SURFING THE NET FOR LEGAL INFORMATION

Lydia Craemer, Johannesburg Bar Library

E-mail: infobar@law.co.za ; (011) 292-6917Twitter: @infointuitive

Electronic information is either free

or fee-based

Web-based formats

These can be fee-based or free

My LexisNexis

Sabinet Online

Juta Law products

South Africa Government Online

Parliamentary Monitoring Group

Southern African Legal Information Institute

The Deep / Invisible Web v “Free Access” sites

Deep / Invisible Web results usually direct one to a site that maybe

• subscription-based (e.g. Sabinet Online)

•one on which one must register (e.g The Government Printing Works website)

“Free Access” sites can be used by anyone, anywhere.

Examples are:

•The Legal Information Institutes’ websites (LII’s)

•Governments websites worldwide, (e.g. the South African Government Information website)

•Websites of organisations such as the ILO (International Labour Organisation)

Free access websites

Are you looking for cases that have been handed

down in South African courts ?

The Constitutional Court has its own website: www.constitutionalcourt.org.za

It is very comprehensive, including information on:

•The Constitution

•The structure of the Court and Court Rules

•Forthcoming hearings

•Judgments recently handed down, and judgments handed down in the past

•It is also possible to find court documents pertaining to cases on the website, such as Heads of argument

The Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein has its own website:www.justice.gov.za/sca/index.htm

•It includes information on

•Court Rules and practice directions

•Court Rolls

•Judgments recently handed down

•Judgments handed down in the past

•Bulletins• If a case can’t be found on the website, the Bulletins can be

very helpful in finding out, for example, whether a judgment was dismissed / struck off the roll

High Courts in South Africa

SAFLII has judgments from all the High Courts in South Africa:www.saflii.org.za

Caveat: Not all judgments handed down are uploaded to SAFLII. The judgments uploaded are dependant on each Court to send an electronic copy to SAFLII for uploading

SAFLII also includes judgments from other Court such as:

•The Commercial Crimes Court

•The Electoral Court

•Equality Court (the only type of judgments from Magistrates Courts to be found on the web)

•Tax Court

High Courts in South Africa

Caveat:

One will not find Court Orders on SAFLII.

One must contact the Registrar of the Court in question

High Courts archive older judgments off-site.

If one cannot find the judgment on SAFLII or via the publishers, and one contacts the Court Librarian, one may be told that the judgment or court order is stored off-site. This usually happens 5 years after the date judgment was handed down. Depending on the location of the off-site storage, it can take two weeks or longer to get a copy of the judgment or court order.

Judgments from statutory bodies

These usually can be located on the websites of such bodies. Examples include:

•Competition Tribunal of South Africa http://www.comptrib.co.za/

•The Pension Funds Adjudicatorhttp://www.pfa.org.za/

•National Consumer Tribunalhttp://www.thenct.org.za/

•SARSwww.sars.gov.za

Point to Note:

On odd occasions, news reports on the Internet may embed a judgment or a ruling from a statutory body, so it’s worth following up on a Google result if the result points to a reputable website that carries online news.

Are you looking for South African legislation ?

From 19 September 2013, SAFLII and the Oliver Tambo Law Library (University of Pretoria) have made consolidated legislation available

on

www.lawsofsouthafrica.up.ac.za.

On this website, one can find the recent Acts and regulations for a variety of subject areas

It’s a work in progress, so Acts and regulations available will increase with time, and it is updated regularly

To find the historical versions of an Act

Go to: http://www.lawsofsouthafrica.up.ac.za/

Select: Historical versions and Search

(Credit: Shirley Gilmore, Oliver Tambo Law Library, University of Pretoria)

Example. Enter search terms as in the screenshot below.Enter at the Keywords field the words “civil proceedings”. Tick ‘Title (path)’ and select the Type – ‘Exact phrase’. Submit

(Credit: Shirley Gilmore, Oliver Tambo Law Library, University of Pretoria)

Scroll down to see the results :

(Credit: Shirley Gilmore, Oliver Tambo Law Library, University of Pretoria)

Bills can be found on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group website www.pmg.org.za

Bills, Acts, Regulations and Notices can be found on the South African Government Information website www.gov.za

Caveat:

Bills found on the Web are not necessarily the most current version being debated in Parliament. It is best to contact Parliament to find out what is the most current version of a Bill being debated, if one has no access to a service like Sabinet Online’s Bill Tracker service.

Acts found on the Web on some commercial websites (e.g. Acts Online www.acts.co.za ) do NOT include the amended versions of Acts. They are normally the Acts as originally published. One can contact the publishers of legal information (Juta/LexisNexis/Sabinet Online) for legislation.

Regulations and notices found on the Web may not also be the most current. One can contact Sabinet Online if one requires the most current regulations/notices.

What about Government Department websites ?

The websites of Government Departments are a logical place to look for legislation.

Caveat:

The quality of information found on the website varies from Department to Department

•Legislation can be found on some websites, but not on others

•Sometimes links to legislation are clearly noted on a website

•Sometimes it is tucked away in an obscure page

Example of a website where legislation is easily distinguishable:National Treasury: www.treasury.gov.za

Example of a website where legislation is not clearly distinguishable:South African Revenue Service (SARS): www.sars.gov.za

Examples of websites where there is no legislation available:Dept of Home Affairs: http://www.dha.gov.za/

Dept of Transport: www.transport.gov.za

Are you looking for judgments that have been handed

down in courts overseas ?This is when the Legal Information sites (LII’s) can be most helpful. The most extensive and most used ones are:

(World Legal Information Institute)http://www.worldlii.org/

It contains 1252 databases from 123 jurisdictions via 14 Legal Information Institutes as well as International case law and legislation, Treaties and Privacy Law

(Commonwealth Legal Information Institute)http://www.commonlii.org/

Information on CommonLII is linked to LII’s that form part of the Commonwealth. It includes case law and legislation for Commonwealth Countries, External Territories & Dependencies (such as Bermuda) and Common Law Jurisdictions (such as Hong Kong)

(British and Irish Legal Information Institute)http://www.bailii.org/

This encompasses case law and legislation from the UK, England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Jersey (part of The Channel Islands)An important point to note about BAILII is that it also is a repository for case law from Europe such as the European Human Rights cases

(Canadian Legal Information Institute)http://www.canlii.org/en/index.php

This website provides access to court judgments, tribunal decisions, statutes and regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions

(Legal Information Institute)http://www.law.cornell.edu/

This LII is supported by Cornell University Law School and encompasses legislation and case law from the USA

(Australasian Legal Information Institute)http://www.austlii.edu.au/

This encompasses case law and legislation from Australian territories, The Commonwealth of Australian territories and New Zealand

(Southern African Legal Information Institute)http://www.saflii.org/

As already mentioned, here one will find case law and legislation for Southern Africa and South Africa in particular.

The African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII) http://www.africanlii.org/

Caveat:

Although one can sometimes locate African legislation and case law on AfricanLII, it is a work in progress and dependent on the

co-operation of African countries to supply case law and legislation.It has useful links to major international sites such as Natlex (ILO) where, for example, one can locate labour law for African countries

If using the LII’s doesn’t help one locate case law, in particular, there are various sites one can try:

Websites of the Courts in a given country. In Africa, the Botswana e-Laws website - http://www.elaws.gov.bw/ - contains case law and legislation and has proved useful.

Open access sitesOpen Jurist - http://openjurist.org/ - is well worth checking for US case law and legislation.Find Law - http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/index.html - is another useful site for US case law.

A website that is little known but that can be very useful for tracking down case law, especially with regards to parallel citations is LawCite -

http://www.lawcite.org/It links to the LII’s and acts as a noter-up for foreign case law, with hyperlinks to judgments noted.

But what about ?

People think Wikipedia is the one and only solution to their research needs.

Not a good idea ! Especially in Law where one has to be 100% certain that one has the correct facts

It is written by people from all walks of life: university professors, world organisations, lay people, and even school kids. Anyone can contribute, so you don’t know how accurate the information is.

Use it alongside information from other reputable websites to ensure that information that you find on Wikipedia can be verified.

Evaluating websites

It is very important to evaluate websites – anyone can put information on the web. Is the content controlled, verified, trustworthy? Methods for evaluating websites include:

Currency (how up to date is this site?) This is indicated by the words “last updated…” and a date. An outdated website is fine for historical information but not if you’re dealing with a topic like “Judicial Service Commission”

Who writes the content? Do you recognize the person‘s or organisation’s name who is responsible for the site ?

Look to see if there are links to other credible web pages or websites.

Look at the URL. Domain names e.g. .gov/.ac.za/.org/.com ; country codes, e.g .za/.fr/.au/.uk show the site can be trusted. NOTE: the US doesn’t use a country code !

Important search tools

Your “gut feel” / intuition Lateral thinking

Happy surfing !