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Comparative Indigenous Law

Cases​

Finding judicial consideration of legislative provisions 

The following sections will help you find cases that have considered a particular section of legislation.

Selected/ Leading Cases​

To find selected or leading cases use secondary sources such as books and commentary. 

All Cases​

In CanLII (open access):

  • Type the name of the Act in the Legislation Title search box on the home page. 
  • Scroll to the section number and click on the hyperlinked section or sub-section number - a pop-up box will tell you how many documents cite this provision. Click on the link to see the citing cases. These can be viewed by jurisdiction, court level, etc. 

In WestlawNext Canada (UniMelb staff & student access):

  • Either go to Statutes and Regulations from the home page and navigate to your Act, or start to type the name of the Act in the top search box (autocomplete will find the Act for you).
  • Navigate to the section
  • Click on the Citing References button at the top of the screen, and click on Cases and Decisions in the drop-down menu. On the next page, the cases can then be sorted by sub-section, jurisdiction, court level, citation frequency, and treatment type.

TIP: While most of the same cases will be found in both the above databases, they will have slightly different coverage, so if you want to find as many cases as possible on your legislative provision, use both databases! For example, a search for s 35 of the Constitution Act 1982, shows that CanLII has fewer cases citing s 35 and all its sub-sections than Westlaw. However, CanLII has more cases citing sub-section 35(2) than Westlaw. 

NOTE: The online databases referred to above generally only have coverage from the 1990s to current. To find older cases considering statutory provisions, you will need to use the print Canadian Statute Citations (previously called the Statutes Judicially Considered).