Study Guides: Secondary Sources in Law : Finding Encyclopedia Entries Relating to a Case

Legal encyclopaedias don't tend to have entries on specific cases, however:

they will often refer to particular cases in the footnotes of an entry on a legal topic. You can search the full text of the encyclopaedia for entries that mention a specific case.
Alternatively, it is possible to work backwards from the case to the encyclopaedia. Once you have located a case in a legal database (such as Lexis Advance Pacific), it will generally provide a selection of links to secondary materials, including encyclopaedia entries - and you can use that function to look up legal terms used in that case.

Go to Lexis Advance Pacific
Click on Advanced Search and then choose AU Cases
Locate the relevant case
Navigate to the About section on the right side of the page
Click on the Find references to this case link
Select AU Secondary Materials
From the Narrow By window on the left, choose Halsbury's Laws of Australia to limit your secondary sources to materials found in Halsbury's Laws of Australia.

Note: for some cases, there may not be any related secondary materials.

Lexis Advance Pacific Lexis Advance Pacific provides citation information and full text reports for many Australian and overseas cases, as well as links to journal articles and other secondary materials.

Go to the Laws of Australia (part of Westlaw AU)
Click on Search TOC
Enter the case citation as your search term (for example, 175 CLR 1). (If you don't have a case citation, you can enter party names.
Click Search
Encyclopedia entries from the Laws of Australia (where that case has been mentioned) will be displayed.

Note: for some cases, there may not be any related secondary materials.

The Laws of Australia A legal encyclopedia focusing on topics relevant to the Australian jurisdiction.

Secondary Sources in Law : Finding Encyclopedia Entries Relating to a Case