Finding Case Law and Work Law Texts On-Line

You will need to access case law and law texts in this class.  Here is a quick guide to finding material on-line.

1. Free Internet Case Law

A lot of cases (not all) are now available for free on CanLII.  You need to use CanLII for your first 3 Minute Lawyer exercise.  It uses a simple search engine.  You can access statutes and case law decisions.

You can search nationally or by province.  If you click on Ontario, for example, your searches will be confined to Ontario.  You’ll see when you click on a province that specific courts and tribunals are listed. For example, if you click Ontario you will find a list of Boards and Tribunals.  In that list is the Ontario Labour Relations Board, the Human Rights Tribunals, and Labour Arbitration Awards.  These are tribunals that are important in the Law of Work.

2.    Quicklaw

Quicklaw is the main case law database used by lawyers.  It’s expensive, but you have free access to it while you are a student.  Just search Quicklaw in e-resouces, and then “click on access this resource”.  On the next page, click “Register Later”.  Then on the next page click “Accept”.    That gives you access to the database.  You can search by topic or case name.  Quicklaw includes all courts and tribunals in Canada.  It has more cases than CanLII, since not every case makes it onto CanLII.

3.   Work Law E-Texts

There are several good e-texts available using York University’s library e-resources database.   You will need to enter your passport York information.

For the Common Law and Regulatory Standards Regimes [often referred to as “Employment Law”]

On E-Resources, search for “Employment Source”.  Follow the link to the database of that name by WestLawNext Canada.  There you can ask several Employment Law texts, including:

S. Ball, Canadian Employment Law

H. Levitt, The Law of Dismissal in Canada

You can also access the text by Geoffrey England, Individual Employment Law, by searching the name of the text in e-resources. This is a leading text on common law and regulatory law, but was last updated in 2008 so it is dated now.

For the Collective Bargaining Regime [often referred to as Labour Law]

On E-Resources, search for ‘Labour Source”. Follow the link to the database, where you can find several labour law texts, including:

Canadian Labour Arbitration (known in the field as “Brown & Beatty” after the names of the authors).  This book is the leading textbook on labour arbitration in Canada, which is the litigation of grievances in unionized environment.  The book explains the law and links to arbitration decisions.

Canadian Labour Law  by George Adams.  This is a leading text that explains all aspects of collective bargaining law (unionization, collective bargaining, labour arbitration, strikes and lockouts).

Labour Arbitration Cases (L.A.C.), is the leading case law reporter for arbitration decisions.

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