Legal Research Module

3
Legal Research
Table of Contents
Introduction to Internet Legal research ............................................ 1 Legal research............................................................................ 2 What is legal research? ............................................................... 2 Four steps of legal research.......................................................... 2 Search engines ........................................................................... 5 What is a search engine?.............................................................. 5 How to use search engines ........................................................... 5 Using search operators ................................................................ 6 Examples of search engines .......................................................... 7 The PacLII website ...................................................................... 8 What is PacLII? ......................................................................... 8 What does PacLII cover? .............................................................. 9 Why should you use PacLII?.......................................................... 12 How do I use it? ....................................................................... 12 The WorldLII site....................................................................... 13 Pacific Law Pathfinders .............................................................. 14 Case studies............................................................................. 17 Case Study 1: Copyright Law applicable in Samoa .............................. 17 Case Study 2: Rights of accused on arrest ........................................ 26 Case Study 3: Defamation law in Samoa .......................................... 37 List of other useful sites for legal research ...................................... 39
Legal Research
Introduction to Internet Legal research

The development of the Internet as an information resource has vastly increased the availability of legal research materials around the world. Legal practitioners, government officials, private corporations and members of the public with an interest in Pacific law, and access to the Internet, are fortunate to have a large range of legal materials and resources available online. The aim of this module is to provide a solid base of understanding for people to use the Internet to assist in researching:
relevant legislation relevant case law secondary law materials (journals, case reports and commentaries)
Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia
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Legal Research
Legal research
What is legal research?
Before developing an understanding of using the Internet to assist in legal research, it is worth understanding what legal research is. Legal research is defined as follows: THE NEED TO FIND THE LAW WHICH APPLIES TO A SET OF FACTS1 It is important to understand from the beginning that the material available through the Internet is complementary to other research sources such as those available in hard copy form in law libraries.
Four steps of legal research

1. Identify the problem Because every case or application of facts is different, the first task of legal research is to identify the problem. Essentially this is a process of:
collecting the facts applicable to the situation classifying those facts into legal terms (for example, rather than classifying a commercial relationship as a deal, the legal term contract would be more useful in developing the research strategy) determining the legal issues the collection of facts represents identifying the relevant jurisdiction
2. Brainstorm the problem At this point, you are trying to figure out what the case is about or what legal issue or issues you will need to research. A useful exercise at this point is to brainstorm search terms (think up synonyms - fraud? money stolen? white collar crime? con? scheme?)
Laying Down the Law, 6th ed. by Cook et al (2005)
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Legal Research
At this point, you will have collected a few key phrases and identified and defined one or more legal subject areas to assist in targeting your research successfully. 3. Research the law Once you have established the legal subject areas and key phrases, your next task is to find material relevant to the subject area. Legal research materials are made up of primary and secondary materials. In common law jurisdictions such as Samoa, there are two primary sources of law:
legislation including Acts and Ordinances made and passed by Parliament case law consisting of decisions made by the Judiciary
Secondary materials include material that reports and provides commentary, discussion or opinion on legislation or case law. Secondary materials include:
law journal articles (such as those in the Pacific Law Journal, the Journal of South Pacific Law) case reports (providing summaries of cases handed down by the judiciary) legal dictionaries textbooks
It is important to reassert that not all material will be found on the Internet. Using the Internet for your legal research should form only one part of your research strategy. The checklist below can be applied to ensure that all relevant material is covered in the legal research project. This checklist applies to all legal research across hard copy and Internet based resources.
locate, read, and update secondary sources locate, read, and update primary authority (cases, statutes, and regulations) lookup rules of procedure, ethics, non-legal and other materials if needed repeat the above steps, as needed, depending on your search results
4. Application of your research How you apply all the research material you have gathered depends on the intended outcome and context of that research. The results of your research can be used to prepare:
judgments briefs
3.3
Legal Research
legal cases advice policy contracts documentation for other commercial arrangements
3.4
Legal Research
Search engines
What is a search engine?
A search engine is a searchable online database of Internet resources. As the Internet includes many billions of pages of information, a search engine is the principal tool used to find the information you are looking for. Search engines contain:
search engine software spider software an index (database) a relevancy algorithm (rules for ranking)
Search engine software indexes Internet Web pages, stores results and returns lists of pages to match user queries. Spider software constantly crawls the Web collecting Web page data for the index. The index stores the data in a database. The relevancy algorithm determines how to rank search queries.
How to use search engines

The common search engines are a good starting point for any kind of research on the Internet, including legal research. Search engines contain a field for you to type in a query. A query can be in the form of keywords, or you can use search operators to assist in targeting the search. Once you have typed in your query into the available field, press the return key on your keyboard or double click on the search button next to the query field. The search engine will then load a page of results ranked according to relevance to your original search term.
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Legal Research
Using search operators

Most search engines recognise special operators to target and define the search more precisely. Operators structure searches so that you can combine terms to include or exclude keywords. PacLIIs search facility is an example of a database collection that recognises search operators. The most universally used and understood search operators are Boolean operators (also called Boolean Logic). Below is a table of basic Boolean operators and the effect of their use on search queries. OPERATOR AND WHAT IT DOES AND WHEN TO USE IT The AND operator requires all terms (words or phrases-in-quotes) joined by the operator to appear somewhere in the document, in any order. Using AND narrows a search because it increases the number of matching words the document needs to meet the search criteria. Use the AND operator to join different kinds of concepts or aspects of the question. Example: "Corporations law" AND "competition" AND "Samoa" All three terms (Corporations law, competition, and Samoa) must be somewhere in every document retrieved. OR The OR operator requires at least one of the terms joined by the operator to appear somewhere in the document, in any order. Using OR broadens a search because it makes it easier for documents to meet the criteria of the search. Example: "selling land" OR "property conveyance" - You will accept either (or both phrases) in retrieved pages. AND NOT The AND NOT operator excludes documents containing the word or phrase directly following the operator. Using AND NOT limits a search, because it disqualifies documents whether they meet the other criteria of the search or not. You can use the AND NOT operator after looking at the results of a search, and you decide you do not want to see pages containing a word or phrase.
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Legal Research
OPERATOR
WHAT IT DOES AND WHEN TO USE IT

Note: Use the AND NOT operator with extreme caution because it eliminates the entire page, and you may be prevented from accessing other relevant information.
Example: "customary law" AND "Pacific" AND NOT "parliamentary" you will receive documents containing the first two phrases but excluding the last. NEAR The NEAR operator requires the term following the operator to occur within a certain proximity of the preceding search term. On the PacLII site, NEAR the proximity threshold is within 50 words. Example: "company law" NEAR "Samoa" You will retrieve documents containing both phrases within 50 words of each other, in either direction. W/n The W/n operator is the same as the NEAR operator, but you can vary the proximity of the words used in the search query. Example: "company law" W/10 "Samoa" You will retrieve documents containing both phrases within 10 words of each other, in either direction. More information on Boolean search phrases and their effect on your searches are available on the PacLII site at http://www.paclii.org/paclii/help/operators.html
Examples of search engines

Some of the most trusted and used search engines include:
Google: accessed by typing www.google.com into your Internet address Yahoo: accessed by typing www.yahoo.com into your Internet address Alta Vista: accessed by typing www.altavista.com into your Internet address
Search engine technology has developed considerably and many of the most popular search engine websites can infer Boolean operators in their searches.
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Legal Research
The PacLII website

What is PacLII?
The most comprehensive website available to those with an interest in or professional need of material relevant to law in the Pacific is the PacLII site.
Figure 1: PacLII logo PacLII is a shortened version of the phrase Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute. PacLII is managed as a joint operation between the University of the South Pacific, School of Law, and by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) Access PacLII by typing www.PacLII.org into your Internet browser's address bar.
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Legal Research
The PacLII homepage looks like this:
Figure 2: PacLII home page
What does PacLII cover?

As you can see by the information on the PacLII homepage, PacLII provides access to a wide range of legal materials from 20 Pacific nations including Samoa. It is important to note that PacLII does not provide complete coverage of Pacific island nations law in force and on the record. PacLII is a work in progress and you must never assume that all the material for every year listed on the site is up to date. This is why it is important for jurisdictions to ensure relevant material is forwarded to PacLII. The ease and convenience of online searching for relevant legal material makes it a very effective starting point for all research inquiries. Gaps occur when communication breaks down with courts or when PacLII has other pressing materials that need to go on-line.
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Legal Research
Primary sources of Samoan Law

Clicking on the link Samoa on the left hand side of the home page navigates to a page outlining more information on Samoan law.
Figure 3: PacLII list of Samoan law databases The majority of these links are to the two primary sources of Samoan law, case law and legislation, listed at the top of the page.
Secondary sources of Samoan Law

Other useful databases provide access to secondary materials such as Law Reports and links to information about the Samoan Government, Parliament, Court System and the Pacific Law Journal Index.
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Legal Research
Pacific Islands Law Materials

Further secondary sources can be accessed from the PacLII homepage, by clicking on the link to Pacific Islands Law Materials on the left hand panel of the home page.
Figure 4: Link from PacLII homepage to Pacific Islands Law Materials, located at the bottom left of the screen The Pacific Islands Law Materials contains links to the following secondary sources:
Law Reports of the Commonwealth (LRC) (South Pacific Index 1980-2003) South Pacific Law Reports (SPLR) (Index and Digest 1987-1988) Law Reports of South Pacific Islands Procedural Rules of South Pacific Islands' Courts South Pacific Stock Exchange Listing Rules Journal of South Pacific Law Melanesian Law Journal Pacific Law Journal Index Historical Pacific Islands Law Documents Pacific Islands Law Links - on WorldLII
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Legal Research
Why should you use PacLII?

For people with access to the Internet, the databases available on PacLII provide the easiest and most accessible means of researching law relevant to Samoa. The basics of the Samoan legal system are outlined in summaries of the following topic areas:
Court System Government Sources of Law
PacLII is also a useful starting point for accessing a wide range of other material relating to law in Samoa and the Pacific generally, including:
the Samoan Parliament the Pacific Law Journal Index
How do I use it?

PacLII have developed a range of useful standardised training materials that are available at the APPENDIX OF THIS MODULE. The Case Studies towards the end of this Manual also give you practical examples of PacLII in action.
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Legal Research
The WorldLII site

The Pacific Islands Law Links on the WorldLII site provide further links to many Pacific Islands law related material:
Figure 5: Pacific Islands Regional Portal on the WorldLII site
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Legal Research
Pacific Law Pathfinders

Clicking on the Pacific Law Pathfinders and Regional Holdings of Pacific Law Materials link opens another useful listing of further secondary sources of Pacific Islands legal research material including:
The University of the South Pacifics Emalus Campus Library's Resources for Law Students (note that many of the services accessed off this page are subscription based and only available to USP students).
Figure 6: The University of the South Pacifics Emalus Campus Library's Resources for Law Students
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Legal Research
The University of the South Pacific Emalus Campus Librarys Pacific Law Collection page.
Figure 7: The University of the South Pacific Emalus Campus Librarys Pacific Law Collection page
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Legal Research
Peter Murgatroyds2 Introduction to Researching South Pacific Law, which is published on the New York University Law Schools Globalex site, provides you with a good starting point for researching the laws of the Pacific.
Figure 8: Globalex Introduction to Researching South Pacific Law page
Law Librarian of the University of the South Pacific
3.16
Legal Research
Case studies
The Case studies in this module describe brief frameworks of legal issues to research, and outline a suggested approach using your online browsing and searching skills. It is important to note that the case studies do not present exhaustive studies collating a complete collection of relevant material on the Internet. Instead, the case studies have been designed to illustrate possible paths of inquiry as well as pointing to other sources of relevant material.
Case Study 1: Copyright Law applicable in Samoa

Your task is to prepare a brief outline of copyright law in Samoa. The first step is to open your web browser, and type in www.paclii.org into the browser's address bar. Tip: You can save time by saving the PacLII homepage as a favourite in your browser. See Short cut to a web page in Module 2. Type a relevant search query in the box provided in the top middle of the PacLII homepage. As the research question is broad, use the words copyright law and Samoa.
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Legal Research
The results page will look something like this:
The list above provides links to one source with a 100% match to the search query copyright law and Samoa. Our original search phrase appears to have been too restrictive, although the Journal article link looks like it could provide a good summary on copyright in the South Pacific. The journal article is an example of a secondary source of legal research material.
3.18
Legal Research
It is important to establish the legislative context of copyright law. On the Internet, there are two sites hosting reproductions of Samoan legislation. In this example, we will access the legislation section of the Samoan Parliaments website:
Figure 10 : Parliament of Samoa homepage, with the legislation link highlighted
3.19
Legal Research
The list on the right hand side of the legislation page provides direct links to legislative material. You can scroll down the list and click on legislation you may think is relevant to copyright law in Samoa. However, when you click on Copyright Act 1998, the pop-up window displays the Act title and the date of commencement, but shows no further link to a copy of the Act. Your alternative is to go to a law library and find the hard copy of the Copyright Act, or you could try PacLII again.
3.20
Legal Research
You know from the list of legislation on the Samoan Parliament website that the Copyright Act was passed in 1998. Therefore, when you return to the Samoan section of the PacLII website you know you might be able to find it by searching for the legislation under the correct date:
The page to browse Samoan sessional legislation passed from 1996 to the present day looks like this:
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Legal Research
Figure 11: Samoa Legislation index page As you can see, the Copyright Act 1998 can be found by browsing under C or under 1998. The figure below shows the page containing Samoan legislation beginning with the letter C.
3.22
Legal Research
Now that you have located a copy of the relevant legislation, you may now want to search for some case law relevant to copyright legislation.
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Legal Research
A good way of targeting your search is to use PacLIIs advanced search facility. Here you can limit your search to a single database or selection of databases. In the figure below, you can see the search for the term Copyright Act 1988 is limited to a collection of databases identified as Samoa: All cases.
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Legal Research
The results page returns the following two cases:
Now you have accumulated three good sources of information relevant to copyright law in Samoa, including:
a journal article on intellectual property law in the Pacific a copy of the Samoan copyright legislation links to two cases on copyright law in Samoa
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Legal Research
Case Study 2: Rights of accused on arrest

You are asked to research the legal issues surrounding the following factual circumstance:
An accused person had told police he wanted to see his lawyer prior to being questioned The police questioned him without his lawyer During the questioning, the accused person did not maintain his right to silence
You are to present your findings based on research across multiple jurisdictions. The example research path identified below will only pursue one avenue of inquiry. If you fully researched the issue, the volume of information across jurisdictions could be enormous. It is considered best practice to manage and record your research efforts so you can properly organise the results according to the particular facts of the case. Tip! When you are searching on the Internet, if you find a good source of information, you can save the location of the source using the favourites function in your Internet browser see Short cut to a web page in Module 2 for instruction on using favourites. Identify the jurisdictions you want to research. Of most relevance to Samoa, the list might include:
Samoa neighbouring Pacific nations New Zealand Australia United Kingdom
Following the steps of legal research, first you need to identify the problem. Identify the broad topic areas and brainstorm key words and phrases: Criminal Law Evidence Rights of accused Right to legal representation right to silence, Police powers, fair trial, police questioning. Identify and brainstorm possible legislation names: Crimes Act, Criminal Code Evidence Act Police Act.
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Legal Research
The next thing to do is to research the law. The terms evidence law and criminal law are fairly broad search phrases and may not return good results through an Internet or database search. Finding a textbook with those subjects may give you a good starting point however. Textbooks usually provide:
useful summaries of the law of a particular area other more useful search terms and research paths to pursue
In terms of Internet searching, a good place to start would be the WorldLII site, because we are searching across jurisdictions: In the WorldLII search window at http://www.worldlii.org/, type in the search query evidence AND police questioning. Click on Search and you should see a results screen that looks like this:
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Legal Research
As you can see, the search query returned over 500 entries. In an effort to narrow the search, and restrict it only to the jurisdictions you are interested in covering, click on the By database tab at the top of the results display. This will sort the results to show from which database (eg which Court, legislative, or secondary source) the material has come from. Scrolling down the results returned by database, you will come across results from databases that will be more relevant to your query. The figure below shows a few of the databases that you might consider looking into further:
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Legal Research
Often Law Reform Commissions and other judicial and legislative reform bodies also have useful overviews of the current state of law in a particular area. You will note the New Zealand Commission database contains 41 entries on the search query evidence AND police questioning.
You will notice the Commission has produced a report specifically on Police Questioning. Although it is secondary material, because it is not law laid down by the judiciary or the legislature, it could provide useful background material and point to other primary sources.
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Legal Research
If you click on the NZLC Report 31 Police Questioning, the following message will appear:
Obviously, this is disappointing. Before leaving this page, however, it is a good opportunity for you to help improve WorldLII by reporting the issue by clicking on the feedback address form.
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Legal Research
Because the Law Report you are after hasnt shown up on WorldLII, it might be a good strategy to perform a search over the whole Internet for the report. Try typing NZLC Report 31 Police Questioning into the Google search engine.
If you click on the second of the links shown above, you will arrive at the section of the Law Commissions site containing the report.
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Legal Research
Note the size of the report 2, 712 kilobytes, or around 2.7 megabytes. On slow Internet connections, this may take some time to download. The final step in your research is to apply the results of your research. You can achieve this by scanning the Law Commission Report and highlighting of areas you think may be useful in presenting an answer to your research topic. As you can see, typing the simple search query into WorldLII led you across a huge range of potentially relevant material. Your task now is to constantly refine that search to come up with a definable set of relevant research materials. For example, you have found a useful secondary source in the form of a New Zealand Law Commission report, but you now may want to get specific about a particular jurisdiction, and you might as well choose Samoa. You need to find a primary source of law that answers the following legal question: Does a suspect have the right to access legal representation after being arrested but before being questioned?
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Legal Research
You will remember that one of the key words on the subject was evidence. Use this as a starting point.
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Legal Research
The results returned from the search query above will look like this:
The third entry in the search results looks like it could give you some solid information for your query.
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Legal Research
Clicking on the Criminal Procedure Act 1972 link produces the following page:
Immediately, after a quick scan of the page, a couple of points should jump out at you. As indicated above, section 9 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1972 seems to provide some pretty solid information about rights and obligations on arrest.
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Legal Research
Scrolling down the page to the relevant section confirms that the document contains information about rights and obligations on arrest.
As you can see, the section refers to clauses under the Constitution, which is another source you should be able to find on the Internet. The extent you research is obviously dependent on the context of your original brief. You have really only started to research the topics in this case study, but you should have gained an understanding of some of the techniques involved in tackling legal problems using your Internet search skills.
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Legal Research
Case Study 3: Defamation law in Samoa

You have been asked to prepare some material relating to case law in Samoa. By now you should be getting familiar with using the Internet, and in particular PacLII, to track down legal resources effectively. Since defamation is a word of definite meaning within a legal consequence, you should be able to target the relevant sources of law quickly. In the PacLII Full Search window type the word defamation into the query field, and select Samoa: All legislation. Your results page should look something like this:
Right away, you have hit on the primary source of law relating to defamation law in Samoa. Now, use the same search phrase defamation in the Samoa: All cases search limiting category.
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Legal Research
The result will look like the following, giving you numerous cases to look through to improve your understanding of the application of defamation law in Samoa.
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Legal Research
List of other useful sites for legal research

The list of sites below represents a small slice of an enormous range of legal material available on the Internet. Many legal publishers, such as Thomson, CCH, and Lexis Nexis also have good legal research tools available online, but these are only available on subscription. www.comlaw.gov.au The Australian Attorney-Generals Department maintain this comprehensive collection of all Commonwealth legislation and legislative instruments. www.austlii.edu.au The original Legal Information Institute, AusLII is probably the most comprehensive resource of legal material for any one country freely available on line. www.alrc.gov.au The Australian Law Reform Commission website contains the Commissions publications on a range of topics predominately concerning legislative reform. www.nzlii.org The New Zealand Legal Information Institute is much smaller and less comprehensive than AustLII, with a greater focus on case law than legislation.
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3

Introduction to Internet Legal research

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Four steps of legal research

Laying Down the Law, 6th ed. by Cook et al (2005)

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

How to use search engines

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Using search operators

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

WHAT IT DOES AND WHEN TO USE IT

Examples of search engines

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

The PacLII website

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

The PacLII homepage looks like this:

Figure 2: PacLII home page

What does PacLII cover?

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Primary sources of Samoan Law

Secondary sources of Samoan Law

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Pacific Islands Law Materials

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Why should you use PacLII?

Court System Government Sources of Law

the Samoan Parliament the Pacific Law Journal Index

How do I use it?

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

The WorldLII site

Figure 5: Pacific Islands Regional Portal on the WorldLII site

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Pacific Law Pathfinders

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Figure 8: Globalex Introduction to Researching South Pacific Law page

Law Librarian of the University of the South Pacific

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Case Study 1: Copyright Law applicable in Samoa

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

The results page will look something like this:

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Figure 10 : Parliament of Samoa homepage, with the legislation link highlighted

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

The results page returns the following two cases:

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Case Study 2: Rights of accused on arrest

Samoa neighbouring Pacific nations New Zealand Australia United Kingdom

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia

Copyright 2007 Commonwealth of Australia