Legal Research Manual

WestlawNext Canada has an online citator for finding cases that have considered a statute.  However, its coverage prior to the early 1990's is incomplete.  If you need greater coverage than that, you should consult the Canadian Statute Citations in print.

In the same way you can keycite a case, you can keycite a statutory provision by bringing up the relevant section and then examining the "Citing References" attached to it.

1. From the main page, click on the tab "Find and KeyCite by Name."
2. Select "Find and KeyCite a Statute or Regulation by Name."
3. Enter the legislation title, section number, and jurisdiction. Click "Search."
4. From the results, choose the relevant statute and section.
5. Your selected section will be displayed in the main frame of the page. Click the "Citing References" tab at the top of the page.
6. Cases that cite that section will then be displayed.  You can search within those cases and reorder the table in various ways.

Lexis Advance Quicklaw has an online citator for finding cases that have considered a statute.  However, its coverage is only comprehensive from 1992 onward (2006 onward for Quebec).  If you need greater coverage than that, you should consult other citators.

The fastest way to note up a statute in Lexis Advance Quicklaw is to pull up the statute you need and then navigate to the section of interest.  From there you can find cases that consider it.

Once you are on the landing page of Lexis Advance Quicklaw:

1. In the "Explore Content" box, click on "Legislation".
2. Search or browse down to a statute by jurisdiction.
3. Navigate to the section you are interested in.
4. Once the desired section of the statute is displayed, you will see "Citing Cases" on the right hand side.
5. Click on "Citing Cases" to display cases that have considered your statute section. You can search within them and explore them by jurisdiction, court, or date.

*Please note that you can only note up sections of statutes, not the statute as a whole.*

CanLII's coverage of cases that judicially consider statutes is limited to the case being in CanLII.  With that caveat, here is how to note up a statute:

1. Use the third search box (labelled "Noteup") to enter the name or citation of the Act.  Do not include a section at this time.
2. Once it's run this search, there will be a box to enter a section number.
3. Adding a section number will rerun the search.
4. Go over to the "cases" tab in the results to find the cases considering that section of an Act.