Law PORT

Law PORT is a collection of training resources from the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. The tutorials within Law PORT have been designed to support postgraduate researchers with common research tasks in the sphere of public international law, and in the correct use of OSCOLA. The resources are online, interactive and free-to-use; they can be accessed anywhere, at any time and be undertaken at your own pace.

To access the training resources visit http://port.sas.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=120.

The following tutorials are available in Law PORT

An introduction to citing references using OSCOLA

This tutorial offers an introduction to the rules for the citation of legal and other authorities according to OSCOLA (Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities). It covers primary sources of law for the UK and EU, as well as secondary sources including books, journals and websites. The general principles are also covered, allowing students to apply these with confidence to sources not explicitly covered in the guide, along with information about various other sources of help and information. This tutorial was created by Laura Griffiths, Academic Services Librarian at IALS.

Researching customary international law

This tutorial gives an overview of the key sources, print and online, for researching customary international law. It covers finding evidence of state practice in the records of states' foreign relations and diplomatic practice, and in legislation concerning international obligations. It also looks at researching the practice of the UN Security Council, UN General Assembly and UN human rights committees. The learning outcomes are based on the International Association of Law Libraries’ Guidelines for Public International Law Research Instruction. This tutorial was created by Hester Swift, Foreign and International Law Librarian at IALS.

Treaties and international conventions

This tutorial covers the fundamentals of treaty research; finding treaties, checking status and party information, understanding treaty citations and tracing travaux preparatoires. It focuses on authoritative sources of treaties in print and online. The learning outcomes are based on the International Association of Law Libraries’ Guidelines for Public International Law Research Instruction. This tutorial was created by Lisa Davies, former Access Librarian at IALS.

Judicial decisions in public international law

This tutorial offers a general overview of the role of the international courts and their decisions. It covers a selection of international courts, information on their history, sources of further information, where to find basic documents including relevant treaties and statutes, how to locate printed/online reports of cases and sources for further background reading. This tutorial was created by Katherine Read, Principal Library Assistant at IALS.

Finding legal journal articles

This is a collection of three short tutorials:

These tutorials give practical tips and guidance on how to understand a citation for a journal article and use the citation to locate a copy of the article; how select a database that is suitable for your area of research; and how to construct an effective database search when looking for legal journal articles. Each tutorial is designed to be completed in approximately five minutes. This collection was created by Alice Tyson, Access Librarian at IALS.

More about the Law PORT project