What is Commentary?
Commentary services are useful research tools, as they are regularly updated and contain succinct legal commentary, with references to legislation and leading and significant cases to illustrate the commentary. Much of the commentary links directly to legislation, cases and other commentary on the same online platform.
Looseleaf commentaries are generally jurisdiction and subject specific. For this reason, looseleaf commentaries usually provide more depth on a topic than encyclopaedias. They contain information particularly useful to legal practitioners and students looking for key case law and legislation on a legal topic.
- Westlaw AustraliaWestlaw Australia is a locally designed platform for Australian law. The platform provides access to case law (including authorised reports) and journals, legislation and commentary, precedents, encyclopaedia and news.
The law library staff have developed some short guides to help you navigate the Westlaw Australia platform. These are listed under Research Tools on the Law Library website.
The below video demonstrates how to search for commentary on Westlaw Australia
While many of the commentary services sit on subscription databases (like CCH, Lexis+ Australia and Westlaw AU), there are a number of open access commentary resources available. The open access services tend to be targeted towards legal practitioners.
- Judicial College of Victoria Manuals and Bench Books (open access) include:
- Uniform Evidence Manual - includes very useful flowcharts
- Civil Procedure Bench Book
- Criminal Charge Book
- Victorian Sentencing Manual
- Charter of Human Rights Bench book and Charter Case Collection
- Judicial Commission of NSW Bench Books and Handbooks (open access) include: