Skip to Content

Law and legislation

Databases

  • AGIS Plus Text
    Based on the Attorney General's Information Service this database provides full text articles from Australian, New Zealand and Pacific law journals and selected articles from major US, UK and Canadian law journals. Covers all aspects of law.
  • APA-FT
    Australian Public Affairs Full Text indexes a wide range of periodicals, newspapers, scholarly journals, conference papers and books. Subject coverage includes business, health, current affairs, economics, humanities, law, literature, politics and social sciences. To only search the Alternative Law Journal, click here.
  • CINCH
    Australian Criminology Database indexes and abstracts articles on all aspects of crime and criminal justice including corrections, crime, crime prevention, criminal law, criminology, juvenile justice, law enforcement, police and victims of crime.
  • Informit Search
    Select this link to select from and search the entire collection of Law databases (including the three listed above) in INFORMIT simultaneously.
  • AustLII
    The Australian Legal Information Institute publishes acts, regulations and cases for the Commonwealth and Australian states and territories. AustLII also provides links to Australian and world law resources on the Internet.
  • CCH Intelliconnect
    A range of Australian legal publications and resources covering taxation, industrial law, corporations law, trade practices and consumer law, and human resource management. Once you open the database, go to the Quick bar near the top left-hand corner and click on Browse. Then select the types of you content you wish to look through. Finally, enter your keywords in the search box along the middle top of the screen.
  • National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts, in EBSCOhost - Covering law enforcement and criminal justice. Mostly US content. Some full-text access, however you can try clicking on the full text button to get the full-text from a different database (but there is no guarantee of success).
  • Legal Online by Thomson Reuters
    Search or browse through the following Thomson Legal & Regulatory publications:
    Commonwealth Law Reports
    Federal Law Reports
    Australian Law Journal
    Australian Business Law Review
    Building & Construction Law Journal
    Company & Securities Law Journal
    Environmental & Planning Law Journal
    Media & Internet Law & Practice

Law dictionary (online)

Ebooks

You can find lots more ebooks by using Search the Library or by using the Library's ebooks webpage.

Subject gateways and portals

  • Court cases in Australia
    Katie Flack at the State Library of Victoria has prepared this fantastic guide for anyone to use when trying to locate cases, law reports, court documents, police records, transcripts, newspaper reports and anything else you may need. It also provides lots of Plain English explanatory material to help you immediately understand legal words and concepts.
  • LegalOnline
    The Victorian Government's legal information website containing fact sheets, links to legal practitioners, relevant legislation and agencies.
  • WebLaw
    WebLaw is an Australian portal with links to the best online law resources, selected by lawyers and legal teachers. Click on sets of links arranged by subject, such as Torts, Native Title, Family Law or browse their index to find what you want.
  • Parliament of Australia Library - Law Internet resources
    Excellent gateway of links to information and legislation. Includes sections such as the Legal Profession & the Courts, Statute Law, Terrorism law and many more.

Australian law firm publications

  • Allens Arthur Robinson - recent publications: Move your cursor/mouse over the "publications' top menu option - a pop-up window then gives you all the different subjects they have written about. click on one to see all publications about that subject arranged newest to oldest.
  • Arnold Bloch Leibler - Find-a-publication: Select a practice area (first note what types of law they cover - yours may not be here) from the drop-down menu and then enter any relevant keywords. Publications are in PDF format.

Legislation for the Commonwealth, States and Territories

  • ComLaw - "ComLaw contains 1) Commonwealth primary legislation, as well as other ancillary documents and information, in electronic form, and 2) The new Federal Register of Legislative Instruments (FRLI) that was established on 1 January 2005 under the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 as the authoritative source for legislative instruments and compilations of legislative instruments. 3) As new, up-to-date compilations are added to ComLaw and the FRLI, the previous compilations are retained as Historical Data. If you want to see an item of legislation as it looked at a particular date, the historical data is the place to look. The historical data also includes legislation of the Commonwealth that is no longer in force.".
  • Victorian Legislation and Parliamentary Documents
    Acts, Bills and Statutory Rules for Victoria.
  • Queensland Legislation
    Acts, subordinate legislation, Bills, repealed legislation and Annotations for Queensland.
  • NSW Legislation
    Acts, regulations, instruments, explanatory notes for Bills, drafts of Bills and more for New South Wales.
  • ACT Legislation register
    Acts, legislative instruments and Bills for the Australian Capital Territory.
  • South Australian Legislation
    Acts, regulations & rules, policies, proclamations & notices and Bills for South Australia.
  • Online Publications - WA State Law Publications
    Legislation, statutes, ceased legislation, progress of Bills, Gazettes, Hansard, votes & proceedings, inquiries & commissions for Western Australia.
  • Tasmanian Legislation
    Legislation for Tasmania.
  • Current Northern Territory Legislation Database
    Legislation and copyright policy for the Northern Territory.

Courts and Tribunals

(most of these have explanations of process or procedure)

Other Australian resources

  • Law Council of Australia
    “Representing around 50,000 legal practitioners across the country”. Professional association.
  • Law Institute of Victoria - Professional association. Archived issues of their own Law Institute Journal can be accessed through the News & Publications tab. "Information for...students" on the right-side menu has lots of careers information.
  • Privacy Victoria - “The Information Privacy Act gives Victorians privacy rights. The law requires State government and local councils to protect the privacy of your personal information….Privacy Victoria is the key body in a system regulating the way Victorian government agencies and local councils collect and handle personal information.”
    The relevant Acts are linked to; the differences between privacy and its related topics are explained; there are resources specifically for blind and low vision users; there are helpful quizzes and, lastly, the Publications section can be browsed Alphabetically or by Type.
  • Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC)
  • Commonwealth Ombudsman - also see the Ombudsman Victoria site.
  • Legal Aid Victoria
  • FindLaw Australia
    provides current awareness services, newsletters and articles including resources for lawyers, students, business and the public.
  • Office of Public Prosecutions Victoria
    "The DPP has responsibility for prosecuting on behalf of the Crown in the High Court, the Supreme Court of Victoria and the County Court of Victoria all indictable offences under the laws of the State of Victoria". Also see the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
  • Parliament of Australia
  • Victoria Law Foundation
    "An independent, public benefit organisation making law accessible”. A number of resources are available for free through their Publications button, including Death at Blue Hills - a model criminal trial (available by clicking on the Printed and then the Education sub-buttons) and the Rural Law Online website (available by clicking on the Community sub-button).
  • Australian Institute of Criminology
    "The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) is Australia's national research and knowledge centre on crime and justice."
    This Australian Government group produces a large number of publications each year - access them by clicking on the Publications tab. A summary document you may find useful is Australian crime: Facts & figures 2010.

International resources

Contact us

Subject materials

    Enter unit code for course reading

Quick links

Find