Note: All the current Authorised report series for all Commonwealth, Federal, and all Supreme Courts of Australian states are available on Westlaw AU.
Bills Digests are written by the parliamentary library. They provide a timely and independent perspective on legislation. They are written to assist members of Parliament in their consideration of Bills. The digests provide a plain English summary of Bills and detail their purpose, background and main provisions complementing the legislative material provided by the Government.
Queensland does not have a bills digest.
Explanatory Memoranda (EM) explain the contents and purpose of a bill in plain English. Explanatory Memoranda contain a clause by clause description of a bill.
In the Federal Parliament Commonwealth Explanatory Memoranda came into regular use from about 1978/1982 and are kept with bills. Explanatory Statements have been issued for Commonwealth Regulations since 1993.
The Parliamentary Libraries prepare papers on legislation before the Parliament and on major issues of interest to members. Papers cover a broad range of subject areas including law, politics, government, environment, economics and social issues
Before you search for Journal Articles you need to understand the topic you are looking for.
Legal dictionaries and encyclopaedias are a good starting point. They help you gain an overview on the legal concept you are researching.
Using these you will find the term and can gain not only an understanding of what the concept is, but also key cases that have considered this topic.
We have the following you can choose from:
Using a dictionary, Look up the term frustration. We can see that frustration is a reason that a contract is terminated due to an unexpected event that fundamentally or radically changes the outcome of the contract in terms of performance or benefits.
When we run our search we know that we are looking for articles about an unexpected contract outcome, not about someone getting annoyed.
Law journal articles are often given using an abbreviated form of the journal title.
So how do you find out what the title of the journal is from the abbreviated form (or citation).
The best database to use is the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations.
This is a worldwide index so always make sure you have the right journal. More often than not you will be wanting the Australian jurisdiction.
You will need to know how to find the full name of a journal as the Australian Guide to Legal Citation 4 (AGLC4) states in section 5.5 (page 93) that you need to enter the full name of the journal in the citation (footnote) not the abbreviation.
Find the meaning of law journal and law report abbreviations, for example: