Secondary & tertiary materials

Extrinsic materials provide guidance on the meaning behind, and the intended purposes of, an Act of Parliament. Extrinsic materials are materials which do not form part of the Act itself, but assist in the interpretation of the Act. Extrinsic materials exist in a grey area between primary and secondary legal materials.

For more information about extrinsic materials, see our Legislation guide:

Articles discuss current trends and provide arguments on topical subjects. A major part of your studies as a student will be finding, reading and analysing articles published in journals.

Articles from peer-reviewed journals (or refereed journals) have been evaluated by researchers working within the disciplines covered by the journals. If you're unsure whether a journal is peer-reviewed, search the journal title in UlrichsWeb to check if it has a peer-review publishing policy.

For more information on peer-reviewed articles, see our introductory guide to researching:

Books are useful for finding both overviews and in-depth information on a topic. A book's table of contents will identify key concepts within the topic of the book. Books will also reference or cite significant cases to support an argument, allowing you to use these citations to lead you to further relevant materials for your research.

Legal commentaries and updating services provide guidance in applying the law on a particular subject area.

Written by subject specialists, practitioners and academics, commentary services provide an explanation of laws using a mix of commentary, legislation (full text or extracts) and key cases. Many commentary services include in-depth, practical insights together with extensive illustrative material, enabling an appreciation of both the technical and procedural aspects of the law.

Printed commentaries were known as loose-leaf services and were published as a series of unbound pages, often stored in a ring binder, and regularly updated. Updates would consist of packs of pages that would replace out-dated information and need to be inter-filed into the existing binder. Even though these services are available online there has been little change in the format, presentation and content from the printed versions.