Law: Canadian Law

• Canadian Law,  KS 1 – KS 600
• Canadian Constitutional Law,  KS 11. 
• Politics section for Canada, JL, e.g. JL 27 for federalism and JL 187 for human rights
• History section, e.g. E 92 for North American aboriginal rights

E-books with Canadian law content include Oxford Scholarship Online and the ebrary Academic Complete Collection.

The boxes on this page cover the most common questions regarding our resources for Canadian law.  For more detailed information, you may wish to see the Canadian Law Resources and Research guide (link below).    This also includes lists of key resources and additional readings.

Westlaw – accessing the Canadian content using the new international interface. 

1.    Open Westlaw from library web pages.

2.    Under 'More resources' click on 'Westlaw International'

3.    Click 'Continue' in the pop-up box

4.    You will see Canada listed under 'Jurisdictions'

5.    After selecting Canada, you can search across all Canadian content using the main simple search box at the top, or first choose your source (e.g. 'All Canadian Cases', 'All Canadian Treatises' etc.)

6.    You will probably find this relatively easy to use, but please ask for guidance when you need to.

1.   Open Lexis+

2.   Under the search bar select 'International'

3    Choose Canada from the list

4.   You can then search everything or search by: Cases, Secondary Materials, Legislation, Dictionaries and Forms & Precedents    

If you have a citation, e.g.

[1998] 1 S.C.R. 27,

first try searching using only that.  Look to see if the source you are using has a ‘Find by Citation’ option, type in the citation and this will usually work.   

Some journals deal solely or primarily with the issues at the heart of Canadian constitutional law, e.g.:

• Review of Constitutional Studies, all published issues of which are on HeinOnline
• Indigenous Law Journal (from University of Toronto Law Faculty), also on HeinOnline 

In addition to these, we have online access to a number of Canadian university law journals/reviews.  Constitutional issues are also published in politics journals so check the journal articles on the politics subject page. See also our general law journals page (via tab above).

There are many places to find free law for Canada and there will be times when such places are easier to use than the subscription services!  Please do be aware, however, that the subscription sources will have more of a commitment to keeping up to date, for example by showing case histories and subsequent developments.

If in doubt, start your search with WorldLII, which lists and describes free sources only after evaluating them.

• WorldLII:Canada