Noting-up Legislation

Noting-up is a term used for finding cases which apply or interpret an Act or a provision of an Act. Other terms for the same function include 'case annotations'; 'legislation judicially considered'; or 'statutes judicially considered'. It is a very important part of legal research.

The tools to note-up legislation are:

• Case Citators and Digests
• AustLII
• Statute Annotations and indexes services

Case Citators and Digests

Citators and digests offer a means of searching case law databases for cases which apply or interpret legislation. Simply use the 'Search by legislation' (or similar) feature in the case digest databases, for example, in both CaseBase and FirstPoint enter your Act name and provision in the 'Legislation judicially considered' search box.

How to Note-up Legislation using AustLII

AustLII is a large legal portal site of Australian case and statute law, produced as a collaborative effort between the Law Schools of the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of New South Wales. Full text legislation for all Australian jurisdictions is available via AustLII. However, you are cautioned to take note of how current the information is – each database notes at the top of the screen the date of the last data load.

AustLII performs a 'note-up' function through its legislative databases using a search function across the entire AustLII database. You can 'note-up' an entire Act or a selected Act provision.

Example: We want to find any judicial decisions on attempts to obstruct or pervert the administration of justice. Section 256 of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 (SA) concerns Attempts to obstruct or pervert course of justice or due administration of law.

• From AustLII, select the South Australian Consolidated Acts database
• use the alphabetical browse bar to locate the Criminal Law Consolidation Act by selecting C then selecting your Act
• select section 256 of this Act and the full-text of this provision is loaded up on the screen
• select the Note-Up button at the top of the screen. AustLII then performs a search on the entire AustLII database for any documents which refer to this section. Consequently your return hits will invariably include the Act itself

The results are ordered by relevance. Note the first listed result (in screenshot above) is R v McGee. If we select this result, then select the context button, we can view where in the decision s.256 of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 appears. The screenshot below shows us it is indexed as legislation referred to within the decision, therefore it is highly relevant to our search.

Statute Annotations & Indexes

Statutes annotations and indexes are research tools which provide information about legislation, including, in some instances, citing cases which have considered the legislation or parts of the legislation.

Federal Statutes Annotations and Commonwealth Statutes Annotations both annotate Commonwealth Statutes, providing legislative commencement and amendment information, and case annotations. These multi-volume publications are available in print, Lower Ground Floor, Stack 47.

Australian Current Law and the Australian Legal Monthly Digest (Law Reference Stack 1)
These are monthly digests on the law, updated with summaries of new decisions or new legislation. These digests in print form, usually include Tables of Statutes/Legislation Judicially Considered which is an index of legislation with references to recent cases which have considered that legislation.