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Law

Guide to research sources for Canadian and BC law.

CRIM 3305

This guide contains a short list of resources that may be helpful for students in CRIM 3305 (Law & Society), taught by Jeffrey Meyers in summer 2022.

Selecting a topic

If you're not sure what you you want to write about yet, you can look for ideas in these sources:

Legislation

Statutes and Regulations:

Bills

Federal

BC

Other legislative instruments:

See the Noting up Legislation page on this legal research guide for tips on locating legal cases and commentary on a specific section of a statute or regulation.

Research databases

See the Journal Articles tab in the left menu for recommended databases to locate legal journal articles.

Some local independent news media:

Government bodies and other organizations publish reports on many topics. Here are a few tools to help you locate them: You'll find many other tools listed on the KPU Library's Government Information research guide.

If you have not found anything useful in the Library's databases (though that's very unlikely!), you may want to check Google Scholar.

Google Scholar lists articles from a wide variety of scholarly journals. It also includes references to book chapters and many other types of sources.

Google Scholar Search
How do I find the full text for an article I found in Google Scholar?

Google Scholar does not usually provide the full-text for articles for free, so you might get prompted to pay for access to an article. 

Do not pay for articles! It's quite likely that the KPU Library subscribes to the journal.

  • If you are on-campus, look for the "Full text at KPU" link in your results. If you do not see this link, double-check by searching for the Journal Title.
  • If you're off-campus, customize the Google Scholar settings (under 'Library Links') to check the Kwantlen Library for full-text, then follow the steps above.
  • If the KPU Library does not have the journal article that you need, you can request a copy from another library through interlibrary loan at no charge. We do the searching and can email most articles to you within 2 business days.

Citing your sources

The APA Style is the most-commonly used format in the social sciences. See the KPU Library's APA Guide for lots of help.

For tips on citing legal sources in APA style, see the Cite Your Sources page on this legal research guide.

For extensive examples of citing government information sources in APA style, see this SFU Library guide. Please note that it is using the older 6th edition of APA, not the 7th edition.

The "McGill Style" is the most-commonly used format for legal publishing in Canada. See the "Cite Your Sources" tab in the left menu bar for info on this style. Here's the KPU Library's quick guide to McGill-style citation:

Another excellent starting place is the Queen's University Library's Legal Citation guide.