resources for reviewing legal cases in the UK Is there a (free) resource in the UK for someone to obtain details of various cases brought to court, for example details of case history, court rulings? I have come across, for example, https://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/ but this appears restricted to legal students or professionals
The main free resource is Bailii. I've sometimes also found cases on Casemine, which is free. The most popular paid resources are Lexis and Westlaw. In general, the paid databases are more complete and provide additional useful features such as cross-referencing statutes and cited/citing cases, information on whether the case is still good law or not, and others. For this luxury you will pay a heavy price: typically a few thousand a year depending on what type of subscription you take out. If you are lucky you can get free access via a university course. With that said, Bailii can sometimes have judgments not found on the others; particularly unreported judgments. Ideally as a professional you would have access to all three if you can afford to do so. If you want a specific case and can't find it on any database you may be able to ask the court to provide a transcript, usually for a fee.
england-and-wales &quot;Lead defendant&quot; is not used, unless colloquially by some, but a comparable term would be &quot;principal defendant&quot; which is more than mere style as it becomes important when establishing the hierarchy of defendants for, say, culpability and at sentencing (i.e. it has some legal implications). It could also relate to the first-named on the indictment (see rule 3.32(1)(b)(ii) Criminal Procedure Rules 2020) and often this is the principal, but the prosecutor has discretion on the order of names on the indictment, because: It is important to bear in mind that defendants are called to give evidence in the order in which their names appear on the indictment. This means that a tactical decision may need to be made as to the order of defendants on the indictment, bearing in mind the evidence and the nature of the case. Source Although tagged united-states, I have followed the guidance from the LawSE Help Centre: &quot;Even if you supply a jurisdiction tag, we expect and encourage answers dealing with other jurisdictions ... please tag your answer using the tag markdown: [tag: some-tag]&quot;
This is very, very weird. I've never heard of a case like this one. Is there some context that could explain why anyone would refile a divorce someplace new twelve years after getting divorced the first time around? The logical thing to do if Canadian civil procedure is at all analogous to U.S. civil procedure on this point, would be to have a Canadian lawyer file a motion in the Canadian divorce case to set aside the judgment on the extraordinary grounds that you were not married any longer at the time that the 2015 divorce was filed, seeking to set aside the 2015 case ruling. In most U.S. jurisdictions with civil procedural rules modeled on the federal rules of civil procedure (California's are not), this would be a motion under Rule of Civil Procedure 60, but obviously, the Canadian rule numbering would probably be different. Alternatively, if the home is in California, you could bring an action for declaratory judgment declaring that the Canadian judgment is invalid because it was brought in a divorce action between people who were already divorced and probably also lacked jurisdiction over you and the property. I'm not sure what you mean by CPL in this context. Normally, in a real estate context, a CPL would mean a "closing protection letter", but in the context you are using it, it sounds like you are referring to something akin to a lis pendens or a lien. Perhaps you mean a "certificate of pending litigation" which is another name of a lis pendens in at least some Canadian jurisdictions (but is terminology rarely used in the U.S.). This sounds like slander of title, or "abuse of process" or the filing of what is known as a spurious lien, any of which are actionable, but without knowing what a CPL actually is, it is hard to know.
I cannot speak for civil law systems (Germany) but in Common Law (UK, USA) systems the law looks at substance rather than form. So: Am I allowed to undo the word-wrapping of all the texts and unindent them, as well as performing a new word-wrap on them? Yes Do I have to make sure that it is readable for everyone on every device, and do I have to make sure that accessibility interfaces are used (e.g. for blind persons, which aren't even the target group of my software)? If they are licences (rather than contracts) they must simply be available; this does not mean universally available. Do I have to make sure, that if my application wouldn't even start correctly on a device, that the user is able to start the application in an impossible, absurd, magic or religious way to ensure that he can read the legal texts or is it enough to state it on the website then? It depends if you want the licences to be enforceable by you on the users or if you are simply complying with your disclosure obligations. See What if the user disagreed with the Terms of Service, but still registered on a website?. Do I have to make sure that the rendering of the licenses/privacy policy/impressum is performant (e.g. text rendering and refresh after scrolling takes less than a second)? I already have to include two external libraries with my software to display the texts, otherwise it would not be possible to display texts at all. No - make them wait if you want.
Yes. The jurisdiction I am familiar with is England and Wales. Conviction requires evidence (witness testimony is evidence) which proves the case "beyond reasonable doubt". It is open to the jury to find the witness so convincing that they find that they are sure the defendant committed the crime. In general of course, prosecutors prefer to have some supporting evidence (either additional witnesses, or circumstantial evidence - like DNA.)
1. You need to read and utilize law textbooks, the MOST UPDATED editione. Try to access a library of a university that has a law faculty. Failing that, try a local library — but local libraries may not stock (pricey) law textbooks, or their most updated edns. I scanned Jonathan Herring, Criminal Law Text Cases Materials (2020 9 edn), beneath for you. But the NEWEST edn is 2022, 10 edn, as at May 23 2022. Herring updates his book every 2 years. Two other leading textbooks are Smith, Hogan, and Ormerod's Criminal Law (2021 16 edn), and Smith, Hogan, &amp; Ormerod's Text, Cases, &amp; Materials on Criminal Law (2020 13 edn). 2. Look up the Act of Parliament in the Table of Legislation. See scan beneath. 3. Finally, you shall find the cases expatiated in the body, and cited in the footnotes! See scan beneath.
Generally, irrespective of charge, there is no 'shield laws' in the UK legal system. Any such provisions are a matter of discretion for the judge on the same grounds as the admissibility of evidence. Though the following case relates to a murder case rather than rape, it does provide justification for the lack of 'shield laws'. In R v Davis [2008] UKHL 36; [2008] 1 A.C. 1128 (henceforth Davies), as described in para 3, per Lord Bingham, the witnesses were subject to extensive protective measures, as 'they claimed to be in fear forth their lives if it became known that they had given evidence against the defendant'. [Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law (2011 Penguin) 99]. The case addresses issues at the time of the original hearing. However, more recently, there have been statutory provisions for anonymity of witnesses, specifically section 86 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. This enables witness anonymity orders to be made, however there are specific requirements that can be found in subsequent provisions of the Act, but there is no common or absolute protection of victims or witnesses. A closing note regarding the 'victim' in the rape case, it should be noted that in the UK legal system, as criminal cases are brought by the CPS on behalf of the Monarch, not the victim and as such the victim is, for all intents and purposes, a witness.
The author of the passage is telling you where the quotation comes from, using a formal case citation. Lawyers usually don't use footnotes, endnotes, or parentheses to set off these citations. Case citations are a sort of shorthand developed by lawyers and judges over the past few centuries. The goal is generally to identify the name of the case, where to locate it, when it was decided, and what court decided it. Although there are a few different styles for formal citations to cases, you don't need to learn much to cover the basics for common types of cases. How to Read It Case name Brown v. Bd. of Educ. Case names usually have a "v." in the middle. Most of the time, the plaintiff goes on the left and the defendant goes on the right. But United States Supreme Court cases are different. Almost always, the Supreme Court reviews decisions of lower courts. They do so in an unusual way: the loser in the lower court asks the Supreme Court to change the outcome. Because the loser, more formally called the "appellant," is the one initiating proceedings in the Supreme Court, they go on the left. (To learn more, look into "writ of certiorari.") Since Brown is a Supreme Court case, we can guess that Brown lost in the lower court; and indeed that's what happened in this case. There are some arcane rules about abbreviating case names. The full name of this case is "Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka." If you're a law student, especially if you're on the law review, you get to learn all about these rules. If you're not, thank your lucky stars and try not to worry about it. Volume, reporter, and page number 347 U.S. 483 This is the bit you want to copy and paste to find the case. It's a lot like a URL: the idea is to clearly identify and locate a case. If you just want to find the case on the Internet, you don't need to understand how it works, and you can skip to the next section. These three parts tell you where to find the beginning of the case in a good old-fashioned printed book. You know those yellow books in the background of lawyer advertisements? That's what we're talking about. They're called "reporters," because they originally contained somebody else's reports of what judges said in court. Now, of course, the judges write down their own decisions; but the name stuck. The middle part, here "U.S.", identifies what set of books the case is in. You can learn something about the court from this: U.S. -- United States Reports -- United States Supreme Court F., F.2d, F.3d -- Federal Reporter -- Federal Courts of Appeal F. Supp -- Federal Supplement -- Federal District Courts (trial courts) The first number is what volume the case is in. This is the number printed on the spine of the book. The second number is what page the case begins on. Pinpoint citation , 495 When somebody wants to refer to a specific place in a case, they just put the page number or range right after the case page number. Remember, "483" was the page the case starts on; "495" is the page where the court actually say what we're talking about. If you flip to page 495 of volume 347 of the U.S. Reports, you'll find the quoted sentence. Remember: usually when you see two numbers separated by a comma, like "483, 495", the first one is part of the citation to the case as a whole, and the second one says what page to look at. Date and court name (1954) This part varies a lot between the different formal styles. In "Bluebook" style, which most law journals use, the year the case was decided is enclosed in parentheses, along with anything necessary to identify the court. Here, there's no court name, because we already know from the "U.S." that it's a Supreme Court case. For lower appellate cases, this might be "(9th Cir. 2005)", meaning that it's a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from 2005. Dealing with short citations You may also see something like "Id. at 495". This is a short citation; "Id." means "the last thing I cited." Go back to the nearest previous citation and look that up, going to the page cited. How to Use It (aka "tl;dr") The key to actually finding a case on the Internet is to copy the three numbers in the middle--the volume, reporter name, and page number. Here, "347 U.S. 483". Don't include any pincite after a comma; Google and many search engines may be clever enough to figure out what you mean, but they may not. There are a bunch of free online services providing case texts. I prefer Google Scholar; just paste the citation in, being sure to select "case law". Other people like CourtListener, FindLaw, and Justia.com. Commercial databases like Westlaw or LexisNexis have a lot more than just the case; most importantly, they list citations to the case. Your local public law library might have a terminal for one of the services that you can walk in and use. Be sure you're reading the actual case, not a summary or "annotation." This is especially true if you're writing an answer here on Law.SE. Many case summaries, especially for famous cases, are written for first-year law students; some of them are probably written by first-year law students! They're often helpful, but they focus on what the student needs to know for class, which often isn't what the case actually said. If I find you quoting a case summary as if it's "the law," I will not be very nice to you.