1. Librarian for Criminology, Psychology, philosophy
LBST 313: Legal Research
Yolanda Koscielski,
Librarian for Criminology, Psychology, philosophy
/ January 2017

2. objectives
Provide an introduction to legal research to fulfill course assignment needs:
Understand case citations
Use online legal resources to locate decisions and legislation
Use secondary legal resources to research your topic

3. Key Concept: primary and Secondary Legal Literature
Primary Legal Literature: case law + decisions, legislation
Secondary Legal Literature: articles from academic legal journals, case commentary, newsletters and digests by legal experts, textbooks, books
Provides an understanding of legal issues and case law in context
Primary legal literature consists of sources that outline the law: case law and other decisions, statutes, regulations. The sources of law.
Secondary legal literature is writing about the law, but not the source of the actual law itself (a few exceptions, such as some often-cited legal treatises)

4. Primary Legal Literature
Case law / Judgments / Reasons for Decision
Legislation
Acts / Statutes
Regulations
DEMO = go to court website for BCSC Judgments  Recent Judgements  January 11th.
This gets printed in court reporters’s volumes, with classification headnote, as well as aggregated in commercial and non-profit databases
Other way to get case info: Journalists: reporting /live tweeting on a case. Past cases = find citation information.
DEMO = BC Laws website  Laws of British Columbia  Public Sector Employers Act

5. Case Law
Significant overlapping coverage in case law cases covered in various databases
Free sources (e.g. CanLII) are easily accessible
Subscription sources often include: value-added tools such as summarizing headnotes, subject classification, and research tools such as the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest

6. DATABASES
Three main online resources for case law and legal research at SFU
CanLII (Open Access)
Westlaw Next Canada
Quicklaw

7. CANLII
“CanLII is a non-profit …. [whose] goal is to make Canadian law accessible for free on the Internet. This website provides access to court judgments, tribunal decisions, statutes and regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions”.
Free & easy to use
Continually improving & expanding
Common law system where case law and legislation is a primary source of the law, important for citizens to access it without paying
Also a source of legislation
Always growing to include more decisions from a wider range of judicial bodies
One-stop shop for cases and law

8. Court systems: Tribunals
Administrative Tribunals/Boards
BC Labour Relations Board
BC Human Rights Tribunal
Canada Industrial Labour Relations Board
Canada Human Rights Tribunal
BC Employment Standards Tribunal …
Administrative Tribunals are also a source of decided cases.
Tribunals have adjudicative powers
Regulate distinct areas
Tribunal Board Members have area expertise
Own rules of procedure
Decisions formerly in print  moving online
In addition to various levels of court such as Provincial Court, BC Supreme Court, BC Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada, Additionally, many matters are dealt with via Tribunals.

9. Tribunal decisions Available on both Quicklaw and CANLII
Quicklaw provides deeper historical coverage of tribunal and quasi-judicial board decisions than CANLII.

10. CANLII Use Scope of Databases link to search within decisions from:
Canadian Human Rights Tribunal 1979 –
BC Human Rights Tribunal 2008 –
BC Labour Relations Board 2004 –
BC Labour Arbitrations Awards 1998 – *
*=incomplete coverage
DEMO x 2
DEMO:
Case: Wells v. Newfoundland
Sort by cases, legislation, commentary
Scope of databases link

11. Find a case!
You will most often search for a case on a website by either:
1) case citation, or,
2) case name
A case name is the name applied to a legal case and is based on the abbreviated names of the parties involved in the case. Example case names:
R v Sun Glow Foodservice Ltd
Western Canada Wilderness Committee v Canada (Minister of Environment)
Moore v Bertuzzi

12. Understanding Case Citations
Gist

13. Understanding Case Citations
To locate cases by citation, first make sure we know how to read the citation correctly.
Case citations recall the world of print.
Style of cause – the Plaintiff vs. Defendant, Petitioner v. Respondent, appellant v. respondent – in italics.
Parentheses – the year the decision was made.
Next, which law reporter reported on the case. There can be several. This report can be found in the 69th volume of the Dominion Law Reports on page 433.
Traditionally judgments were (and still are) published in series of volumes called "law reports." The SFU Library in Burnaby has a large number of print law reports series such as Business Law Reports (HF 1278 B8), but our collection has migrated to online content now.
The "2nd" tells you that the DLR has been published in multiple series; the second series was Some law reports stop at a certain series, e.g., 100, before they reset
First page of the report
Supreme Court of BC decision The abbreviated name of the court in which the case was tried, enclosed in round brackets, sometimes appears at the very end of the citation.
This one has a neutral citation…neutral because it the case is represented by the citation without reference to a commercial reporter (neutral = “no name” brand)

14. Understanding Case Citations

15. Understanding Case Citations
1988 in round parentheses  should be year OF decision

16. Key Concept: Secondary Legal Literature
Searching primary sources directly for case law by keyword is usually not recommended
Keyword = 1000s of unrelated hits
Exception: very unique terminology
Start with secondary legal sources and/or specialized legal research tools, such as the Canadian Abridgment Digest, and the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest
For most broad legal topics (e.g. trademarks) a general keyword search for case law will return thousands of hits. Onerous to go through.
Secondary legal literature and finding aids will

17. Sources for secondary legal lit
Legal journals and books, case commentary, case digests, legal encyclopedias, newsletters, etc.
Quicklaw
Westlaw Next Canada
HeinOnline
CBCA (Canadian content)
Catalogue (ex: Musicians and the law in Canada : a guide to the law, contracts, and practice in the Canadian music business )
Canadian Electronic Library
Newspapers

18. DECISIONS BY TOPIC Quick intro to 2 sources:
Canadian Abridgment Digest (CAD)
Quicklaw’s secondary sources

19. Canadian Abridgment Digest
Available in LawSource database
“Digests of Canadian case law that are organized by legal issue according to a single taxonomy”
Scope: over 850,000 cases
1803  all reported cases
1986  all unreported and reported cases
Updated daily
A case may be “digested” in more than one subject category
DEMO
DEMO:
Log into LawSource, and note it is a collection of different products
Search on the right, browse on the left
Browse. Note expanding structure. Drill down to the cases in one category. LAB – labour and employment law. Occupational Health and Safety. Employment of Minors.
Note # of digests, length of digest
Hyperlink to full case + case history at bottom

20. Academic Legal Journals
QuICKLAW
Case Law
Academic Legal Journals
Journal articles can provide important legal context and analysis
EXERCISES

21. Questions?
Yolanda Koscielski, Liaison Librarian for Criminology & Psychology at Burnaby
Moninder Lalli, Liaison Librarian for Labour Studies at
General queries:
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