English sources:
The UK Government has a number of sites available:
A must for locating current Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments (i.e. delegated legislation) is the Stationary Office. The full text of Acts of Parliament since 1996 are available (a search engine is incorporated) and selected summaries of earlier Acts are also available (i.e. long title and arrangement of sections). Statutory Instruments from 1997 are available, as are Draft Instruments published since 1 November 1997.
The UK Parliament site has links to both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The full text of the vast majority of Public Bills before Parliament are available. The link to the House of Commons contains a variety of publications (including Hansard, Select Committee Reports and The Weekly Information Bulletin); similar publications are available on the House of Lords' link, which also contains judgments delivered since 14 November 1996, which are usually available within two hours of being delivered to the House of Lords.
Court of Appeal judgments are now available from the archive of Smith Bernal (official reporters to the Court of Appeal). This free service allows access to Casebase where new cases are added 30 days after approval (usually 6-8 weeks after judgment).
The University has a special subscription to Current Legal Information. CLI consists of:
The Government Information Service has an organisational index with links to the Home pages of Government Departments and Agencies and Local Authorities.
The Lord Chancellor's Department Website includes text of speeches and consultation papers.
The Royal Family's server contains information on constitutional history and current issues concerning the Queen and the royal family.
The EUROPA Web site provides general news, together with basic information on, and links to, the European Institutions. A search engine is incorporated.
The European Commission site provides useful information on the Commission's work, and has an extensive library of official documents (work programmes, action plans, guidelines, green papers, white papers, communications, reports, memoranda and press releases). EUR-Lex provides free public access to issues of the Official Journal published within the last 20 days, plus the Treaties, consolidated versions of existing legislation and recent judgments from the European Court of Justice; by the end of 1998 on-line access to new draft legislation presented by the Commission to the Parliament and the Council of Ministers should be available.
The UK Representation of the European Commission, based in London, has some useful publications available, including The Week in Europe (a weekly summary of developments in the EU) and Background Reports (a survey of a particular Community policy).
The European Parliament server includes a a number of reference documents: Treaties and basic documents, Parliamentary Rules of Procedure, Official Journals and Bulletins.
The Council of Ministers' site provides little information of any use, but it does contain the full text of the Treaty of Amsterdam..
The European Court of Justice site is particularly useful for lawyers. It not only contains weekly summaries of cases since September 1996, but from 17 June 1997 judgments are available in full. A search engine is incorporated.
The University of Newcastle's Web Journal of Current Legal Issues is an electronic law journal which covers most legal disciplines.
The Journal of Information Law and Technology (JILT) covers the Law and IT.
Electronic Law Journals includes information on all UK journals as well as other resources.
Sweet and Maxwell's site includes a summary of cases (Inter-Nutcases) which are organised into different subject areas, together with hotlinks to other legal resources.
The Butterworths site has details of all its law publications.
JURIST, the Law Professors' Network has launched a special JURIST UK section, which consolidates JURIST's listings of home pages, course pages and online articles authored by UK law lecturers and provides links to many other UK legal sites.
The Bulletin Board for Libraries provides an A-Z listing of subjects. Under 'L' there is a 'Law' option where there are links to EU, UK and overseas law.
The Social Science Information Gateway has a wide remit and includes a facility for searching for sites throughout the world.
Findlaw is a general gateway which provides access to a wide range of legal materials.