Oxford LibGuides: South Africa : legal resources: Journals

South African law journals & finding articles on SA law

A journal is a regular publication (monthly, yearly, etc.) in which you will find academic and research articles. The articles present current research and quick (but thoughtful) responses to legal developments, such as Case Comments..
Journals which are peer-reviewed submit potential articles to evaluation by other experts before publication, so you can be confident of the quality of those finally included in the volume.
The majority of journals held by the Bodleian Libraries in both physical and electronic formats can be searched via SOLO, however you may find the Law Library's own database easier to use.

Search our law reports and journals (Law Bod)
Database maintained by the Bodleian Law Library. Put in the title of the law report or law journal which contains the report or article you wish to read, then click search. The results will show which (if any) database will provide full text access and also the shelf mark to the print holdings of the publication in the Bodleian Law Library. Not everything is available online!

Use the other tabs in this box to find recommended journals and guidance on the special online tools to help you find articles in law journals

Holders of an Oxford SSO have access to law journals published in South Africa via the databases below

Jutastat E-Publications
Alternative names: Juta Law ; Juta Online ; Jutastat

Contains: Juta’s South African Case Law 1838 to date; The South African Law Reports 1947 to date; Statutes and Regulations of South Africa; Juta’s Electronic Law Journals; Botswana Law Reports 1964 - ; Namibian Law Reports 1990 to date; Case Law of Zimbabwe including access to the Zimbabwe Law Reports 1980 - 2000 (2); Tanzania Law 1983 to 1997; Zambia Law Reports from 1963 to 1997.
Sabinet Law Collection
Downtime: This resource will be unavailable on Friday 17th November 11pm to Friday 18th Saturday 9AM 2023. ##
Alternative name: Sabinet Reference

South African Law Journals.
HeinOnline
Some journals may be subject to a rolling 3 year embargo, with the most recent issues only indexed
Alternative names: Hein Online ; HOL

HeinOnline includes five major collections:
The Law Journal Library includes over 500 U.S., U.K., Australian and International Law Journals. For most journals the date coverage starts very early (in many cases at the first issue). However the most recent editions (within the last calendar year) are sometime unavailable due to licensing restrictions. HeinOnline makes these journals available on a rolling yearly basis.
The Treaties and Agreements Library includes all U.S. treaties and agreements including those in force, expired or yet to be published.
The U.S. Supreme Court Library includes all U.S. Supreme Court opinions as published in the U.S. Reports
The Federal Register 1936-1995, and indexes to the register.
Legal Classics Library. Full text of over 100 legal texts including Blackstone's Commentaries (1803), Cardozo's Growth of the Law (1924), and Story's first edition of Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833). Provincial Statutes of Canada includes Provincial Statutes for ten of the Canadian provinces. Contains public and private acts passed by Canadian provincial governments. Current, revised, and historical content is now available for Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. Historical and revised content only is available for Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan.
All content consists of scanned images of the original printed editions. This allows you to view the content as it originally appeared in print complete with page numbers and pictures.
To save or print articles from HeinOnline choose PRINT OPTIONS followed by DOWNLOAD AS PDF. You will then be able to print out and/or save articles using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Available on the free web

South Africa: Law Journals
OA Journals via SAFLII Constitutional Court Review,
African Disability Rights Yearbook, African Human Rights Law Journal, African Law Review, De Jure Law Journal, De Rebus Law Journal,
Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal
SADC Law Journal
South Africa: Law, Democracy and Development Law Journal
Speculum Juris
African Journal Archive
Open Access.The African Journal Archive is a retrospective digitisation project of full-text journal articles published in Africa, in the Sciences, the Social Sciences and Humanities, and was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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The archive provides access to a multi-disciplinary, multi-country digital archive of Africa’s research and cultural heritage contained in its journal literature with some articles dating back to 1902. (For more information about the archive and the project, please go to http://www.ajarchive.org.)
Directory of open access journals (DOAJ) : Law Filter On
Portal to Open Access law journals. The Publisher's Countries filter in the left hand column may be good first filter to apply for studies in foreign jurisdictions

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
Archive of social science papers including legal papers.
Most content on the SSRN website does not require registration. You can register an account on SSRN using an .ox.ac.uk email address in order to subscribe to eJournals in the following networks:
- Economics Research Network
- Financial Economics Network
- Legal Scholarship Network
- Management Research Network
Bepress Legal Repository
Alternative name: Berkeley Electronic Press

The Bepress Legal Repository is a network of law-related research materials. Law schools, research units, institutes, centers, think tanks, conferences, and other subject-appropriate groups post materials to specific publications (e.g., the USC Working Paper Series).

LawArXiv: Legal scholarship in the open
Open in 2017 LawArXiv is an open access legal repository; preprints deposited during its life remain available to all to download

Commonwealth iLibrary
The Commonwealth iLibrary comprises the Commonwealth Secretariat’s publications and covers such topics as globalisation and multinational trade issues, gender, education, law and human rights, and public service management and reform. It includes ebooks and working papers.

World Bank's Open Knowledge Repository (ORK)
OA repository This link takes you to browse by topic. A search box is also available near top right of screen

Note that when a new part arrives it is first put out on the special New Journals Display (Just In corner) in the main Reading Room on Level 2.

Shelf marks beginning S Africa 300
Journal issues from and including 2000 are on Level 1; older issues up to and including 1999 are on the Ground Floor.

Acta juridica 1958-
Annual survey of South African law 1947-
De jure v.1(1975)- [incomplete]
Industrial law journal v.1(1980)-
Stellenbosch law review v.1(1990)-
South African journal on human rights v.1(1985)-
South African law journal
Tydskrif vir hedendaagse Romeins-Holandse Reg v.1 (1937)-

Shelf marks beginning General 300
Journal issues from and including 2000 are on Level 1; older issues up to and including 1999 are on the Ground Floo

Journal of African law

Please ask a member of staff for directions when you visit the Law Bod.

Legal databases and ejournal platforms offer ways for you to set up customised alerts and/or an RSS feed. Look out for "Current Awareness," "Stay up to Date," "Create Alert" or the bell icon: instructions are usually clear. If you do encounter difficulties please contact us.
Note that Westlaw Edge UK also includes the formerly separate LawTel service
An ETOC or TOC option provides the entire table of contents of each new journal issue.
If you come to the Law Library, check out the Just In Corner on Level 2 (the entrance level) which has a display of the most recent issues of those law journals still received in print. (This display is updated weekiy.)

In addition (especially if you have inter disciplinary interests)

Some researchers may remember ZETOC. In its place we recommend the open access service JournalsTOCs - "the largest, free collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs): 32,312 journals including 15,741 selected Open Access journals and 11,834 Hybrid journals, from 3333 publishers."
Please note this requires you to register as an individual - it is not an Oxford SSO related eresource.

JournalTOCs
is the largest, free collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs): 32,312 journals including 15,741 selected Open Access journals and 11,834 Hybrid journals, from 3333 publishers.

Journals published in South Africa are indexed by IFLP, see first link below.

Remember: legal developments may well be the subject of articles in law journals published in other jurisdictions. However, South African law can be the subject of articles in journals published elsewhere. eg "Corporate governance and employees in South Africa" is in The Journal of Corporate Law Studies v. 10 no. pt2 (October 2010) p. 367-89.

It is therefore advisable to use all the indexing tools listesd below

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
Alternative name: IFLP

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (produced by The American Association of Law Libraries) provides access to legal literature worldwide, covering all forms of foreign (non-Anglo-American) law from 1985 onwards. This includes comparative law and legal systems, such as Islamic law; socialist law; public and private international law; and transnational commercial law. The data is not limited by country of publication, but rather type of publication. Therefore whilst publications concerning British and American law are not included, British and American publications concerning foreign law are included.

The types of documents covered include journal articles, congress reports, essay collections, yearbooks, and book reviews. The database encompasses all languages. Materials in Greek, Cyrillic, and East Asian vernacular are Romanized according to Library of Congress standards. Arabic and Hebrew titles are translated into English or French.

Legal Journals Index (LJI)
Requires Oxford SSO & personal registration. Westlaw Edge UK indexes more UK law journal issues than it holds in full text. (1986 onwards) If Westlaw only has the abstract make a note of the citation details. If needed, use Cardiff Index to find the full title of the journal, then search SOLO by the full title of the journal. In other words, search SOLO for LLoyd's Maritime & Commercial Law Quarterly (not LMCLQ)

Westlaw US
Westlaw US is a large legal database with both primary and secondary sources. Legal research tools include the KeyCite citator, and West Key number system for case law.
Coverage:
US federal and state legislation
US federal and state law reports
US law reviews and journals
US federal and state legal encyclopedias and dictionaries
US legal texts and treatises
US Restatements & Principles of the Law
Because of licencing restrictions this database is not available to "Walk-in" users of the library.
Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981
This retrospective database indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic will also be covered.
HeinOnline
Alternative names: Hein Online ; HOL

HeinOnline includes five major collections:
The Law Journal Library includes over 500 U.S., U.K., Australian and International Law Journals. For most journals the date coverage starts very early (in many cases at the first issue). However the most recent editions (within the last calendar year) are sometime unavailable due to licensing restrictions. HeinOnline makes these journals available on a rolling yearly basis.
The Treaties and Agreements Library includes all U.S. treaties and agreements including those in force, expired or yet to be published.
The U.S. Supreme Court Library includes all U.S. Supreme Court opinions as published in the U.S. Reports
The Federal Register 1936-1995, and indexes to the register.
Legal Classics Library. Full text of over 100 legal texts including Blackstone's Commentaries (1803), Cardozo's Growth of the Law (1924), and Story's first edition of Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833). Provincial Statutes of Canada includes Provincial Statutes for ten of the Canadian provinces. Contains public and private acts passed by Canadian provincial governments. Current, revised, and historical content is now available for Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. Historical and revised content only is available for Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, and Saskatchewan.
All content consists of scanned images of the original printed editions. This allows you to view the content as it originally appeared in print complete with page numbers and pictures.
To save or print articles from HeinOnline choose PRINT OPTIONS followed by DOWNLOAD AS PDF. You will then be able to print out and/or save articles using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

HeinOnline's Scholarcheck
Libguide provided by Hein to help you make use of this feature.

Social Sciences Citation Index
Alternative names: Web of Science ; SSCI. SSCI is the machine readable version of the printed Social Sciences Citation Index. It provides bibliographic references to significant items from over 1,400 journals in the behavioural and social sciences. Selected items from over 3,100 physical and natural sciences journals are also included to provide multidisciplinary coverage. This amounts to approximately 130,000 articles per year.
The data, which is updated weekly, consists of articles for the current year, with other year's data going back to 1970. The data for each index defaults to the current year plus the three previous years (this can be reset), with searches covering one index at a time. Many of the more recent articles contain abstracts, as well as author, title and journal information with lists of citations.

Indexing tools on the free web

Google Scholar search (enhancements)
Enhancements: OU members should
1) click on the 3 parallel lines (top left corner before google logo), then click Settings
Among the options:
1) Search Results - last options in central panel, if you are using RMS adjust Bibliography manager options
2) Library Links in the left hand column, type Oxford in the search box and then click in box alongside "University of Oxford Find it @ Oxford" and finally click Save this setting. This will help you get online access to material in some (but not all) legal databases for which the Law Bod has a subscription when on the OU network/working via VPN.
LawCite search
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LawCite is being built as part of a three year project that is funded by the Australian Research Council in co-operation with a number of Australian courts and other commercial and non-commercial organisations. It is being developed at AustLII in collaboration with other members of the Free Access to Law Movement - in particular BAILII , HKLII , PacLII , SAFLII , NZLII and CYLAW. Particularly strong for common law countries, but the civil law dimension is growing

There are too many for any list to be comprehensive. If you are studying a particular legal topic, or a foreign jurisdiction, it may well be worth considering which law firms have gained a distinguished reputation in the same topic/jurisdiction, they may well have partners/practitioners posting news and comment.

Constitutionally Speaking
Blog of Pierre de Vos, Professor and author on SA constitutional law
South African Commercial Law Blog
The South African Commercial Law Blog is written and managed by Don Mahon. Mahon is an Advocate (Barrister) and Arbitrator specialising in commercial litigation.
International Law Office Newsletters (ILO Newsletters)
Open access. ILO publishes a series of legal Newsletters which provide expert legal commentary in the form of concise, regular news updates. The Newsletters are written in collaboration with over 500 of the world's leading experts and cover more than 100 jurisdictions.
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Change jurisdiction before either filtering by work area or searching by keyword. Or approach by work area. Latest issues can be read online.Or register (free service) to receive newsletters by email.
Linklaters: Knowledge Portal
Open access "You can browse, search or filter our publications, seminars and webinars, multimedia and collections of curated content from across our global network. Create an account and set your email alert preferences to receive the content relevant to you and your business, at your chosen frequency."
Global Legal Monitor: Search and Browse screen
Open Access The Global Legal Monitor is an online publication from the Law Library of Congress covering legal news and developments worldwide. It is updated frequently and draws on information from official national legal publications and reliable press sources. You can find previous news by searching the Global Legal Monitor

Inter-library loans

If the Bodleian Libraries don't have the journal you are looking for, we may be able to source it through Oxford's inter-library loan service.

Inter-library Loans Service Online Form
Use this form to request material not held by the Bodleian Libraries. Please check Oxford collections on SOLO and ensure that the item is not in stock, either in print or electronically.

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If the Bodleian Libraries don't have the journal or article you are looking for, you can make a recommendation by completing the form below (Oxford Single-Sign On required).

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