how i do research laws?

[bluecheese544]

How do I look up changes in the laws? I know what area the law covered and have some idea when. This may be a dumb question, but how do i do this kind of research.

Go to www.legislation.gov.uk which has a database of all the UK statutes, statutory instruments etc including amendments.

...but be aware of the fact that the government legislation website is not updated with amendments to the law (which are frequent) and all you can see there are statutes in their original (unamended) form. Also you can't research case law there; as we have a common law system in this country, much of the law is developed through case law developments.

Lawyers use legal databases such as LexisNexis and Westlaw but you have to have a subscription to these and subs are very expensive.

What area of the law do you want to research? I may be able to point you in the right direction.

I'm not being funny - but have you looked on Wikipedia? That will narrow down major changes in the law of whatever it is, then you'll know where to start.

For example the assault page has the relevant statutes and important case law (including the always memorable, "Fuck you, you can wait" case..!)

As a lawyer I would advise caution in relying on Wikipedia - anyone can add anything!

True, I'm not saying take a case to court based on it , but more as a place to start if you're not 100% sure what you're looking for. If that makes any sense.

Peppin FYI statutes are updated with amendments on legislation.gov.uk, although Statutory Instruments are not. I still wouldn't recommend it for research though.

It isn't that straight forward for lay people to research the law. First of all there is statute law set out in legislation, but there is also case law where higher courts make decisions that in similar circumstances the lower court are bound by and sometimes laws haven't yet been implemented and some never are implemented.

The other thing is it isn't always possible to read the the law to understand it. Lots of people divorcing might take a look at s25 Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and don't interpret it properly or acquire selective vision and only see the bits that suits them. On the other hand with run of the mill private children cases there is often not a great deal of law involved, the issues are more about parenting.

Then you have laws which are obsolete which have never been repealed. There might be a by law, for example, that it isn't unlawful to shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow in York on a Saturday night but no one is going to get away with the dastardly deed.

Bluecheese - if you have a public library card you may find that your public library system has access to something called LexisLibrary (my county does) - you would have to go to a public library to access this. The legislation on this is up to date and you should be able to find out when amendments occurred.
As others have said, the free government website legislationonline.gov.uk isn't as up to date as the commercial services.