Contents of the Law Library
Legislation
Case Law
Journals
Useful Web Links
How to find EU Law

 Contents of the Law Library

Textbooks
Guide to Shelfmarks
Useful Reference Material
Useful Books on Legal Research

 Textbooks

The main Law collection is situated on Level 2 of the Library. It contains books, journals, law reports and statutes. The European Documentation Centre is also located in the same area.

Law books begin with a shelfmark 34

Books in heavy demand are placed in the Short Loan Collection on Level 1. The Short Loan Collection contains 1 day and 3 hour loan  books.

Law dictionaries are shelved with the Law collection. 

Legal encyclopaedias, handbooks and yearbooks are all kept on Level 2 with the main law book collection. 

Use the Library Catalogue to find the exact shelfmark and location for each book. If you are searching for books on a particular topic, use a keyword search.

Any law textbook that can be read online will have an e-link attached to the record so students can access the electronic form of the book.

 Guide to Shelfmarks

Administrative law 342.41
Company law 346.42066
Competition law 343.410721
Competition law (Europe) 343.240721
Constitutional law 342.41
Constitutional law (Germany) 342.43
Constitutional law (France) 342.44
Constitutional law (Spain) 342.46
Consumer law 343.41071
Contract law 346.42022
Criminal law 345.42
Employment law 344.4101
Environmental law 344.41046
Environmental law (Europe) 344.24046
European Union law 341.2422
Equity and trusts 346.42059
Evidence - Criminal 345.4206
Evidence - Civil 347.4206
Family law 346.42015
Human rights 342.41085
Human rights (Europe) 342.24085
Human rights (International) 341.48
Intellectual property law 346.41048
International law 341
International criminal law 345.0235
International trade law 343.087
Jurisprudence 340.1
Land law 346.42043
Landlord and tenant 346.420434
Legal System (England and Wales) 349.42
Legal System (Germany) 349.43
Legal System (France) 349.44
Legal System (Spain) 349.46
Legal System (Russia) 349.47
Media law 343.420998
Medical law 344.41041
Public international law 341
Public law 342
Sale of goods 346.41072
Treaties 341.026
Tort law 346.4203

 Useful Reference Material

The most useful starting point for any legal research is usually the following:

Halsbury's Laws of England

This is a legal encyclopedia giving an outline of each subject of law. Its stated aim is to cover every proposition of English law, statute or case law. 

Halsbury's Laws of England is accessible on the LexisLibrary database and is found under the Commentary button at the top of the screen.

The Library also takes a number of specialised legal encyclopedias such as Harvey Industrial Relations and Employment Law (also available online via Lexis Library).

Legal dictionaries are also available for definitions of legal terms

• Words and Phrases Legally Defined 340.03 WOR and also available on Lexis Library
• The Longman Dictionary of Law 340.4103 also available as an ebook
• Stroud's Judicial Dictionary of Words and Phrases, Jowitt's Dictionary of English Law and Osborn's Concise Law Dictionary are available on Westlaw UK

 Useful Books on Legal Research

• Bradney, A How to study law 340.071141/HOW
• Smith, ATH Glanville Williams: learning the law 340.071141/ WIL
• Finch, E and Fafinski S Legal Skills 340.0711/FIN
• Strong, S How to write law essays and exams 340.07/STR
• Knowles, J Effective legal research 340.072 /KNO

 UK Legislation

Example: Human Rights Act 1998 c. 42

How to find printed Statutes in the Library
How to find electronic sources for legislation
How to find Statutory Instruments in the Library

 How to find printed Statutes in the Library

The Statutes are arranged in annual volumes and are shelved on Level 2. The Public General Acts and Measures collect together all of the Statutes enacted in a given year. They are arranged by chapter number of the Act. The text of each Act is as it was passed by Parliament, and does not show repeals or amendments or whether the Act is still in force. This series is largely of historical interest.

How to find electronic sources for Statutes

The full-text of statutes can be found on the Lexis Library and Westlaw UK databases. These commercial databases make legislation easy to find and give the text of statues currently in force in amended form. 

Lexis Library: contains all UK legislation in force, including Statutes and Statutory Instruments. It is updated regularly and includes Halsbury's Is it in force? An excellent resource for checking if a statute has come into force.

Westlaw UK: contains all UK legislation in force, including Statutes and Statutory Instruments, and has links to commentary (Analysis).

The full-text of UK Acts as originally enacted can be found from 1988 on the Legislation.gov.uk website.

Please note that the majority of our online legal resources are available to current University of Surrey staff and students only. 

How to find Statutory Instruments (SI's)

The printed collection is arranged in annual volumes and is also shelved on Level 2 next to the Statues .The text of each statutory instrument is as it was passed by Parliament, and not revised.

Statutory instruments can also be found very easily on the commercial databases Lexis Library and Westlaw UK.

The full-text of SI's as originally enacted can be found on the Legislation.gov.uk website

Case Law

How to find Case Law in the Library
Legal citations
How to find printed sources of Law Reports in the Library
How to find electronic sources for Law Reports

How to find Case Law in the Library

Cases in the Courts are reported in many different series of law reports. 

In 1865 the modern Law Reports began when the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting started publishing this semi-official series. Since 1881 there have been four series:
AC (Appeal Cases), Ch (Chancery Division) QB (Queens Bench Division) or KB (Kings Bench Division) and Fam. (Family Division).

The I.C.L.R. also publish the Weekly Law Reports, 1954-

The other major series of law reports is the All England Law Reports 1936-

 Legal citations

Before you start searching for a case the first thing you will have to do is to find out about case citations. Case citations include the names of the parties and a reference to the law report in which it is published.

e.g. Hinz v. Berry [1970] 2 QB 40

This provides the party names, Hinz and Berry, the year in which the report was published, 1970, the law report volume number, 2, the law report series abbreviation, QB and the page number, 40

To understand and locate where this case has been reported, you need to identify the abbreviation used.

Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations

• Use to identify the full title of the law report or journal title you need
• Coverage includes UK and International materials, current and historic titles
• If an abbreviation has multiple meanings, use the one that matches your jurisdiction or topic

Neutral citations

Since January 2001 all cases from the Court of Appeal and divisions of the High Court have been assigned neutral citations. Each case is given a unique number to identify the case which is not tied to any law report series.The citations are set out as follows

e.g. Holland v. Barnett [2001] EWCA Civ 10

Older Reports

Many reports published before 1865 can be found in the English Reports, a collection of various series of reports. Text for these cases can be found on Hein Online or Westlaw or BAILII. The Library also has a print set of the English Reports shelved on Level 2 with the other printed law reports.

 How to find printed sources of Law Reports in the Library

The Library subscribes to a large amount of law report titles in print.

The printed law reports are arranged alphabetically on Level 2 and are part of the Law Collection.The principal reports are: All England Law Reports (ALL ER), Common Market Law Reports (CMLR), Criminal Appeal Reports (Cr App R ), European Court Reports (ECR), Industrial Cases Reports (ICR), Industrial Relations Law Reports (IRLR), The Law Reports, Weekly Law Reports(WLR)

• Use the Library catalogue and search using the full law report title (not the abbreviation) 
• The catalogue will show if the series is online or in print or both
• Locate on Level 2 in the Law Collection

How to find electronic sources for Law Reports

Key online resources for UK case law are:

Westlaw UK: This database provides access to The Law Reports back to 1865, The Weekly Law Reports and several other series. It allows you to search by name of case, citation and keyword. A good feature of Westlaw UK is that you can search for journal articles by the name of a cited case, which is very useful for finding commentary.

Lexis Library: This database provides access to CaseSearch, All England Law Reports, Halsbury's Laws of England. You can search for a case by name, citation or keyword (subject).

Lawtel UK: Contains summaries and transcripts only from 1980. This database covers a very broad range of cases and you can often find judgements here which are not available elsewhere. Contains a good volume of European information and a practice resource for Employment law.

The best way to find electronic sources of law reports is to search by the law report title (not the abbreviation) via the EJournals@Surrey list .You will then be directed to the correct Online Database where the full-text can be read online.

You may if you wish, go directly to a particular database via the Online Databases page but you must be aware that the different databases hold the full-text to different law reports.

Please note that the majority of our online legal resources are available to current University of Surrey staff and students only. 

Non-subscription services include:

BAILII : contains an easily searchable and growing number of case law databases

Journals

How to find printed law journals in the Library
How to find electronic law journals in the Library
How to find journal articles on a particular topic

 How to find printed law journals in the Library

The printed law journals are arranged alphabetically by title and are shelved with the Law Collection on Level 2. Principal law journals are: Cambridge Law Journal, Criminal Law Review, Current Legal Problems, Law Quarterly Review, The Modern Law Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Public Law.

.It should be easy to find a particular journal article if you have the full reference. There are several ways of citing journals but a typical citation using the OSCOLA referencing system would be:

R Kerridge and G Davis, 'Reform of the legal profession: an alternative way ahead' (1999) 62 MLR 807

• Use the Library catalogue and search using the full journal title (not the abbreviation) 
• Use the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations to find out the full meaning of the abbreviation if necessary
• The catalogue will show if the journal is online or in print or both
• Locate on Level 2 in the Law Collection

 How to find electronic law journals in the Library

To find which journals are available electronically you can either search the Library catalogue by Journal title, any record that has a "Full Text" link means there is electronic access to that title. 

Otherwise you may go directly to the EJournals@surrey page.

• Search using the full journal title (not the abbreviation) 
• Use the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations to find out the full meaning of the abbreviation if necessary
• The Ejournals@surrey page will direct you to the correct database

Most of the law electronic journals will link through to the 3 key databases:

Lexis Library
Westlaw UK
HeinOnline

Please note that the majority of our online legal resources are available to current University of Surrey staff and students only. 

 How to find journal articles on a particular topic

There are many sources for finding out legal journal articles by subject. One of the best ones is:

Legal Journals Index (1986-) via Westlaw UK

This index is the most important source for tracing British and English language European journals. You can search by subject, keyword, legislation cited, case cited, journal title, article and author.

There is also

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (via HeinOnline)
Access to legal literature worldwide including all forms of non Anglo-American law.

Criminal Justice Abstracts
Abstracts and references to criminology related journal articles, book reviews and book chapters

The other major online sources for tracing articles of a non-legal nature are:

Web of Science- a broad index to articles in the Social Sciences covering socio-legal subjects, criminology etc

IBSS - International Bibliography of the Social Sciences - this is an index to a broad range of international publications in the fields of economics, sociology, political science and anthropology
British Humanities Index - this includes articles from a broad range of journals, magazines and newspapers, and is especially valuable for topical information.

JSTOR Arts & Science Collections - provides a collection of full-text journals from the Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities.

ZETOC - provides access to the British Library's vast index of journals and conference proceedings and allows you to set up an email alert of your selected journal contents pages.

Newspapers

The Nexis database provides full text access to UK national newspapers and regional newspapers. It also covers international news and company data.

Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985: The complete digital edition of The Times (London) capturing the entire newspaper, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.

 Useful Web Links

Other Libraries
Other Web Links

 Other Libraries

You may wish to search the catalogues of other libraries:

British Library

British Library of Political and Economic Science: one of the largest libraries in the world devoted to the economic and social sciences.

COPAC: searches the major university research libraries in the UK in one catalogue

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library - access to the Library catalogue and Research Guides

If you want to use another library, ask about access at the AskMe Desk.

Books, journals and other material needed for your study and research, which are not available in the University of Surrey Library, may be obtained from other libraries by using the Inter-Library Loan scheme. Please read the guidance page or ask at the AskMe Desk.

 Other Web Links

UK Government
Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council - a permanent standing body charged with monitoring the constitution and working of all tribunals and inquiries in Great Britain.

Cabinet Office - information on government, including ministries and the Civil Service  

Crown Prosecution Service

Directgov - a wide range of government information

Judiciary of England and Wales -details about the judiciary service

Law Commission - keeps the law under review and recommends reform where it is needed

Ministry of Justice - information on the administration of justice. A good gateway to other legal sites.

Privy Council Office- includes description of the functions and jurisdiction of the Privy Council as well as links to judgments

Official Publications

Legislation.gov.uk

London Gazette -official news and legal statutory notices. Searchable backfile from 1752 to date

Official Documents- is the official reference facility for Command and departmentally sponsored House of Commons Papers. All Command Papers and House of Commons Papers published from May 2005 onwards, as well as key Departmental papers, are available for free on the site in PDF format

The Stationery Office (TSO) - includes a searchable database of all the Stationery Office's current print titles

The National Archives- The National Archives is preserving government information published on the web by archiving UK Central Government Websites

Parliament

 Bills -bills before Parliament

Hansard - full text Hansard from1803-2005

House of Commons - including Hansard

House of Lords - including Hansard

UK Parliament

International Law - guides and resources

International Legal Research Tutorial - follow this online tutorial about international legal research which provides tips of resources to use.

ASIL - American Society of International Law, information on the teaching, theory and practice of international law.

EISIL - Electronic Information System for International Law. A major research tool for international law. This database has detailed subject breakdown and access to primary documents and secondary materials. It has been developed by the American Society for International Law

GlobaLex - section on international law research which has 20+ guides to specific topics of current interestStudies, research guides by jurisdiction

International Law - the United Nations International Law page

International Law Library - includes decisions, treaties and agreements available on WorldLII

Treaties - This ASIL guide gives you some guidance on how to go about treaty research, using electronic resources 

United Nations Treaty Collection 

WorldLII- World Legal Information Institute, free, independent access to worldwide law

International Courts

African International Courts and Tribunals

European Court of Human Rights

International Court of Justice

International Criminal Court