Researching Legislation

Browse for Acts in LawNow:

1. Go to the Lexis+ Australia database homepage via the Library A-Z Databases.
2. Select Legislation and then select the relevant jurisdiction, eg: Victoria.  This example is searching for the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic).
   
3. Select Current Acts from the Acts column.
   
   
   
    
4. Select the letter C for Charter.
   
   
    
5. Scroll through the alphabetical list to find the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic).
   
    

Search for legislation in LawNow:

1. Use the LawNow Plus Legislation Citator Advanced Search (Lexis+ Australia) and enter the name of the Act in the Legislation Title field. You can search by keyword or title. This example is searching for the term human rights in the Legislation Title field. Suggested titles will appear as you type, you can accept or ignore them. There is also an option to select the jurisdiction using the check boxes. Click Search.
   
    
2. On the results screen, use the filters on the left to choose  Jurisdiction.
   
   
    
3. Click on the title of the Act to view the legislation record.
   
   
    

Follow the steps above to either browse or search for legislation. This example demonstrates how to view the legislation record for the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic).

1. Once you have navigated to the record for the relevant Act, the following information is available:
   1. Citator links  The top level links go to related materials which discuss this Act as a whole, or which discuss a particular provision of the Act. For example, view cases and commentary in Lexis+ Australia that mention the Charter of Human Rights.
   2. List of Provisions links you to a full-text view of sections of the Act.
   3. History links to the Bill and shows a table of amendments.
   4. Historical Versions of the Act provides a list of previous versions of the Act, which is useful for 'point-in-time' research.
   5. Defined Terms links to definitions and the relevant sections in the Act.
   6. Government Website links to the authorised version of the Act.

1. To view commentary on a specific section, click on the link to the relevant section under the List of Provisions tab. This example is viewing commentary for Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic), section 4: What is a public authority?
   
2. Click on the View Legislation Citator link to view any commentary on the Lexis+ Australia database that discusses this section.
   
    
3. Clicking on the link to Cases, will retrieve case records from the CaseBase database indicating cases that have judicially considered this section. Clicking on the link to Secondary Materials will provide journal articles and commentary on this section. Clicking on View Legislation will return to the full text of the Act.