Legal Citation

TO FIND CONSTITUTIONS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES

A constitution is the system of fundamental principles by which a political body (state
or nation) governs itself.
Law libraries have a separate section maintaining constitutional laws of all countries in
the world.
Constitution of any country of the world may also be downloaded from various
websites i.e. http://confinder.richmond.edu/

WHERE TO FIND COMMISSION & COMMITTEE REPORTS

In India, various commissions and committee are in existence like Women Commission,
Commission for SC/ST National Human Right Commission etc. https://nhrc.nic.in
Reports of such commissions are maintained within the law library Collection.
Parliamentary Committee Reports are also major sources of legal information which
may be referred through website of Parliament of India.
www.lawcommissionofindia.nic.in

Annual Reports of the Government Departments are also useful for legal research
HOW TO FIND LEGISLATION
Law library must have a good collection of following International and National
Legislations i.e. Bills and Acts of the concerned Parliaments

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES AND PARLIAMENTARY COMMIT-TEE

A law library provides a sound collection of Parliamentary Debates of Rajya Sabha

and Lok Sabha.
Parliamentary debates may be downloaded from the website of Parliament of
India from XIth Lok Sabha 1996 onwards.
All Parliamentary Committee Reports as published by the Parliament of India are
also browsed to disseminate students within the library through online access.
LAW JOURNALS AND SCHOLARSHIPS UNDER PUBLIC DOMAIN

Social Science Research Network (SSRN) http://www.ssrn.com/ is devoted to the

rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a
number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences.

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) http://www.glin.gov/search.action

is a public database of official texts of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and
other complementary legal sources contributed by governmental agencies and
international organizations.

DOAJ is a directory of open access journals.

 It contains around 135 journals of legal sphere.

FREE ACCESS TO LAW MOVEMENT IN INDIA
Various government and non-governmental agencies are involved in for free
access to legal and law related information in India.

The pioneering efforts were made by National Informatics Centre (NIC) (

http://www.nic.in/during launching various sites providing online legal
information like JUDIS www.judis.nic.in, INDIACODE (All the central and local
legislation) , Law Commission of India, ministerial websites and various high
courts

In pursuance various independent private initiatives are taken like Legal Services
India, Indian Kanoon, and PRS Legislative Search.

Laws of India (www.lawsofindia.org is another initiative of PRS India digitizing

State government gazette for providing free access to general public.
GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES
All government ministries are maintaining their websites through National
Informatics Centre, which provide rules, regulations and legislation past regarding
functions of their works.

E governance has been adopted by a number of states to facilitate their local laws
including judgments, state legislative debates, state legislations and other
committees and commissions reports.

The official portal of Government of India i.e. www.india.gov.in provides almost

all information including legal information like Constitution of India, Acts &
Legislations, Law & Orders, Parliament of India, Rulesetc.

The other official websites of India, a Government of India Directory

www.goidirectory.gov.in provides an index of central government and its
departments, state legislators and state departments, judiciary i.e. Supreme
Court of India and High Courts established in the states.
PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE AND DEBATES
The website of the Parliament www.parliamentofindia.nic.in of India provides all
activities and procedures of the both houses of the parliament along with
President of India official records.

The website has three sub sections i.e. www.presidentofindia.nic.in,

www.rajyasabha.nic.in and www.loksabha.nic.in

The website of Lok Sabha also provides business, question, debates, legislations,
committees, conference and secretariat level information.
LEGAL INFORMATION INSTITUTE OF INDIA
• Legal Information Institute of India (LII of India) has been recently launched in February
2011 by AUSTAD, an NGO associated with Cornell University, USA and Australian Legal
Information Institute.
• LII of India provides almost all law related information of India through its portal
www.liiofindia.org officially inaugurated on1 st May 2011 at Vigyan Bhawan by National
Law University, Delhi.
• Till now, LII of India contains more than 150 databases as compared to 50 databases at
the time of its launch.
• The Home page contains news and database additions along with bifurcation of
resources in five pillar of law i.e. Cases, Legislation, Journals and Scholarship, Law
Reforms and Treaties.
• The Resources have been arranged by territories i.e. Central Government Resources and
law resources of State governments.
• The LII of India supports in dissemination cases decided by the Supreme Court of India
since its inception.
• More than one lakh cases since 1950 have been digitized and
CITATION OF LEGAL DOCUMENTS
• A citation is a path address of a book, article, web page or other published item, with sufficient
details to uniquely identify the item.
• Citations are provided in scholarly works, bibliographies and indices referring the past work in the
same subject area.
• Citations are used in scholarly works give information about a publication (book,journal article,
video, etc.) that enables readers to identify and locate the referred publication.
• Books: Citations for usually contain the author's name, the book's title, place of publication and
date of publication.

• Harlow, Carol Textbook on Torts, 3rd ed., Sweet & Maxwell, 2002, 48p.
Journal Articles: Citations for usually include the author name and title of the
article, the title of the journal, the volume number, page numbers and date of
publication.
Author Title Year Volume Periodical Page
Thompson,B Integrated 2000 64 Modern Law 459
Ombudsmanry Review

• Example: B. Thompson “Integrated Ombudsmanry: Joined-up to a Point” (2001) 64 Modern

Law Review 459p

Electronic Sources: Provide the uniform resource locator (URL) within arrows <…>
to avoid confusion.