Self Paced Lesson - Legislation - Subject Guide: 4: Judicial Consideration of an Act - Cth

Source Cases Considering and Act in Lexis Advance Using CaseBase

Lexis Advance can be accessed via the link on the Law Subject Guide.  

Lexis Advance contains an extensive collection of Australian legal databases.
One of these is CaseBase, which is a case citator and digest service.
This means that it enables you to find the details of a case from its citation, and also provide a lot of information about a case.
You will look at CaseBase more closely when you look at researching case law.
For our purposes now, CaseBase enables you to see how a particular section of an Act has been judicially considered.
Judicial consideration of a section of an Act means that a particular section of an Act has been the subject of a tribunal or court case where a judge or judicial officer has considered (interpreted or discussed) it. 

Task: Use CaseBase on Lexis Advance  to locate case law that judicially considers section 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth).

Once you have accessed Lexis Advance , follow these instructions:

Step 1: Under the Publications list on the right-hand side of the screen, select CaseBase Cases.  Then select Go to Advanced Search from the resulting dropdown menu.

Step 2: On the Advanced Search page, look down the available search boxes until you locate the boxes for Legislation Title and Provision Number. 
In the relevant search box place the information about the Act - in this example we will look for s 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007.
As you begin typing the Act name in the search box, suggestions will be made.
If there is an appropriate suggestion, select it and the search box will be populated with the appropriate information. If a relevant suggestion isn't made - keep typing. (And check your spelling!)

Step 3: Click on Search.

Your search may produce a large number of results; use the Search Within Results option to narrow your search.
Search within your results to find cases that discuss section 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth) with reference to the term underage applicant.

In some instances, Acts and the section you are interested in do not match up, i.e. the case returned in the results deals with the same Act, but the particular section matches a different Act.

Make sure that the cases you find are dealing with the correct section of the correct Act in the correct jurisdiction.
The case is not relevant unless all three are correct.
To check this, click on the name of the case in the results list and open the CaseBase entry for the case.
Select Legislation considered by this case. 
This table will show you the legislation name, jurisdiction and the relevant provisions of that Act that have been considered in this case.  

The table below shows the legislation considered by Govekar v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (2010) 117 ALD 543.

This table confirms that the case judicially considers s 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth) and therefore is relevant to our search.

LawNow on Lexis Advance

LawNow is a database available on Lexis Advance which contains current national legislation for all Australian Federal, State and Territory jurisdictions, as well as related materials including judicial consideration of Acts and sections of Acts.
Note: to ensure you are always looking at an up to date and authoritative text of the legislation, use the Federal Register of Legislation.

Task: Use LawNow on Lexis Advance to locate case law that judicially considers section 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth).

Step 1: From the central Quick Find box, select the Legislation tab.
Note that the default search is LawNow Legislation

Step 2: Type in the details you know: Act tile and section number.
Note : only use the section number, not part designation such as s or cl

Step 3: Select Search

Step 4:  Select the result title: Subdivision B—Citizenship by conferral

Step 5: Navigate to section 21

Step 6: Select the link to  View Legislation Citator

You will now see any mentions of this section anywhere in any of the Lexis Advance products included in the Murdoch University Library's subscription.
You can scroll down to view the different types of results, or select the type of material you are looking for under 
In this document at the top of the page (e.g. cases).

LawNow Long Method

Step 1: Under the Publications list on the right-hand side of the screen, locate LawNow Legislation.  You may need to click on More and scroll down to find it.
Once you have found LawNow Legislation, click the arrow to the left of the publication title.

Step 2: This will result in a dropdown menu which allows you to choose the jurisdiction in which you are interested.
In this case, as we are looking for the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth), select LawNow Legislation CTH - - Legislation.
Then select Browse Legislation from the dropdown menu that appears.

You will be taken to the LawNow Commonwealth Legislation homepage.
While the appropriate source for your Commonwealth Legislation is Federal Register of Legislation, LawNow is regularly updated and you can see the currency information on this page.
It is worth being aware of this if you plan to look at the text of the Act in Lexis Advance.

Step 3: The Act we are looking for, the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth), is still in force.
On the LawNow Commonwealth Legislation page select Current Acts underneath the Acts column of the table.

If you were looking for an Act and you were unsure if it was still in force, select All Acts by Title.
This includes all current and ceased Acts.

Step 4: You will be then taken to an alphabetical listing of all current Commonwealth Acts. Select A, and scroll down the list until you locate the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth) .
Click on the title.

Step 5: Scroll through the contents of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth) LawNow page and locate s 21.
Click on the title of the section.

Step 6: You will be taken to the text of the section.  Click on View Legislation Citator to the right of the section title.

You will now see any mentions of this section anywhere in any of the Lexis Advance products included in the Murdoch University Library's subscription.
You can scroll down to view the different types of results, or select the type of material you are looking for under 
In this document at the top of the page (e.g. cases).

Judicial Consideration of an Act on Westlaw Australia

Westlaw Australia can be accessed via the link on the Law Subject Guide.  

You will be taken to the search results page.
Make sure that you look closely at the results and ensure that each case is actually considering the right section of the right Act in the right jurisdiction.

At the time of writing, this search returned more than 700 results.
It is again important to check the accuracy of the results.

Below is a screen shot of one of the cases,  XJDS v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, which was returned as a result from the search.
You can see that the correct Act and section in the correct jurisdiction appears in this case.

You can use the same strategies to source information regarding State legislation.
Always make sure that you check your results to ensure that the cases you find are discussing the correct section of the correct Act in the correct jurisdiction.
Sometimes an Act will have the same short title and year but be in a different jurisdiction. 

To be sure, click through the case record and scroll down until you find the heading Legislation Considered then check to see that the correct section, of the correct Act in the correct jurisdiction is being considered.

Results can be filtered by:

AustLII

AustLII can be accessed via the link on the Law Subject Guide.  

AustLII is the Australasian Legal Information Institute and it provides free internet-based access to Australasian legal materials. It is continually adding to its online collection of legislation and law reports with historical materials.
AustLII is a valuable legal research tool as it is available for free, unlike databases such as Lexis Advance and Westlaw AU that require a subscription fee.
Like CaseBase and LawNow on Lexis Advance, AustLII provides information on cases which have judicially considered an act, or section of an act. 

Task: Use AustLII to locate case law that judicially considers section 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth).

Step 1: Go to the AustLII website http://www.austlii.edu.au/.

Step 2: Select CTH from the charcoal banner.

Step 3: Once on the Commonwealth Resources page, scroll down to locate Commonwealth Legislation OR select the Cth Legislation tab at the top of the page, and then select Commonwealth Consolidated Acts.

Step 4: Select 'A' from the charcoal banner to view a list of Commonwealth Consolidated Acts that begin with the letter A.

Step 5: From the alphabetical listing scroll down until you find the Act you want, in this case the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth). Select the title link to open the Act.

Step 6: You will be taken to a page listing the contents of the Act. Scroll down until you locate the section you are looking for (in this example s 21) and click on the blue hyperlinked section number.

Step 7: When the section is open, click on NoteUp references under Cited By on the right-hand side of the screen.

This searches all AustLII databases for reference to the section. However, it is worth noting that some of the items found will be irrelevant and that you need to check for relevance.

For example, if you search for "Australian Citizenship Act 2007" and s 21, you may find cases on your list which refer to the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 and s 21 of some other Act. So again, ensure correct section, correct act, correct jurisdiction!

You may find that your search results in a very large number of hits. There are a few strategies you can try.  Take the example above.  You are looking for judicial consideration of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth) s 21.  Your NoteUp search in AustLII results in over 400 hits and you want to find out if a particular case appears on this list.  In this example, look for the following:

Re Guntapalli and Minister for Immigration and Citizenship [2008] AATA 521. 

You can either:

• Change the way results are displayed, by using the tabs across the top of the results page to sort either By Date, By Databases or By Title, and then browse the list.  You would look for cases starting with "G" in the example given.
• Try adding to the search string.  Take a look at the search string which resulted from your use of NoteUp:
  • You have to use the citation only; the parties' names won't work. 
  • You need to leave out brackets around the year and use inverted commas around the citation (see below). The resulting list is generally much more manageable.
  • If you need to look for more than one case, remove the citation details from the search string and repeat the process with the next citation.

LawCite

LawCite is a freely available case citator from AustLII. LawCite describes itself as "...an automatically generated international legal case and journal article citator". It is something you use to locate judgments and to see how these have been subsequently dealt with and commented upon, or to see where journal articles have been cited. It provides up-to-date access to Australian and international case law, journal articles and where possible provides links to the free full text of these. It is not created by editors and therefore does not apply the criteria that citators like CaseBase on Lexis Advance do.

AustLII can be accessed via the link on the Law Subject Guide.  

Task: Use LawCite to locate case law that judicially considers s 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth).

Step 1:  Access LawCite from the link on the AustLII homepage

Step 2: From the LawCite homepage, enter in the details in the search fields to locate cases that have judicially considered s 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth) then click Search.

At the time of writing this search produced 537 cases.

Explore the search results screen. You can sort the results in the table by clicking on the column headers such as Case Name, Citation(s), Court, Jurisdiction, Date and the source where you can access Full Text.

You can also use the links at the top to jump between cases, law reform reports and journal article results.

Jade

Jade can be accessed via the link on the Law Subject Guide.  

Jade provides all  Australian legal judgments from Australian Courts and Tribunals.

BarNet is a not-for-profit organisation and JADE is one of their initiatives to provide better legal research to the profession.

Register for free with your Murdoch University student email to automatically receive Jade Professional access.

Jade Professional enables the Visualisations feature, and allows the creation of JADE Alerts.

Additionally, the Citation functionality is enhanced (you will need this to complete the lesson and Library Research Test).

Jade is a valuable legal research tool as it is available for free, unlike databases such as Lexis Advance and Westlaw AU that require a subscription fee.

Task: Use Jade to locate case law that judicially considers section 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth).

Step 1: Go to the Jade website https://jade.io/j/.

Step 2: Select By legislature from the Browse collections menu, located to the left of screen

Step 3: Select Commonwealth Legislation - Acts (AULegAct) from the menu

Step 4: Select Au from the list of letters

Step 5: Navigate to Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth)
Tip:  Use Ctrl + F and find the word citizen

Step 6: Select Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth)

Step 7: Navigate to Section 21 Application and eligibility for citizenship

Step 8: Click on the Section title that is hyperlinked to the Section within the legislation

Step 9: Expand the s 21 citations tab content by clicking on the +

Step 10: Browse the list of cases citing section 21 of the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (Cth)

OR

locate a specific case by using Ctrl +F
e.g. Hamdan and Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (Citizenship) [2019] AATA 228
use Ctrl +F to find Hamdan

Note: You will require to be registered for Jade Professional to access the citation feature.
A registration confirmation email, including your temporary password, will be sent to your Murdoch Student email address.
student number@murdoch.student.edu.au

Method 2:

Navigate to the bottom of the legislation to view the citation pane