Law Dissertation Literature Review: Primary and Secondary Sources

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Evan McConnell

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Law Dissertation Literature Review: Primary and Secondary Sources

A law dissertation literature review is not a literature review in the social science sense. This is the first thing you need to understand, because getting it wrong will waste months of your time.

In social science, your literature is secondary sources. In law, your literature includes primary legal sources: cases, statutes, regulations, treaties. These are not part of your "background". They are your evidence. The secondary literature is academic commentary on those sources.

This distinction changes everything about how you structure your review and what counts as engagement with scholarship.

Primary Legal Sources: Where Your Evidence Lives

Primary legal sources are the law itself. Cases decided by courts, statutes passed by parliament, regulations issued by government bodies, treaties signed by states. If you're researching employment law, the Employment Rights Act 1996 is a primary source. A Court of Appeal judgement interpreting that Act is a primary source. An academic article about how courts have interpreted that Act is secondary literature.

Your law dissertation will be built on primary sources. You're not summarising what the law says. You're analysing it. You're showing how courts have interpreted a statute. You're showing how different jurisdictions have approached the same legal problem. You're critiquing the law.

This means your literature review will have a particular structure. You'll set out what the law says. Then you'll show what academic lawyers have written about what it means.

Find primary sources in official databases. Bailii.org has free access to UK case law dating back decades. Legislation.gov.uk has all UK statutes and statutory instruments. These are reliable sources. Cite the official case citation, not a database version.

For English cases, the citation format matters. Reported cases use the official law reports. Smith v Jones [2020] EWCA Civ 123 means a Court of Appeal (Civil Division) case from 2020. Brown v Green [2021] EWHC 456 (Ch) means a High Court (Chancery Division) case from 2021. These are not interchangeable. The citation tells a lawyer which court decided it and how authoritative it is.

The discussion chapter is often the section of a dissertation that students find most challenging, as it requires you to move beyond describing your findings and begin interpreting what those findings actually mean. A strong discussion chapter draws explicit connections between your results and the existing literature, explaining how your findings either support, contradict, or add nuance to what previous researchers have reported in similar studies. It is also important to acknowledge the limitations of your own research honestly, since markers are far more impressed by a researcher who demonstrates intellectual humility than one who overstates the significance of their findings. You should also consider the practical implications of your research, discussing what your findings might mean for professionals working in your field and suggesting directions that future research might take to build on your work.

The way in which you present your findings will have a considerable impact on how your marker perceives the quality of your analysis, since a well-organised and clearly written results chapter makes it much easier for the reader to understand and evaluate your conclusions. For quantitative studies, it is conventional to present your findings in a structured sequence that moves from descriptive statistics through to the results of inferential tests, with clear tables and figures that summarise the key data in an accessible format. Qualitative researchers typically organise their findings around the themes or categories that emerged during analysis, using illustrative quotes from participants or examples from their data to support each thematic claim they make. Regardless of which approach you take, you should ensure that your results chapter presents your findings as objectively as possible, saving your interpretation and evaluation of those findings for the discussion chapter that follows.

Secondary Literature: Academic Commentary on the Law

Academic legal writing is where you engage with what other law scholars think about the law. This includes journal articles, monographs, law review pieces, textbooks, and government reports.

Law journals are prestigious or specialist. The Journal of Legal Studies, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Modern Law Review, and Cambridge Law Journal are generalist journals read across the discipline. Specialist journals exist for particular fields: Family Law, Criminal Law Review, Intellectual Property Quarterly, Journal of Environmental Law.

Find these in legal research databases. Westlaw UK, owned by Thomson Reuters, is the dominant database in UK universities. It has full-text access to English cases, statutes, and law journals. LexisNexis is a competitor. Both cost considerable sums, but your university almost certainly subscribes.

BAILII is free. It has cases and UK legislation. JSTOR has some law journals, though fewer than Westlaw or LexisNexis. HeinOnline, based in the United States, is excellent for historical cases, older law review articles, and American legal scholarship. Many UK universities now subscribe to it.

Law Commission reports and government white papers are secondary sources. The Law Commission publishes consultation papers and reports on areas of law it reviews. These represent a form of expert commentary. A 2020 Law Commission consultation on online defamation is relevant primary research material if you're writing about internet law. Don't ignore government sources.

Textbooks are secondary literature but often less current than journal articles. Glanville Williams' Textbook of Criminal Law is authoritative and widely cited. But it was last updated in 2018. A journal article from 2024 might reflect more recent case law. Use textbooks to understand the field broadly. Use journal articles to engage with current thinking.

Legal Research Databases and How to Use Them

Westlaw UK and LexisNexis are the legal research gateways. Both let you search for cases by citation, by subject, or by keyword. Both have sections for journals, looseleaf services (updated commentary on areas of law), and legislation.

When you search Westlaw for "unfair dismissal", you get cases about unfair dismissal, articles about unfair dismissal, and statutes governing unfair dismissal. Filter to journal articles if you want secondary sources only. Filter to cases if you want judicial decisions.

Shepardise on Westlaw or KeyCite on LexisNexis shows you every case that has cited a given case. This is key. If you find a case relevant to your dissertation, you need to know if it's been followed, distinguished, or overruled by later cases. Shepardising tells you. A case that's been overruled is evidence of how the law changed. A case that's been followed is evidence that it's still good law.

For international law, American law, or comparative legal study, expand beyond UK databases. HeinOnline has American law reviews and international law materials. Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) has free access to many law cases and journal articles, though it lacks the thoroughness of paid databases. For European law, the Court of Justice of the European Union maintains EUR-Lex, a free database of EU legislation and judgements.

PICO frameworks used in social science don't apply to law. Instead, develop a search strategy around key legal concepts. If you're researching how English courts have interpreted the right to privacy in article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights, your search terms are "privacy", "article eight", "ECHR", "reasonable expectation of privacy". Run these searches across Bailii, Westlaw, and LexisNexis to ensure you've found all relevant cases.

Referencing accurately is one of the most important skills you will develop during your time at university, and it is a skill that will serve you well throughout your academic and professional career. Many students lose marks not because their ideas are poor but because their citation practice is inconsistent, with some references formatted correctly and others containing errors in punctuation, ordering, or detail. Whether your institution uses Harvard, APA, Chicago, or another referencing style, the underlying principle is the same: you must give credit to the sources you have used and allow your reader to verify those sources independently. Taking the time to learn one referencing style thoroughly before your dissertation submission will reduce your anxiety considerably and ensure that your bibliography presents your research in the most professional possible light.

Comparative Legal Literature: Learning from Other Jurisdictions

A law dissertation often gains depth by showing how different legal systems address the same problem. If you're writing about product liability, looking at how American, German, and French law handle it reveals why English law has taken the path it has. This is valuable scholarship.

Comparative legal sources exist for most major common law jurisdictions. For American law, Google Scholar and HeinOnline are sufficient. For European civil law, legal research databases specific to those countries exist. For Commonwealth countries, Bailii includes cases from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other Commonwealth nations.

Find scholarly articles on comparative legal topics in journals like the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (which publishes comparative work), or the Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law.

Comparative analysis shows intellectual range. It also shows you understand that English law isn't inevitable. It's one choice among several. That insight strengthens argument.

Structuring a Law Literature Review

Law literature reviews are typically structured around doctrinal issues rather than chronologically.

If you're reviewing law on landlord and tenant disputes, you might structure your review as follows: the statutory framework (Housing Act 1988, specific sections); judicial interpretation of key terms (what "assured tenancy" means in practice, how courts have interpreted "reasonableness"); academic debate on whether the law achieves its purposes; gaps in the law (areas courts have found confusing or contradictory).

Alternatively, structure by theoretical debate. If you're researching privacy law, your review might be organised around competing theories of what privacy means. Privacy as autonomy. Privacy as dignity. Privacy as freedom from surveillance. Then show what English law reflects.

Or structure by jurisdictional comparison. How have England, Scotland, Australia, and Canada each approached this issue? This clarifies what's distinctive about English law.

Within each section, engage with primary sources first. Set out what the law actually says. Then explain what academic lawyers have written about what it means. This is the logic of law scholarship.

A law literature review is not a summary of what people have written. It's an analysis of what the law is, what scholars think it should be, and where the gaps and debates exist. Your own position emerges as you work through those debates.

Academic writing at degree level demands a level of critical engagement with sources that goes beyond simply reporting what other researchers have found in their studies. You need to evaluate the quality and relevance of each source you use, considering factors such as the methodological rigour of the study, the date of publication, and the credibility of the journal or publisher involved. When you compare and contrast the findings of different researchers, you demonstrate to your marker that you have a genuine understanding of the debates and controversies within your field of study. Building a habit of critical reading from the early stages of your research will save you considerable time during the writing phase, as you will already have formed considered views on the key texts in your area.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I cite cases from other jurisdictions in a UK law dissertation? A: Yes, if they're relevant to your argument. English courts consider Commonwealth and American case law persuasive (though not binding). If you cite them, explain why. "The High Court of Australia took the opposite approach in X v Y, finding that..." shows you've done comparative work. Don't cite foreign cases just to show breadth. Cite them because they illuminate something about English law.

Q: Should I include law textbooks in my literature review or just journal articles? A: Both. Textbooks are authoritative and show you understand the field's centrals. Journal articles show you're engaging with current scholarship. A good law literature review cites both. Reference the textbook for foundational concepts. Reference recent articles for debates and developments.

Q: What's the difference between citing a case and citing an article about that case? A: Cite the case if you're analysing what the court decided. Cite the article if you're engaging with a scholar's interpretation of what the court decided. If you're writing about how courts have interpreted the Employment Rights Act, you cite cases interpreting the Act. If a scholar has written a critical analysis of those decisions, you cite that article too. Both types of citation belong in a law literature review.

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The concept of originality in dissertation research is often misunderstood by students, many of whom assume that producing an original piece of work requires discovering something entirely new or making a novel contribution to knowledge. In reality, originality at undergraduate and taught postgraduate level means applying existing theories or methods to a new context, testing established findings with a different population or dataset, or synthesising existing literature in a way that generates new insights. Even a dissertation that replicates a previous study in a new setting can make a valuable and original contribution if it produces findings that either confirm, challenge, or add nuance to the conclusions of the original research. Understanding this more modest but entirely legitimate conception of originality should reassure you that your dissertation does not need to revolutionise your field to achieve the highest marks; it simply needs to make a clear, focused, and well-executed contribution.