Commercial Law

Legal research can be complex. This guide is intended to highlight some key resources and search techniques, but it is unlikely that it will completely answer all questions about business law. If you need further help, please don't hesitate to contact a librarian using our AskUs services or stop by the SFU Library at your local campus.

PowerPoint from October 2009 presentation

In this guide:

1. Where can I look up the definitions of legal terms?

The following are available at KE 183 in the Reference section of SFU's Surrey and Bennett (Burnaby) Libraries:

• The dictionary of Canadian law
• Canadian law dictionary

We also have a British dictionary of law available online, as well as US publications such as Black's Law Dictionary (Bennett & Surrey Reference: KF 156 B53), but be careful using non-Canadian sources - meanings can vary between countries and legal materials tend to involve extremely specific definitions of words!

2. Can I find textbooks or commentaries by lawyers and other writers on my topic?

Secondary literature -- e.g., books and articles by lawyers and others commenting on a case or law -- can be an excellent way to learn the basics around a legal issue. It's probably a good idea to look for relevant secondary literature before you start looking at laws and cases (in sections 3 and 4 below).

• The best general tool for searching for secondary legal literature is the Index to Canadian Legal Literature -- available via LawSource. Here's the official description of this database: "ICLL, a fully bilingual periodical index, is Canada’s only comprehensive legal bibliography, containing books, articles, government publications, audio-visual materials, continuing legal education materials, case comments and annotations in English and French." You can search it using the link inside of of LawSource under Custom Search Templates. Note that the ICLL only provides brief descriptions of articles. You'll need to check the SFU Library catalogue to see if we have the journals with the articles on your topic.
   
• Also in LawSource, try the Law Reports Articles & Journals section -- covers both key law journals and many law reports such as the Business Law Reports, Canadian Cases on the Law of Torts, Canadian Cases on Employment, and the Construction Law Reports. 

• One specific journal that you might want to search within is the Canadian Business Law Journal. You can search for articles in this journal from 1980 to the present using CBCA, then stop by the 6th floor of the Bennett Library at the Burnaby campus to copy the articles on your topic from the print volumes. (Researchers at the Surrey and Vancouver campuses note that you can use the Find a copy / Where can I get this? links below article titles in CBCA to request that a copy of the article be sent from Burnaby to your local campus for pick up. Just click on Find a copy / Where can I get this?, then on Search other libraries / Request this item, and fill out the form. When you are given a chance to mention a specific pickup location, choose your campus.)

• Another tool to try is the SFU Library Catalogue. The Library may have entire books on the topic you're interested in. For example, a keyword search for (contracts and law and canada) produces over 50 titles, including some classic textbooks on this subject.

• The Canada Corporations Law Reporter (Bennett Library Reference: HD 2808 C343) provides "commentary, precedents and policies [including citations for key cases] on the primary federal corporation statute, the Canada Business Corporations Act, as well as on other important federal acts, such as the Competition Act, Bankruptcy & Insolvency Act, Investment Canada Act, and Canada Corporations Act."

3. Where can I find the text of laws and regulations?

The text of laws and regulations is generally available from governmental websites, either federal or provincial. However, these free public websites are often a year or more out of date. If your topic is one where the law may have changed recently, you must get an up-to-date version of the law.

• For BC laws, the most up-to-date source is QP Legalese. If you know the exact title of the law you're looking for, you can use the Browse feature in the left margin to drill down to the law you want. There's also a search form.
• For other jurisdictions in Canada, use LawSource. As with QP Legalize, there's a browse function in the left margin. If you'd like to search the text of all laws by keyword, use the Custom Search Template for Legislation.

If the free public websites are good enough for your needs, here are some websites for federal and BC laws and regulations:

• Consolidated statutes and regulations of Canada
  • Samples: 
    
    • Competition Act
    • Canada Labour Code
    • Business Corporations Act
      
    • Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act
• Revised statutes and consolidated regulations of British Columbia

4. How can I find law cases on my topic?

This is a very common question for students: How can I find cases relevant to the legal issue I'm interested in? You may have noticed that LawSource has an option for searching Cases, and you might think this is the best way to go. However, generally it is not. For most broad legal topics (e.g. trademarks) any search will return thousands of hits. How are you to know which cases are significant? There are better tools to use than a case law search engine.

• Look at your course textbook. Frequently your textbook will refer to major cases in discussing the law on your topic.

• Use the secondary literature (see above). An article on your topic will almost always refer you to specific relevant cases.

• Use the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest (CED) . This is basically an encyclopedia of Canadian law. You can look up any topic and read a discussion of the legal issues. The CED will always point you to major cases which have established the legal points in question. The CED is available electronically through LawSource. In LawSource you can either use the search feature or else the browse option. Browsing appears to be difficult at first because of the long list of topics. On the other hand, keyword searching may turn up hundreds of hits in volumes not of interest to you. One compromise is to mark the relevant topic(s) in the browse list and then use the Search button at the bottom of the screen. This limits your search to those topic(s).

• Use the Canadian Abridgement. This is yet another resource which we have available online through LawSource. The Abridgement contains short summaries of important cases. It is organized according to a complex hierarchy of legal topics. If you can locate the appropriate section relevant to your topic, you will find a list of the key cases and the precedents they set. You can either use the browse option to drill down, or else search, or use a combination of the two methods.

• Another way to find a relevant case is to do a keyword search in a database of Canadian magazine and newspaper articles. This is useful for finding prominent cases which have been covered in the media. Some databases to try are: CBCA Fulltext Business (business magazines and journals), CBCA Current Events & CPI.Q (news magazines and a few newspapers), and Canadian Newsstand (newspapers).

5. I've got the citation to a specific case. How can I get the judgment?

Background on judgments Traditionally judgments were (and still are) published in series of volumes called "law reports." The SFU Library in Burnaby has a large number of print law reports series such as Business Law Reports (HF 1278 B8). (If you are researching at another SFU campus and need a copy of a specific law report sent to you to pick up at your campus library, just search for the law report by title in the SFU Library catalogue, click on Request, and enter the details on the specific volume and page numbers you need.) However, many judgments are available electronically now... Nowadays there are more options for finding the text of judgments. Some courts (e.g., the Supreme Court of Canada) have made their judgments freely available online. Many of the law reports series are also available in electronic format through LawSource and other similar products. Not every judgment is published, only those where the editors think some new or interesting legal point was established. On the other hand, the judgments of very prominent cases may appear in several law reports. If you check each report, the judgment will be identical. Some law reports focus on a specific jurisdiction or court (e.g., B.C.L.R (BC Law Reports), S.C.R. (Supreme Court [of Canada] Reports), and others on an area of law (e.g., C.C.C. (Canadian Criminal Cases)). Once you have the citation to a specific case you can try to locate the judgment. However, even just understanding the citation can be a challenge. The following example shows how to parse out the information in a citation. This report can be found in the 69th volume of the Dominion Law Reports on page 433 (see our guide to law reports). It was tried in the Supreme Court of BC. The "2nd" tells you that the DLR has been published in multiple series; the second series was 1956-68. This is a criminal case, hence the Queen is the plaintiff. The judgment has been published in three reports series: Criminal Reports (C.R.) , Western Weekly Reports (W.W.R.) , and Canadian Criminal Cases (C.C.C.). This all looks rather complicated, and it is, but fortunately LawSource makes it easy. From the homepage, where it says Case:, you can type in the names of the parties involved. Using the first sample citation above, lebrun high-low will take you the judgment of that first case. This works fine so long as the parties don't have common names. If they do have common names, another approach is to type in the legal citation (omit the parentheses) in the Any document by citation box: 69 DLR 2d 433 Using the second approach is probably easier. Even when the parties' names are rare, if a case has been through several levels of appeal you'll find judgments at each level (plus in both official languages for the S.C.R.) so it can be difficult to untangle which citation is the one you want. What should you do if LawSource does not have the judgment you want? In that case, see the guide to finding print law reports in the SFU Library to find out if the report series is available in Burnaby. Then search for the title of the law report in the SFU Library Catalogue and use the Request Item link in the top left part of the page to order the specific judgment . If that doesn't work, see a librarian to find out if we can get the judgment from another source. There are a number of advanced search features in LawSource which you can explore on your own time. You can use the History link to find out if the case was considered at multiple levels of the court system and whether it was upheld or reversed. Using the Citing References button you can find cases which cite your case.

6. Where do I find US Case Law and international secondary legal literature?

Key Sources for American and International Legal Information

Overview sources

• Encyclopedia of White-Collar and Corporate Crime

LexisNexis:

1. Log in to LexisNexis
2. Select the US Legal tab on the left side of the screen and
   
   • Select Federal & State Cases to find US case law, or,
   • Select Law Reviews to search US law journals, i.e., secondary legal literature, much of which has international content and helpful comparative law articles
3. Or select International Legal on the left side of the screen and choose among
   
   • Canadian Cases
     
   • Canadian Legislation
     
   • EU, Commonwealth, and Other Nations
     
   • Canadian Law Journals
4. Need help?  Check out the LexisNexis wiki for tips on finding US cases by topic or citation in SFU Library's LexisNexis database.

HeinOnline:

1. Log in to HeinOnline
2. The Subscribed Libraries section on the left indicates which collections of materials SFU subscribes to within the HeinOnline database
3. Select Law Journal Library — International & Non-U.S. Law Journals or other category
4. Browse by title or click the search tab to search within the journals

Google Scholar

1. Enter Google Scholar via the SFU LIbrary.
2. Choose the option "Legal opinions and journals" from the search screen.
3. Or choose the Advanced Scholar Search option to be able to focus your search on specific states/courts, etc.
4. For more on this new Google search option, check out their blog post about it.

7. How do I cite cases and statutes?

Athough the APA manual does provide some examples of legal citiatons, they tend to be all focused on US resources, and they are based on a non-APA format: The Bluebook: a Uniform System of Citation.  To learn more about how to apply this format, start with the following resources. 

• Legal Citation: a guide by Queens University. Many examples of citations for Canadian legal research resources.

• The APA Manual (most examples are focused on US cases and statutes). Copies available in print in all SFU Library branches [BF 76.7 P83].

• Cite right : a quick guide to citation styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the sciences, professions, and more / Charles Lipson. Available in print [PN 171 F56 L55] and online for SFU researchers.  Part II, Chapter 12 deals with the Bluebook style of legal citation mentioned in the APA Manual.

• More guides to legal citation: see the Writing & Analysis section of the Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research for links.

• In general, remember that no style guide can cover every situation you might encounter. Work from the examples you have and focus on providing unambiguous information for your reader so that they can quickly find the exact same items that you used in your research.

Finally...

If the resources and search tips listed above haven't answered your question, then you may want to consult some of our broader guides to legal and library research written by our Criminology Librarian (e.g., How to Find Legal Cases in the W A C Bennett Library).

A final word: remember that you can always ask for assistance if you're having trouble finding material on your topic. Please come and see us in the Library, or check the AskUs page to find out other ways of contacting us. Good luck with your research!