorporated into the text. Legislation.gov.uk brings together the legislative content currently held on the OPSI (Office of the Public Sector Information) website and revised legislation from the Statute Law Database to provide a single legislation service that replaces the current services.
Irish Legal Information Institute
This site is run by the University of College Cork in co-operation with BAILII in order to supplement the resources available on BAILII. The site provides full text access to Statutes and Statutory Instruments from 1922, cases which can be browsed by year and subject or searched by citation or via the Case Index. Access is also provided to Law Reform Commission publications, a guide to Irish law and a searchable index for articles in Irish legal journals.
Legal Resources in the UK and Ireland
Maintained by Delia Venables, (a computer consultant for lawyers) this site contains links to legal sites for the UK and Ireland. Resources are organised according to Free Information for Individuals, Free Information for Lawyers, Information for Companies and Information for Students. Sites include; case law, marketing, software, current awareness, newspapers and journals.
A Guide to the UK Legal System - An Update (1st April, 2002)
Written by Sarah Carter, this guide provides an overview of the UK legal system and provides links to legislative, government and judicial resources.
Researching Primary Legislation of the United Kingdom (19th May, 2003)
Written by Stephen Young, this guide provides an overview for researching primary legislation and gives an overview of the UK parliamentary and legislative process. Information is provided for finding legislation on the Internet as well as using Halsbury's Statutes of England and Wales and "Is it in force?". (Both of which are available for use in the ADLS Library & Research Centre.)