InSITE
A Current Awareness Service of
Cornell Law Library

ISSN 1521-9046

ARCHIVE

Vol. 3, no. 14
March 9th, 1998
InSITE highlights selected law-related World Wide Web sites in two ways: as an annotated publication issued electronically and in print; and as a keyword-searchable database.

The law librarians at Cornell evaluate potentially useful Web sites, select the most valuable ones, and provide commentary and subject access to them. These information can be accessed as following:

Department of Law - University of Dundee (Scotland)
URL: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/law/
The Dundee University law school has an interesting variety of resources on their website. "General Legal Information" brings up links to databases for the Acts of Parliament, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Hansard Reports, Statutory Instruments, several U.K. legal Internet resources, and an impressive series of links to general legal and reference resources such as Hieros Gamos, legal.net, and the Cambridge University Library (http://www.cam.ac.uk/Hytelnet/uk0/uk000.html), which gives the user access to all U.K. university library catalogues. Other topical divisions--e.g. family law, public international law, immigration and nationality, law schools and the British legal profession--have one or more links to resources such as the European Union, the European Court of Justice, Gabriel (the server for European national libraries), with several European mirror sites. Roman law websites are located under "miscellaneous". There are also links to newspapers, search engines and general information--e.g. BBC Online, the Economist, the Press Association, the Times and other important newspapers, and the yellow pages. Finally, the Department of Law sponsors a Charity Law Research Unit, which studies the law of charitable and voluntary associations, producing research on local government, regulations, and comparative law of Europe and North America.

Encyclopedia of Law and Economics
URL: http://encyclo.findlaw.com
The Encyclopedia of Law and Economics is a 3000-page resource billed as "a survey of the whole law and economics literature," with authoritative reviews of the literature and substantial bibliographies for dozens of topics. In print form the Encyclopedia will be published by Edward Elgar as a 5-volume set, with the University of Ghent providing free access to an Internet version. As of this writing there are only two literature reviews, on institutional economics and "foreseeability, precaution, causation, and mitigation." The unannotated bibliographies of primarily English-language books, articles, theses and symposia are divided into the topics of history and methodology, private and common property, environmental regulation, tort law and unjust enrichment, civil and criminal procedure, criminal law, and production of legal rules. Each topic is further broken down into subject areas (e.g. intellectual property, zoning, war law). Surveys of non-English publications cover selected countries, mostly European. The website provides further links to many online law and economics resources, including working papers, journals, pertinent associations, websites, academic resources, and consultants. The electronic version of the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics lives at Findlaw, with a European site at the University of Ghent (http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~gdegeest/).

Government of Canada
URL: http://canada.gc.ca/main_e.html
A comparatively easy to use website with a simple search engine. Under "What's New" are press releases and announcements of governmental appointments, economic development and business agreements, notices of added websites for government agencies, new federal programs, and reports on the government's response to the January 1998 ice storm. Home pages for federal organizations are arranged alphabetically; "programs and services" are by topic (e.g. business and economics, government forms, resources for new or potential immigrants, customs/tariff information). The Government Overview section houses the prime minister's home page, as well as the text of most Acts and regulations published in the Consolidated Statutes, available in text or Folio Views versions, with individual links to the most frequently requested federal laws. In addition to home pages for federal departments and agencies this site also offers a searchable directory of federal employees. The clear organization of the materials makes this an easier-to-use resource for Canadian government information than the Directory of Federal Government Enquiry Points (reviewed in InSITE vol. 3 no. 5).

Guide to Scots Law
URL: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~athanasp/ToC.HTML
Scotland has a legal system distinct from that of England, with its own history and institutions. This fledgling website, created by Evi C. Athanasekou of the University of Glasgow, provides an introduction to Scots law, with sections on its Celtic, Roman, and Norse antecedents, the structure of the legislature and court system, and a glossary. Brief answers are given to queries on legal issues of marriage and the family, the workplace, property, housing, and consumer rights. A "yellow pages" section lists legal societies, law firms, and universities offering degrees in Scots law. There is also a link to "Court on the Web", describing the workings of the British legal system, and links to the Law Society of England, the European Union, and other legal sites of interest.

©1998 Cornell Law Library

The contents of this publication and any recommendations therein are the opinions of the authors and do not reflect the views of Cornell University.