LEGAL RESEARCH NOTES OLIVER R TAMBO LAW LIBRARY 2008

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1 LEGAL RESEARCH NOTES OLIVER R TAMBO LAW LIBRARY 2008 LibraryResearchmanual.doc CONTENTS Page: 1. Introduction 1. Books 2. Legislation 4. Case Law 8. Journals 8. Foreign legal material INTRODUCTION These notes are compiled as a research reference tool for final year law students to use when they are employed in the legal profession. BOOKS When looking for the most relevant information on a topic South African law books or textbooks may often be viewed as your first port-of-call. However, do take care to use the latest editions. As you well know the law is always changing. Follow up the footnotes to legislation, regulations, case law and other material. Looseleaf books are very useful tools. Once again make sure that they have been kept up-to-date. They are kept up-to-date by means of replacement pages. There are a great many of these books published by Jutas and LexisNexis Butterworths and they cover many different subject areas. LAWSA For those who have access to this publication, either in hardcopy or online format, it can be rather useful. The Law of South Africa (LAWSA) is an encyclopedia of our laws. It is kept up-to-date by means of new volumes and a monthly publication called Current Law. The latter helps you to stay abreast of the new developments. Use the Key to find new cases and other material on a specific topic. Material is arranged by Volume and paragraph numbers. Take note that from Jutas one can purchase, in either hardcopy looseleaf format or online (CD) format, the following: 1. The Jones and Buckle: Civil Practice of the Magistrate s Court 2. Erasmus Superior Court Practice From LexisNexis Butterworths: 1. Harms - Civil Procedure in Magistrates Courts 2. Harms Civil Procedure in the Superior Court 1

2 LEGISLATION ACTS: The acts and their amendments are published in the Government Gazettes. The Government Printer does not yet publish online. During your studies you could use our hardcopy and online versions of the legislation from Jutas and LexisNexis Butterworths. These are updated regularly. Basically you cannot get away from the need to use these commercial sources for legislation. The acts on the Government websites at this stage do not include the amendments to the acts. Thus you can use it if it is a brand new act but if not, it may be outdated. In addition to these, there is also Netlaw from Sabinet, which is the most up-todate source of the acts. In the hardcopy Butterworths sets of Statutes you will find very useful additional information. For each act you will find References to Decided Cases for that act. The material is arranged by the sections within the act. Besides this there are also References to Regulations,etc. Published in Government Gazettes for each act. In the online Jutas SA Statutes there is added to many acts a list of CASES where sections of acts have been considered. These cross-references are very useful in practice. RULES OF COURT: The online Jutas SA Statutes contains the Magistrate s Rules of Court and the High Court Rules of Court. They are found under Regulations and Rules. FORMS: Still in the online Jutas SA Statutes find these under High Court Rules of Court and then Uniform Rules of Court, and then First Schedule and Second Schedule. Below is a screen shot of part of this information. 2

3 REGULATIONS: Regulations appear in the Government Gazettes. In the library we have access to the online Juta s Regulations of South Africa. This is most useful if you can have access to it. If not you will need to use the hardcopy version of Butterworths References to Regulations,etc. Published in Government Gazettes (see above) or the gazettes. Online access is obtainable commercially from Jutas, Butterworths and Sabinet. Many of the subject-specific looseleaf books do have the relevant regulations included in them. Please note the information on this screen shot which gives the contents of the online version of Jutas Statutes: The Butterworths RSA Statutes is quite similar to the Jutas version. Also has a lot of useful additional information. Here is a screen shot of the contents of the Butterworths RSA Statutes: 3

4 BILLS: Bills and draft bills are mostly published in Government Gazettes. Probably the best source is still the databases from Sabinet - under All Legal Products Bill Tracker and Policy Documents. The latter contains Draft Bills as well as Government Policy documents. If you do not have access to these then you may use the free material from the internet. Bills are obtainable free from the following website: Under Information go to Documents then Bills and so on. (under Legislation and Policy ) We suggest that you subscribe to Legalbrief it is a newsletter on legal matters and is sent on a daily basis by . There is a alert section dealing with new legislation and there is also information on some new case law. Legalbrief@legalbrief.co.za CASE LAW It must always be remembered that it is most important to find the latest case law on a particular point. As mentioned before you should use an up-to-date textbook on the subject as a guide, and then search the law reports for the latest judgments. (Authors of textbooks may leave out important case law) Jutas and LexisNexis Butterworths are once again your most important sources. Remember that there is considerable duplication between the 2 publishers. In practice you will need to keep up-to-date with what is published in the blue book your monthly edition of the SA Law Reports. 4

5 Jutas publish the SA Law Reports (from 1828 up to the today), SA Criminal Law Reports and the Industrial Law Journal, both in hardcopy and online. In addition, they also have the Jutas Daily Law Reports - online only. Butterworths publish the following series: All South African Law Reports All South African Law Reports Arbitration Law Reports Competition Law Reports Constitutional Law Reports Judgments Online Labour Law Reports Pension Law Reports Tax Cases Reports NB - Noter-up or Annotations: This is information which you may not have used in your studies but which you will find invaluable in practice and is contained in the following (in hardcopy format): Butterworths Index and Noter-up to the All South African Law Reports and the South African Law Reports. Noter-up section The table below lists the cases which have been referred to or considered judicially in the judgements The index is also very useful. Juta s Index and Annotations to the South African Law Reports. The Case Annotations contains the same information as in the Noter-up. Useful index. If you are using the online versions of Jutas you will find the same information. For example - in the case information in the SALR you will find a Link to Case Annotations. If you follow this link it will give you the information regarding whether or not the case has been considered judicially (compared, considered, applied, referred to, distinguished). Obviously, when using case law you need this information. The Butterworths Noter-up online material is available with their reference works. There are not direct links from the online law reports as it is with the Juta material 5

6 UNREPORTED CASES: These may be obtained from the clerk of the court in which the case was heard. But you may also find them in the JOL (Judgments Online Butterworths), the Jutas Daily Law Reports, or SAFLII. The first 2 are commercially available but SAFLII is a free site on the web. SAFLII - It is also very useful to be aware of the free caselaw obtainable from the internet. Bear in mind the following: 6

7 These are especially useful: - Supreme Court of Appeal (UOFS) Constitutional Court - South African Legal Information Institute SAFLII (Please note it is advisable to go directly to the websites as given above, rather than use the UP Law Library website, unless you are still a registered student). Acts and the case law linked to it: In the online Jutas SA Statutes there is added to many acts a list of CASES where sections of acts have been considered. The hardcopy Butterworths Statutes have the lists of References to Decided Cases (see above). 7

8 JOURNALS You have all used journals and you know that journals contain very useful information. They will also assist you to stay abreast of developments in the law. There are about 25 academic law journal titles in this country alone.you may wish to subscribe to some of them. The Annual Survey of South African Law can be useful. It is published by Jutas. De Rebus will probably be used by all of you and it is worthwhile. I believe it is free on the web. The sorry state of affairs is that there is only one fully free online academic journal in this country namely Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal Other commercially available electronic journals can be obtained from Jutas and from Sabinet (SAePublications). A list of the SA academic law journals is attached to these notes. The Constitutional court website contains a free index to journal articles called isalpi go to the library and then isalpi. FOREIGN LEGAL MATERIAL If you have no access to any international legal databases then the first place to look for material is on 8

9 WORLDLII On the left you see All Countries. Contains some law reports and legislation. For some countries there is a lot of material but for others there may be very little. If you work for a firm that has access to the Westlaw or LexisNexis (Iinternational) database, you will have a wide range of legal information from the western world (UK, US, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and so on) at your disposal. These databases include full-text law reports, legislation, journal articles and other material. Westlaw: You will need to select a database when searching in Westlaw. For example: Combined world journals and law reviews ; US collection-all Federal and State Cases ; United Kingdom Statutes and so on. If you use the Terms and connectors search option (which we would recommend) you will need to search for a phrase by using inverted commas. Other searching tips: & AND /s In same sentence space OR /p In same paragraph Phrase /n Within n terms of % But not AU( ) author s name! Root expander TI( ) words in the article title * Universal character 9

10 Below is a screen shot of one of the pages in Westlaw. Tip: Use World Journals for articles and WLI Academic for case law and legislation. HOW TO KEEP YOUR KNOWLEDGE UP-TO-DATE: In view of the above it should be clear that it remains a huge task to keep oneself updated on new developments in law. It is important though that lawyers develop a system to do so. It is highly recommended that you,at least, read the summaries of new judgments on a regular basis and to page through Government Gazettes etc and make notes of new legislation et. especially the areas of law that you work in. It is also recommended that you visit a law library form time-to-time and page through law journals making notes of articles and other matters of interest to you. A minimum requirement is to subscribe to the De Rebus (attorneys receive this journal automatically) and to read it every month especially those sections that deal with new legislation and judgments. It also contains a list of recent journal publications and newly published books. 10

11 It is also a good idea to read the Juta Law Quarterly and Annual Survey of SA Law (ASSAL is published annually and it gives you a comprehensive overview of legal developments within a particular year of almost all the legal fields.) In time you will become a specialist in one or more areas of the law and clearly you will do more reading in such area(s). If you are in practice it is a good idea to keep updated in terms of the general tools of the trade, like civil procedure and evidence, even if you are a specialist family law lawyer or whatever. October 2008 Shirley Gilmore (With thanks to Andre Boraine for his assistance and suggestions) 11