Oxford LibGuides: Constitutions, constitutional &amp; administrative law: Cases

Judgments on Constitutional Matters in the UK.

The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 established the UK Supreme Court as successor to the House of Lords as both the final court of appeal for England & Wales (both civil & criminal) and the consitutional court of the UK. The UKSC started sitting in October 2009.

Westlaw Edge UK
Alternative name: West Law UK ; Westlaw UK

Westlaw is a large database of UK, US and international legal materials including cases, legislation and journal articles.
Coverage:
•UK statutes, statutory instruments and law reports
•England and Wales law reports
•US federal and state legislation and law reports
•Australian federal and state legislation and law reports
•Canadian federal and state legislation and law reports
•Hong Kong SAR law reports and laws
•European Union legislation and law reports
•UK and US law journals and texts
•Common Law Library and over 200 books published by Sweet & Maxwell (Thomson Reuters)
Because of licencing restrictions this database is not available to "Walk-in" users of the library.
Lexis+ UK
For online access from a device outside the University network or via eduroam, please follow https://plus.lexis.com/uk/xhome?federationidp=RXVSX459307
Alternative names:Lexis ; LexisLibrary ; Lexis Library ; Lexis International

Lexis+ includes extensive primary and secondary legal materials from the UK, EU, USA and many other jurisdictions. It is the only online source for the full text of the All England Law Reports and Halsbury’s Laws. International content can be accessed by following the “International” link on the home page. UK legal news and newspapers are also included.

Leading UK cases in constitutional law
BAILII’s OpenLaw Project supports legal education by making leading cases freely and openly available on the internet. The Constitutional Law list is current up to the Last Updated date [given on the website] and may not include recent decisions. If the citation column does not include a hyperlink, then copyright restrictions prevent BAILII from publishing the judgment (missing cases may be available on other commercial/paywalled sites). Please send all comments, corrections or suggested revisions to openlaw@bailii.org.

BAILII
OA source of transcripts (not reports) of the decisions/judgments of UK and Irish courts and tribunals
Alternative names: British and Irish Legal Information Institute ; British & Irish Legal Information Institute

Free access to British and Irish judgments. General coverage starts mid 1990s, though earlier key judgments are also included. Bailii also includes a subject arrangement of judgments. The judgments are transcripts and do not include arguments of counsel or headnotes. For a wider selection of Law Reports please see Justis, Lexis or Westlaw.

In previous centuries, offences against the state (eg treason trials) where included in collections of criminal cases published as State Trials. Two of the most reputable series are Howell’s/Cobbett’s State Trials (1163–1822) and the New Series (Macdonell’s) (1822–1858) These are in the Law Bod in the KB trials shelves on level 2, but holders of an Oxford Single Sign On can also consult them online via Justis link below.

vLex Justis
Includes State Trials which has "Over seven centuries of higher criminal jurisprudence covering English trials relating to offences against the State or trials illustrative of the law relating to State Officers, e.g. Ministers or Governors of Colonies. A wide variety of cases is covered, predominantly high treason but also bigamy, sedition, seditious libel, murder involving high-ranking officials or peers, riot, piracy, witchcraft, bribery and corruption. It comprises two of the most authoritative series of State Trials, Howell’s/Cobbett’s State Trials (1163–1822) and the New Series (Macdonell’s) (1822–1858), as well as additional material sourced from National Collections and the English (Nominate) Reports."
vLex Justis offers access to a range of law reports, transcripts and legislation from the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Caribbean, and the EU. For UK case research it has extensive information relating to where cases have been cited, etc including a precedent map.

In addition it includes the full text of the following: Aspinall's Maritime Law Cases, English Reports, State Trials, CCH Tax Cases, Immigration Appeal Reports, Inquest Law Reports, Mental Health Reports, Session Cases Archive, Irish Reports & Digest, Jersey Law Reports, Bermuda Law Reports, Cayman Islands Law Reports, The Singapore Law Reports, and the International Law Reports. Also included in the service is Justis Human Rights.

To access personalisation features please set up an individual profile on the platform using a unique id and password.

Please note that apart from the titles listed above, vLex Justis includes some abstracted materials for which you will need to refer to other online services or hard copy to obtain the full text.

vLex Justis includes content formerly available via JustisOne.
Making of Modern Law, The: Legal Treatises 1800-1926
Alternative names: MOML ; The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926

The Making of Modern Law comprises over 21,000 works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on British Commonwealth and American law. It covers nearly every aspect of law, encompassing a range of analytical, theoretical, and practical literature, some very rare. The monographs and materials in Legal Treatises include casebooks, local practice manuals, books on legal form, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, and speeches. The collection covers domestic and international law, legal history, business and economics, politics and government, national defence, criminology, religion, education, labour and social welfare, and military justice.

Important issues of civil & human rights arising in the UK may be litigated in the European Court of Human Rights.

European Convention on Human Rights
Section of official website of European Court of Human Rights. Protocols 6 & 13 are appendices to the pdf version of the Convention available here.
ECrtHR European Court of Human Rights
Official website - this route to find out about its role, history, general news etc etc. For quick route to its case law use HUDOC - see links below.
HUDOC: ECHR: database of case law
Search screen for database of decisions. Use the left hand column to set sensible filters or construct a search string
more...less...
European Court of Human Rights

The HUDOC database [open access available to all with access to the internet] provides access to the case-law of the Court (Grand Chamber, Chamber and Committee judgments and decisions*, communicated cases, advisory opinions and legal summaries from the Case-Law Information Note), the European Commission of Human Rights (decisions and reports) and the Committee of Ministers (resolutions).

*Committee decisions appeared on HUDOC only as of April 2010. Decisions concerning single judge cases are not published. Commission decisions prior to 1960 exist in hard copy only in the Court Archives.
HUDOC: case law analysis of European Court of HR
Free resource.

Case law from foreign jurisdictions

Codices: the infobase on Constitutional Case-Law of the Venice Commission
Open Access resource from Venice Commission of the Council of Europe
Australian constitutional law
Canadian constitutional law
French constitutional law
German constitutional law
Indian constitutional law
Irish constitutional law
South African constitutional law
US constitutional law

If the country or countries you are interested in are not listed above, use link below to see if another of our guides can help

Bodleian Law Library guides to jurisdictions
The Law Bod's guides to both online and print resources for national constitutions, legislation, and case law as well as commentary on the legal systems and their law in books and journals