Types of legal information available on the web

• Significant collections of legislation are already available on the web from over 50 countries.The full text is available on the web of all legislation from almost all the jurisdictions of the USA, Canada, Australasia, many Latin American countries and some European countries (such as Norway and Germany), and extensive collections from many other European countries

• The Parliaments of dozens of countries have web pages, and these contain many significant resources concerning legislation and law reform. In some cases such as the US Congress and the Australian Parliament, extensive `Bills Digests’ analysing each Bill presented to the Parliament (prepared by Parliamentary staff or Parliamentary libraries) are available on the web.

• There are also extensive collections of case law from courts and tribunals of at least 20 countries.The quantities of decisions available from some countries are very substantial. There are over 75,000 Australian decisions available for free access in full text from 24 courts and tribunals, and many more are available on commercial publishers sites for paid access. Australian High Court decisions since 1947 are available. In the USA, free access is available to the decisions of the Supreme Court, all Circuit Courts, and most State Courts.

• Law reform commissions and similar bodies are starting to make their reports and working papers available via the web, and there are already very extensive collections of reports available from national and regional law reform bodies in Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the USA

• There are over 200 Law Journals that have web pages, and in the case of many of these the full texts of the journals are available on the web. Increasingly, law journals publish as `web journals’ so that they are not available in print at all.

Examples inlcude:

• Hein Online
• UNSW Law Library - search through Sirius

• There are research centres at Universities and elsewhere which provide very large specialist collections of materials in areas such as constitutional law, environmental law, central bank laws, labour law, trade law, the law of the sea and human rights

• In addition, there are other expert sources of legal commentary and interpretation on the World-Wide-Web `home pages’ of law firms and individuals (particularly legal academics). This is a form of publication that is unique to the World-Wide-Web, and it makes a vast body of expertise available world-wide. For example, the Jurist system provides access to the home pages of over 100 law professors from around the world, many of which contain articles and reports by those professors, including copies of their articles published in law journals, and otherwise unpublished work and work-in-progress. Also, law firms are increasingly publishing conference papers delivered by their partners, and background reports on areas of law in which the firm claims expertise, as a means of demonstrating the firm’s abilities to the public.