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How do I Locate Law Journal Articles?: Citations

Guide to locating law journal articles within the Library's collection.

What information does the citation give me?

Given a journal citation, example:

Chan Wing Cheong, “Requirement of Fault in Strict Liability” [1999] 11 SAcLJ 98 

This tells you that the author’s name is Chan Wing Cheong, and the article title is “Requirement of Fault in Strict Liability” 

The citation [1999] 11 SAcLJ 98 tells you that it was published in the year 1999 in volume 11 of the journal SAcLJ and the article starts on page 98. 

Note: usually it's recommended to search for journal articles by their title rather than by citation but it's worth checking to see if they match.  


How do you identify the full journal title from the abbreviation?  Search the abbreviation on Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations. This has an extensive (but not comprehensive) list of all legal abbreviations. 

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