The Open Society Justice Initiative is part of the Open Society Foundations. Established in 2003, the Foundation provides expert legal support through strategic human rights litigation and other legal work.
This database is updated continuously with over 300 current titles. With reports, handbooks, briefing papers, legal and policy submissions, and fact sheets exploring and advocating on issues of human rights and justice.
For more information check the blog post, or for full details see the LibGuide.
PathFinder: A Suite of Multidisciplinary Browse and Search Tools
HeinOnline has just added another research tool to make finding by subjects easier and more intuitive.
Subjects are now grouped in a hierarchy of categories letting users easily browse for what they are looking for. Learn more about how to use this new feature here, or take a look at the video below.
While Rangefindr is extremely helpful for all kinds of criminal sentencing research, it is particularly useful when trying to locate cases that do not lend themselves to keyword searching. For instance, imagine trying to find cases where a lawyer or a police officer is the accused person. It would be very difficult to construct a keyword search to locate only those cases, without bringing up irrelevant results that also involved lawyers or police officers in other capacities. Using Rangefindr, such cases can be identified with just a few clicks.
Instead of using Google-style keyword searching, Rangefindr is a filtering service. To find cases where lawyers were sentenced, one can simply click on the “Accused” category at the top left-hand side of the Rangefindr query page.
Scrolling down through the alphabetical list of filters (also called “tags”), clicking “Lawyer” reveals 63 cases in the Rangefindr database. As soon as the filter is applied, the dispositions in the 63 cases are displayed on the right-hand side of the screen. Apparently the 63 cases involved 4 absolute discharges, 3 conditional discharges, 10 conditional sentences, 2 intermittent sentences, 2 fines, 2 periods of probation and 40 imprisonments.
By clicking “Show Durations”, the display on the right toggles to show a breakdown of the 40 prison sentences. Clicking “View Cases” brings up the results page, which defaults to showing all 63 cases in reverse chronological order.
The cases can also be sorted by “Highest Punishment”, “Lowest Punishment”, “Judge” and “Level of Court”.
Clicking “Tags Associated with this Case” expands the brief case summary to show all of the filters that are associated with the case.
Jurisdictional filters can be added by clicking “Edit Search” and choosing the desired jurisdiction(s) under the “Jurisdiction” category on the left-hand side of the screen. Apparently there are 8 such cases from Manitoba in Rangefindr’s database.
Rangefindr provides links to all of the case results in CanLII (which is where it draws its data from). These links can be accessed for individual cases by clicking on “Download This Case” in the top-right corner.
Though the Rangefindr database is limited in scope (it generally includes appellate cases since 2000 and trial decisions from 2010 onward), it can help researchers quickly identify pertinent cases, particularly when they involve unique factual elements. In case you are wondering, Rangefindr’s filters are applied by human editors who go through a rigorous training process.
“For over 30 years, this book has set forth sentencing principles and analyses in order to help criminal defence lawyers formulate effective submissions to sentencing judges. Sentencing, regarded by many as “the sentencing bible”, canvasses the law of sentencing in a way that no other books on criminal law and sentencing are able: it succinctly outlines all of the significant facets of sentencing principles and procedure, and provides the reader with a comprehensive range of sentencing for various offences.”
New Journals from Emerald Publishing added to HeinOnline!
HeinOnline has added several new journal titles from Emerald Publishing to the Law Journal Library. This includes full text for all past issues of the journals, excluding the 2 most recent years, which are indexed only. Take a look at what these new titles offer.
International Journal of Law and Management – “International Journal of Law and Management (IJLMA) is a leading journal addressing all aspects of regulation and law as they impact on organizational development, operations and leadership. Organizations and their leaders operate in an increasingly complex world of emerging regulation across national and international boundaries. International Journal of Law and Management seeks to acknowledge the dynamics of that environment and provide a platform for articles and contributions to stimulate scholarly debate in the development of law and practice.”
Journal of Financial Crime – “The journal’s articles are authored by some of the leading international scholars and practitioners in the fields of law, criminology, economics, criminal justice and compliance. Consequently, articles are perceptive, evidence based and have policy impact.”
Journal of International Trade Law and Policy – “an international journal receptive, but not limited, to the methods of economics, law, and the social sciences. As scholars tend to read individual articles of particular interest to them, rather than an entire issue, authors are not required to write with full accessibility to readers from all disciplines within the purview of the Journal. However, interdisciplinary communication should be fostered where possible. Thus economists can utilize quantitative methods (including econometrics and statistics), while legal scholars and political scientists can invoke specialized techniques and theories. Appendices are encouraged for more technical material.”
Journal of Property, Planning and Environmental Law – “publishes original legal research contributions for the benefit of scholars, policy makers and practitioners in these areas, including those operating in the fields of legal practice, housing and planning. International in scope and with a commitment to comparative legal studies, the journal publishes scholarly legal articles dealing with the application of law in these areas as well as theoretical and policy orientated research.”
Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management – “provides expert discussion, analysis and strategies to achieve greater effectiveness in police management and law enforcement. Publishing peer-reviewed research articles and case studies, the journal provides a truly global and comparative perspective on policing.”
Upcoming titles include Research in Law and Economics and Studies in Law, Politics, and Society. For full access log in to the Member’s Portal.
HeinOnline has a large collection with multiple ways of searching so it can sometimes be difficult to know if your search is getting the results you are looking for. This tip explains how users can search the actual catalog records for a thorough result. Searching the catalog is a little different that doing a broad search as it uses the Machine Readable Coding used to identify each item.
Check the tip to see simple one-box search methods, or dive deeper into advanced searches. You can even take a look at the Catalog Subjects tool to browse through subject headings.
CanLII is another resource with a large database. Typing in a simple keyword or phrase can bring up thousands of results. One method to narrow that down is to use filters. This tip gives a great overview of how to limit results for cases, legislation, and commentary by using filters like jurisdiction, dates, and subjects.
Still can’t find what you are looking for? Email us at library@lawsociety.mb.ca and we can help you with using these resources or track down what you’re looking for.
When should you consider reviewing decisions from foreign jurisdictions when conducting legal research? Does it depend on the issue – is it so localized that only Manitoba decisions will be persuasive? Or is it national in scope, so looking at other Canadian jurisdictions is helpful? Or, do you need to go even further, to international common law jurisdictions?
The authors of A Global Community of Courts? Modelling the Use of Persuasive Authority as a Complex Network examined the contents of the vLex database (available to you behind the Members Portal) “to quantify the flow of jurisprudence across the countries in our corpus and to explore the factors that may influence a judge’s selection of foreign jurisprudence.”
If judges are looking at it, shouldn’t you? Our subscription to vLex includes Canadian, U.S. and U.K. decisions. If you need help using it, review our guide or view the introductory webinar available after signing in to the members portal.
There is a growing discussion in the legal literature of an emerging global community of courts composed of a network of increasing judicial dialogue across national borders. We investigate the use of foreign persuasive authority in common law countries by analyzing the network of citations to case law in a corpus of over 1.5 million judgments given by the senior courts of twenty-six common law countries.
The Manitoba Law Library would like to acknowledge with gratitude that we are situated on Treaty One Territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree and Dakota peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.
Printing and Photocopying
If you need to use the library’s printing and photocopying services you will need to create an account. See us at the front desk for assistance.
Please note: The library will be closing early on Friday, December 13th at 11:00AM for a special event. Regular library service will resume Monday, December 16th at 8:30AM.
Please note: The library will be closed on Monday, November 11th, 2024. Regular library service will resume Tuesday, November 12th at 8:30AM.
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