Skip to Main Content

Obligations law: Legislation & cases

Subjects: Law

Finding English & Welsh & UK legislation & case law

Please see below a list of the more commonly used online sources of UK Legislation.  It can be important to know if you are looking for amended or unamended (as originally enacted) legislation. Subscription databases (such as Lexis and Westlaw) can usually be expected to be quicker at keeping up with amendments than the public site. The subscription databases also include other information (such as annotations) and links through to any related commentary in journals or books which they also have in full text. 

These two databases require an Oxford SSO.

The official (maintained by the government), open access website for Westminster legislation. This is available to anyone with access to the internet.

If you only want the originally enacted text of an act of 1988 or later, it may be quicked to use:

Print resources

The practitioner's classics Halsbury's Statutes at KZ 2 & Current Law Statutes Annotated at KZ 5 --which have updating services to try to keep up to date with subsequent amendments. The current volumes are shelved on Level 2, the same level as you enter the Law Library.

Some publishers produce subject collections of legislation to help the time poor student! But remember you may have to check in case there has been more recent legislative activity (new acts, or amendments or repeals of existing legislation) since the date of publication of the volumes...

The decision of UK courts are first made public as transcripts. These are only available via electronic means - either subscription databases or websites.

Those judgments which are considered legally important are (eventually) published in law report series. The two quickest into print are All England Reports (All ER) and Weekly Law Reports (WLR).

These two subscription databases require Oxford SSO.

Reliable sources of the transcripts of English and UK courts which are available to anyone with access to the internet are:

Other useful sites on the free web

On Level 2, the entrance level to the Library, you will find an nearly comprehensive run of all the printed law report series for England & Wales/UK.
They are all on open shelf, and are arranged alphabetically by the title of the series.

Note that the Law Reports series - which you will need if your citation is to AC, QB, KB, etc - are shelved with the Cw UK 120 L run.

Available on the free web and accessible to all

For help with primary sources for other jurisdictions