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Andrew Taylor› Academic Services Librarian Faculty of Business, Law and Criminology

Reviewing case law is essential for understanding how legislation is interpreted and applied by the courts. It is not sufficient to read only the statute; you must also study relevant case law to gain a complete picture of the law. Using 'Cases Search', you can search for case law by party names, citation, or keywords. To find cases citing a particular section of an Act, you can use the 'More options' filter for legislation and specify the section. If you are already viewing a section of an Act in Westlaw UK, you can use the 'Judicial Interpretation' tool to quickly see edited summaries of how judges have interpreted different sections in case law. 

Cases Search

If you are unsure how to access Westlaw UK, please see 'How do I access Westlaw?'

From the Westlaw UK homepage, select the 'Cases' tab at the top of the screen. Then, click on 'Cases Search' from the dropdown menu to go to the case search page. 

Here, you can search by:

• Party names (case name) by entering them in the 'Parties' box, e.g. 'Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers'.

• Citation in the 'Citation' box, including traditional law report citations or neutral citations.

• Keywords or subjects in the 'Subject/Keyword' box.

• Any term that appears in the full text by using the 'Free Text' box.

• For more precise searching, click 'More options' to use additional filters, such as legislation cited, courts, date range, judges, or cases cited.

After entering your search terms, click 'Search', and a list of matching cases will appear. You can then click into individual cases to read full texts, case summaries, and case analysis documents.

Finding Case Law from Legislation

If you have found a piece of legislation in Westlaw UK, you can see which cases have interpreted or applied it. To do this:

1. View the section or provision of the Act.
2. Click on 'Primary References' (in the left-hand menu).
3. Under 'Key Cases Citing' and 'All Cases Citing', you will see lists of cases that have cited that provision.
4. Click on any case to read the judgment.

'Judicial Interpretation' Tool

Westlaw's 'Judicial Interpretation' tool provides edited summaries of judges' interpretations of different sections of a piece of legislation. When you click into a section, the 'Judicial Interpretation' tool will appear on the left-hand side. Clicking this brings up a list of example cases where a judge has cited the section of the legislation. The list includes an edited summary of the judge's treatment, as well as a link to the case.

Statutory Interpretation

It can be helpful to understand the techniques judges use to interpret legislation. This will help you analyse case law and predict how courts might apply legislation to new situations.

Judges use various principles and rules to interpret statutes, including:

• Literal rule. Give words their ordinary, natural meaning.
• Golden rule. Modify the literal meaning to avoid absurd results.
• Mischief rule. Consider the problem ('mischief') Parliament intended to remedy.
• Purposive approach. Interpret the statute to achieve its underlying purpose.

Following the case of Pepper v Hart, courts may (in limited circumstances) refer to parliamentary debates in Hansard to resolve ambiguity about Parliament's intention.

Please contact me if you need any help finding case law.

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