: By Sarah Carter
Published November 2005
Sarah Carter is Law
Librarian at the
Update to an article
previously published on LLRX.com on
http://www.llrx.com/features/uk2.htm
Primary Sources of Law:
Introduction
Primary
Legislation: Acts of Parliament
Delegated Legislation:
Statutory Instruments
Electronic
Sources for Legislation
Electronic
Sources for Case Law
Legislation
and Case Law Indexes
Legal News & Current
Awareness
The United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland consists of four countries forming three
distinct jurisdictions each having its own court system and legal profession:
The
There is no written
constitution. The Queen is the Head of State, although in practice the supreme
authority of the Crown is carried by the government of the day. The legislature
is a bicameral Parliament. The House of Commons consists of 659 Members of
Parliament (MPs), elected by simple majority vote in a general election every
five years, although the Government has the right to call an election at any
time before then, and in practice usually brings the date forward to secure
electoral advantage. The House of Lords until recently consisted of life peers,
awarded peerages for public service, and a large number of hereditary peers
whose membership of the House of Lords depended on their aristocratic birth.
The constitutional law
of the
The Labour government
which came into power in 1997, and is now in its third term of office, has
instituted constitutional reforms in three distinct areas: the reform of the House of Lords, devolution,
and the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998.
It began the
long-overdue process of House of Lords reform by abolishing the voting rights
of all the hereditary peers apart from ninety-two who remain until the House is
fully reformed. Proposals put forward by the Royal Commission on the Reform of
the House of Lords were published in 2000 as a command paper: A House for the
Future (Cm 4534) with
government proposals laid out in The House of Lords: Completing the Reform (Cm 5291). These
proposed a predominantly appointed second chamber with a minority of elected
members representing regions of the
The Human
Rights Act was passed in 1998, incorporating into
For the effects of
devolution reforms see below.
The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) was established in
2003, replacing the Lord Chancellor's Department. Its changed responsibilities include holding
and administering the judicial system, human rights, and electoral and
constitutional reform. The DCA
administers the Courts Service (see under Courts System below) and oversees
judicial appointments. The role of Lord Chancellor has been modified, with the
holder renamed Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord
Chancellor, relinquishing his functions as Speaker of the House of Lords and
(most importantly) as a judge. These changes were brought in by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005
(see Explanatory Notes
to the Act). This Act also made important changes to the courts and the
judiciary. See below for details.
Making a Difference: Taking Forward our Priorities
published in May 2005 sets out the DCA's achievements
and vision.
For valuable
commentary on constitutional affairs see the University College London Constitution Unit, in particular its Constitutional Update and monthly Monitor.
Civil cases at first
instance are heard in the County Courts (for minor claims) or the High Court,
which is divided into three divisions: Queen's Bench, Family and Chancery.
Cases may be appealed to the Court of Appeal (Civil Division). Cases may be
appealed from the County Court to the High Court.
A useful diagram can be
found on Her Majesty's Court Service
(HMCS) pages, and a description of the functions of the courts on the DCA site.
The House of Lords is
the supreme court of appeal. Its judicial functions are quite separate from its
legislative work, and cases are heard by up to 13 senior judges known as the
Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, or Law Lords. It shares its function as the
supreme appellate court with. The judicial work of the House of Lords is
described on its web pages. The HMCS
web pages provide information on the other courts. However the Constitutional Reform Act 2005
(see Explanatory Notes)
provides for the establishment of a Supreme Court to replace the judicial
function of the House of Lords with an independent appointments system, thereby
making a constitutional separation between the legislature and the judiciary.
A further appellate
court, sometimes omitted in a description of the system, is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,
which hears cases from the British overseas territories and dependencies as
well as some specialised domestic appeals.
It also hears cases concerning questions relating to the powers and
functions of the devolved legislatures. (See below). The
'devolution' function will be transferred to the new Supreme Court.
In addition to the
courts there are specialised Tribunals, which hear appeals on decisions made by various public bodies and Government
departments, in areas such as employment, immigration, social security, tax and
land. The Court Service also contains information on these.
Her Majesty's Court Service
(HMCS) is an agency of the DCA responsible for administration of the court
system, and was established in 2005 under the Courts Act 2003, bringing
together the separate agencies previously responsible for court administration.
There has been extensive
reform of civil procedure in recent years. Following on the publication of a
major report on Access to Justice
by Lord Woolf in 1996, a completely new set of Civil
Procedure Rules were put into operation in 1999, as well as new legislation for
modernising the courts and legal services. The Legal Services Commission was created under the
Access to Justice Act 1999 to provide a Community Legal Service and Criminal
Defence Service and administer legal aid.
Criminal cases are heard
at first instance in the Magistrates' Courts, with more serious ones being
hears in the Crown Court. Appeals are
heard in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division.
The Review of the Criminal Courts by Sir Robin
Auld was published in 2001, as a result of which consolidated Criminal
Procedure Rules were introduced in 2005.
The Criminal Justice System website contains
more information.
The various reports, the
new Civil and Criminal Procedure Rules and much else can be found on the Department for Constitutional Affairs website.
The Constitutional Reform Act 2005
(Explanatory Notes)
provides for the establishment of a Supreme Court to replace the House of Lords
as the Court of final appeal.
Web-based sources for
primary law have been made available officially since 1996. However, while they
offer authentic texts they are limited by the fact that they are not annotated,
amended or hyperlinked. Consequently it is necessary to use commercial
subscription services in order to get reliable up to date information. Early in
2000 a new initiative to put up hyperlinked texts of
For regularly updated
details of all resources see LAWLINKS and SOSIG Law.
The major encyclopaedia
is Halsbury's Laws of England. 4th
ed. Butterworths, 1973-. It is the starting point for any research on
English law. It is also available as an online subscription service as part of LexisNexis Butterworths.
Legislation since
devolution forms several separate entities:
·
·
Scottish legislation
·
Welsh legislation (Statutory Instruments only)
·
Northern Irish legislation
For details of these categories see under the devolved governments below.
Legislation published on the web can be
accessed from the official Legislation website, also from BAILII (see below).
There are two main forms
of primary legislation: Public General Acts and Local and Personal Acts. The
latter are of specific and limited application only. For the purposes of this
survey I will concentrate on PGAs. Depending on the
legislative programme of the government, some 40-70 Acts are passed each year.
The sequential numbering of each Act within each year is known as a chapter
number.
Public General Acts appear
in individual paper-covered volumes, cumulating into three or four annual volumes.
From 1996 they have been published on the Acts of the UK Parliament website, and their
coverage now extends back to 1988. Many recent Acts have useful Explanatory
Notes. They are also on BAILII (see below), and the
texts here contain hyperlinks to other legislation on the BAILII database.
Unamended legislation
is of limited value, however, and it is always necessary to consult up to date
sources. The principal printed source for statutes is Halsbury's
Statutes, published by Butterworths. This is arranged
by subject in 50 volumes and contains the amended text of all Acts in force
with extensive annotations. It is updated by means of an annual Cumulative
Supplement and a loose leaf Noter-up, both arranged
like miniature versions of the work itself.
Halsbury's Statutes
annotations are available on LexisNexis Butterworths (see below under Electronic sources).
Current Law Statutes,
published by Sweet & Maxwell, are a chronologically arranged printed
source. The texts of Acts are therefore unamended,
but are annotated. This source is of particular value for finding the
background to legislation, and tracing the documents (reports, white papers,
etc.) and debates which preceded the Act. Some of this material has been
incorporated into Westlaw (see below under Electronic Sources).
Statutory Instruments,
or SIs, are regulations made under the authority of
an Act of Parliament. There are up to 3500 of these published annually, and
they are numbered sequentially within each year. They are important documents,
which often provide the detail required for the application of the Statute, and
some contain provisions for the commencement of an Act (when it comes into
force). Statutory Instruments are available on the web from 1987 on the OPSI
site and also on the electronic services listed below.
Public domain sources
include the Office for Public Sector
Information (OPSI) which hosts legislative texts. As well as the public domain sources for
legislation on the Web listed above there are several subscription services. OPSI was established in 2005 and has taken
over the functions of Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO)
BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute)
contains the text of Acts since 1988 and Statutory Instruments since 2002.
LexisNexis Butterworths is
the new platform combining Lexis and Butterworths
services. At the time of writing the new
service is about to be launched. It
contains the same legislative data as LexisNexis
Professional, including Statutes and Sis, and the Halsbury's
annotations.
Justis UK Statutes contains the
full text of Statutes as enacted with cross referencing between amended and
amending legislation, and is the only service to include all repealed statutes
as well as those in force. Justis UK Statutory
Instruments contain SIs from 1987, with a separate
database containing an archive of pre-1987 SIs.
Westlaw UK (www.westlaw.co.uk or www.westlaw.com) contains
consolidated Statutes and SIs in force. It also has
historical versions of statutes
Lawtel contains links to the
official version of Acts and statutory status tables giving details of amending
and amended legislation with links.
Cases in the courts are
reported in numerous series of law reports. Until 1865 case reporting was done
by private court reporters, and the resultant publications are known as the
nominate reports, because they are usually known by the name of the reporter.
These have been gathered together in a 178-volume collection called the English
Reports 1220-1873, which makes them relatively easy to find. They are available online from Justis (see below) The English Reports have also been
published on CD-ROM by Jutastat,
but this is not widely held. For a list of citations to the nominate reports
contained in the English Reports see Citations for the English
Reports.
In 1865 the reporting of
cases was systematised by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting, which
started publishing series of reports organised according to the court,
collectively known as The Law Reports.
The main general series
currently published are:
·
The Law Reports, 1865- which is in four separate
series at the present day. For a list of the citations to all the series within
The Law Reports see the guide Citations for The Law Reports.
·
Weekly Law Reports, 1954-
·
All
In addition there is a large number of specialised reports, covering different
areas of law. There is a recognised hierarchy of reports, the most authoritative
being The Law Reports, but of course many cases are only reported in
specialised series.
The Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations,
launched in 2004, is an authoritative online public domain source for legal
abbreviations, both British and worldwide.
Lists of citations can
be found in many of the published works, but the most comprehensive printed
guide for
A distinction here has
to be made between law reports and transcripts. In recent years there has been
a growth in the provision of electronic transcripts of cases on the web, many
available free. Many of these, though not all, will subsequently be reported.
BAILII contains an easily searchable and growing number of
case law databases,
House of Lords judgments
are available on the web from 1996, and within 2 hours of the decision.
Her Majesty's Court
Service (HMCS) contains a database of selected recent judgments from the Court
of Appeal and the High Court.
Other sources can be
checked on LAWLINKS.
Lexis contains The Law Reports 1865-, the All
England Law Reports 1936-. It also has
the All England Reprint and All England Reprint Extension which contain cases
from 1558-1935. In addition it contains
other cases from specialised series published by Butterworths,
and unreported cases (transcripts) from 1980.
It has the broadest coverage of any single service. This will be available on the new platform LexisNexis Butterworths
Westlaw contains The Law Reports 1865- and several other
series as well, including Weekly Law Reports and Criminal Appeal Reports.
Justis hosts an electronic version
of The Law Reports, 1865- and several other major series of reports, including
the Weekly Law Reports.
Lawtel contains a wide-ranging
database of full text case transcripts from about 1980.
There are numerous other
services offering access to more specialised series of reports.
The two major printed
indexes to
Current Law is available
electronically as Current Legal Information, on CD-ROM and online from Sweet & Maxwell. This is in fact a family of databases. The
Current Law Case Citator enables you to check the
judicial history of a case and to see where it has been reported, and to trace
case commentaries in journals, and links to the digest of the case in Current
Law Cases. The Current Law Legislation Citator
enables you to find cases interpreting a piece of legislation, and commentary
in articles. The Current Law databases are all now available on Westlaw, though
in a somewhat altered form, and it is expected that the CLI service will
eventually cease to be available separately.
JustCite is a new product from
Justis.com which allows cross searching of online resources.
The Legal Journals Index
is the major British source for tracing articles in legal journals, and covers
over 400
Index to Legal
Periodicals has good coverage of the more academic-orientated
Lawtel also
includes an articles index for about 60 law journals from around 1998.
The UK Parliament
website gives access to information on the business of the two Houses of
Parliament, including a wealth of general material on the parliamentary system,
much of it accessible from the Parliamentary Publications and
Archives pages. Here you can
find useful factsheets on parliamentary history and
procedure. You can also find details of
the composition of Parliament and of the government of the day and links to
official publications on the web, including white papers and green papers,
reports of committees, House business and the Weekly Information Bulletin.
The debates of Parliament
are published in Hansard. There are separate series
for the House of Commons and the House of Lords and for Standing Committee
debates. Hansard is also available on the web on the
Parliament website, and there are archives of the Commons Hansard
back to 1988/89 The House of Lords Hansard database
is from 1996.
Bills are published on
the web with amendments where available, and Explanatory Notes for major public
Bills introduced into Parliament by a government minister. The progress of
legislation can be checked in the House of Commons Weekly Information Bulletin
on the Parliament website.
Directgov is the
Until 1996 all
government publishing was in the hands of Her Majesty's Stationery Office when
it was privatised. The trading business was sold off to a company now known as
The Stationery Office. HMSO remained as a body handling the statutory functions
of official publishing, with responsibility for publishing legislation and
administering crown and parliamentary copyright, but these functions have now
been transferred to OPSI (Office for Public Sector
Information). The Official Publications
section on its pages gives access to the full text of government publications
where available, although it is often necessary to go to government department
sites for departmental, non-parliamentary publications.
TSO (The Stationery Office) is now mainly useful for its
online catalogue and bookstore.
The major online subscription
service for official publications is UKOP, which has
authoritative bibliographic information.
BOPCRIS is a valuable free index to official
publications from 1688 to 1995.
The Law Commission is an independent body set up in 1965 to keep
the law of
Recent constitutional
reforms are dealt with under Background and Constitution above. Reform of civil
and criminal procedure is under The Court System above.
You can find a useful
summary of devolution since 1997 on UCL Constitution Unit's website:
·
Constitutional update 1997-2001
·
Devolution monitoring reports
Information about
devolution can also be found on the Directgov
site and the devolved government and parliament sites.
The Scottish legal
system is in part separate from that of
The court system is
separate and different from that of
The Laws of
Until the establishment
of the Scottish Parliament, Acts of Parliament with specific application to
The Scottish Parliament site includes Bills
and other material.
The Scottish Executive is the official site
for the devolved government, and includes a section on the Justice system.
Session Cases 1822- is
the main series, reporting not only cases heard in the Court of Session, but
also in the House of Lords and the High Court of Justiciary.
Scots Law Times 1893- is
a weekly publication containing law reports. There are also other series, and
some significant Scottish judgments may be reported in the Weekly Law Reports
and the All England Law Reports.
BAILII publishes all the Scottish cases in
the public domain with links to legislation and cases cited.
The Scottish Courts Web Site contains the same
cases, though without links, on its Court Judgments
pages. You can also find information
about the Scottish judiciary and the judicial system here.
Welsh Statutory
Instruments can be found on the Wales Legislation
site and on BAILII.
There is no separate
Welsh case law.
The present civil unrest
between the Unionists (protestant) and the nationalists (catholic) began in the
1960s, and the British government assumed direct responsibility for law and
order in 1972. The Northern Ireland Parliament was abolished, and replaced by a
unicameral Northern Ireland Assembly, with a Secretary of State appointed by
the British Government and serving as a member of the British Cabinet. The
constitutional authority of this lies in the Northern Ireland Constitution Act
1973. This only lasted until 1974, when the British government took over direct
rule of
The Northern Ireland Office contains background and current
information. A valuable website for
information and documents on the
Legislation applying to
the whole of the
The Northern Ireland Legislation
site gives details of and links to all NI legislation.
Orders in Council
are Statutory Instruments applying exclusively to
Statutory Rules of Northern
Ireland are Statutory Instruments relating exclusively to
Statutes Revised
The legal profession in