If you have an exact title add ti= (eg. ti=Emergency Medicine)
Find guidance and essential resources for medical ethics and law including ethics in clinical practice and health and medical law by clicking through the blue tabs above. If you have suggestions for additional guides or require research assistance, contact us at library@monashhealth.org.
Cases are judgments handed down by Courts and Tribunals. The best freely available case law resources are:
AustLII : Open access to unreported decisions from courts and tribunals in Australia and NZ. AustLII offers powerful and broad ranging search tools across it’s databases. You can limit via the Advanced Search option, or navigate to a relevant jurisdiction or Court or Tribunal and select “database searching” for more targeted searching.
LawCite a freely available and international case law citator which provide information about the judicial history of a case (subsequent citations and cases cited within the decision) and other basic data such as the jurisdiction, judge/s, dates, parties and law report citations. It is possible to search LawCite by citation, case name or subject keywords.
Jade : a resource developed by Australian barristers for the legal profession, Jade offers the best of both worlds - full text case law searching and a case citator which finds all references to a case. It is also possible to use Jade to find relevant citations at the paragraph/point of law level. Set up a free Jade account for preferences and alerts.
Subscription based case law resources available from law libraries include CaseBase and FirstPoint.
How cases are formally published - Law Reporting
Every decision starts out as an unreported judgment in what is know as a medium neutral format. All of the case law published on AustLII is unreported and cited medium neutral. Decisions are then selected by the judge or judicial editorial board to be included in the jurisdiction’s authorised report series, or by publishers for reporting in a subject series (un-authorised law reports). Each jurisdiction has only one authorised report series and it is always preferable to rely on decisions from authorised reports, because they have been selected for their legal precedent and they are considered to have an impact beyond the parties involved.
In Victoria, the key law report series is the VRs (Victorian Reports). The authorised federal reports are the CLRs (Commonwealth Law Reports) and FCRs (Federal Court Reports). For definitions of law report abbreviations, see the reference materials tab in this guide.
Authoritative and freely available resources for federal and Victorian legislation are:
Victorian Legislation and Parliamentary documents : click on Victorian Law Today for all Victorian Acts and Regulations currently in force and consolidated with amendments. Historical consolidations are available from each item’s home page, showing the legislation at different points in time. Original versions of legislation as passed by parliament are available in the Victorian Statute Book from the home page.
Health.vic Health Legislation : links to and information about the legislation administered by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.
Federal Register of Legislation : the authorised Commonwealth site for federal legislation. Note the regulations appear under ‘Legislative Instruments’. Navigate or search for a particular piece of legislation to access the most recent consolidation in PDF or information such as previous consolidations and amendment history.
Legify : an incredibly simple yet powerful tool which will connect you wil the most up to date and authorised version of legislation. Simply start typing the name of the legislation you need to locate and select from the dropdown list. Legify will then take you to the legislation on the relevant federal or state government website.
Key health legislation:
Extrinsic materials are documents which can be used in court or legal analysis to help determine the intention of a piece of legislation. This information is also included under primary materials.
Parliamentary extrinsic material:
Parliamentary debates (Hansard) particularly second reading speeches
Cth HoR Hansard | Cth Senate Hansard | Victorian Hansard
Bills and their explanatory memoranda (EMs)
Commonwealth Bills | Victorian Bills
Reports of Royal Commissions and Committees of Inquiry
Royal Commissions & Committees of Inquiry, 1902 to date | APH Tabled Papers Register
Also see:
Law reform publications are include issues papers, background and discussion papers, and full reports. They are produced by Law Reform Commissions which are appointed by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments to undertake enquiries in specific areas and recommend reforms.
These publications are an excellent source of information about new areas of law and the intentions behind changes to the law. They are also useful to researchers because they provide an in-depth analysis and review of particular areas of law as well as defects in the system and legal principles.
All Publications:
AustLII Australasian Law Reform Library
Australian Law Reform Bodies:
Commonwealth - Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC)
Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC)
Law Reform Commission of Western Australia
NSW Law Reform Commission (NSWLRC)
NT Law Reform Committee
Queensland Law Reform Commission (QLRC)
South Australian Law Reform Institute
Tasmania Law Reform Institute
Key law reform reports for Victorian health professionals:
Assisted Reproductive Technology and Adoption Final Report, VLRC, 2007
Elder Abuse - A National Legal Response, ALRC Report 131, 2017
Genes and Ingenuity: Gene patenting and human health, ALRC Report 99, 2004
Guardianship Final Report, VLRC, 2012
Law of Abortion Final Report, VLRC, 2008
Medicinal Cannabis Report, VLRC, 2012
Protection of Human Genetic Information, ALRC, 2003
Commentary services are just that - they comment on the law. Commentary covers specific subject areas, is updated regularly and provides references to case law and legislation.
Online commentary has now replaced loose-leaf services and many law reporters. The main commentary databases (CCH Intelliconnect, Lexis Advance and WestlawAU) are subscription based and available from law libraries.
The following commentary resources are available open access:
Subscription based legal alerts are available from law libraries.
The following news services are freely available:
Citation guidance:
Australian Legal Guide to citation (AGLC4) : the fourth edition of the AGLC is freely available in PDF from Melbourne University.
Abbreviations:
Monash University legal abbreviations : an excellent and thorough Australian guide to the meaning of abbreviations in legal citations and publications.
Cardiff Index to legal abbreviations : global database covering law reports, periodicals and other legal publications.
Calculators:
Doleman Bateman Online Calculators : go to the Lawyers Section of this website for access to a wide range on online calculators, including pre and post judgment interest, personal injury, past and future economic loss, taxation, damages and multipler tables. You will need to create an individual user account to use this website but this is free.
Terminology:
Victoria Law Foundation Legal Glossary : plain English guide to commonly used legal terms (PDF).
Victoria Legal Aid Legal Words : an online list of terms from the courts and legal system.
The Law Handbook Glossary : the glossary section of the popular law handbook from The Fitzroy Legal Service.
Legal Industry:
Findlaw : a free database of legal information and articles, as well as profiles of lawyers in Australia.
Australian Legal Directory : facilitates searches of legal issues or the names of practitioners and firms.
A list of key journals on health and medical law are available below. Additional journals are available from our eJournal list. If you require an article from a journal outside of our collection, you may complete our request a book or journal article form and we will endeavour to obtain it from another library for you.
You can track new articles from the above journal titles by downloading the Read mobile app. To download the app, click the logo below:
Also see our video instructions on how to set up Read by QxMD. Further guidance on keeping up to date and tracking new research is available in our keeping up to date guide.
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