By: BEVERLY BUTULA//November 12, 2010//
The British and Irish Legal Information Institute “provides access to the most comprehensive set of British and Irish primary legal materials that are available for free and in one place on the internet.” The databases include court and tribunal decisions and legislature from England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the United Kingdom.
Regarding case law, the website explains, “BAILII receives a regular feed of cases from the Courts of the four jurisdictions of the United Kingdom and from the Courts of Ireland.” Most of the case law available is from after 1996. To conduct a legislation search, the website provides a very nice search template. An alternative for UK statutes is the official database offered by the Office of Public Sector Information.
BAILII provides a basic search box, an advanced search option, or the researcher can browse by case name or topic.