Law

Law Reform Commissions conduct inquiries into different areas of law with the purpose of improving the legal system and justice mechanisms. Recommendations made by Law Reform Commissions are often implemented by Government, so the documents they produce can be valuable sources of information regarding legislative change.

The AustLII Law Reform Library is a good starting point when searching for Law Reform materials.

Access national and state websites below:

Created by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), SHERLOC is a free knowledge portal containing legal resources regarding organized crime and terrorism. In addition, SHERLOC also contains a legislative guide for implementation of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. 

The SHERLOC knowledge portal contains:

• The Database of Legislation – an electronic repository of laws concerning organized crime and terrorism, now covering laws from all 193 UN Member States (as well as 4 non-Member Observer States), categorised by country, crime type, relationship to provisions of international conventions, cross-cutting issues (such as investigative measures and international cooperation) and keywords
• The Case Law Database – a database of case summaries of judicial decisions concerning organized crime and terrorism, containing summaries of the facts and legal reasoning of each case, as well as commentary and analysis. Each case summary is categorised according to country, crime type and cross-cutting issues. The relevant judicial decisions are included as attachments or links for each case summary.
• The Strategies Database – containing regional and domestic strategies concerning the implementation of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols thereto, as well as the international legal framework against terrorism
• The Treaties Database – containing links to relevant international and regional treaties concerning organized crime, drugs and terrorism, as well as criminal procedural issues such as extradition and mutual legal assistance. The Treaties Database also contains information regarding the ratification status of each treaty included therein.
• The Bibliographic Database – an annotated bibliography providing synopses of key articles on organized crime and terrorism, searchable by country, research method and keywords

Each of these databases includes materials concerning 15 crime types: