Collections

• New Law Titles
• Primary Materials
• Secondary Materials
• Law Journals
• Chinese Law Collection
• Basic Law Collection
• Microforms
• Reference Collection
• Electronic Resources
• Digital Initiatives
• Reserve Collection
• Faculty Publications Collection
• Media Resources
• United Nations Depository Collection
• Past Exam Papers

 

The Lui Che Woo Law Library is one of the subject branch libraries of the University of Hong Kong Libraries. It provides study and research facilities for the academics, students and postgraduates of the Law Faculty, and other staff and students of the University. Members of the legal profession practising in Hong Kong may also use the library on application.

 
Reflecting the common law tradition of Hong Kong, the Lui Che Woo Law Library has strong collections of print and electronic resources from Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. It also has extensive collections in the major common law and Pacific Rim jurisdictions (Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand), as well as a Chinese language collection focusing on the PRC, Taiwan and Macao. Other areas of strength in the collection include public law, human rights, international trade law, insolvency law, and commercial law.

 

A list of new additions to the Law Library is updated on a weekly basis. Visit this site to know more what's new in our collection.

The Library has a substantial collection of primary materials including statutes, regulations, law reports, digests, and cases of Hong Kong, UK and other common law jurisdictions including Africa, Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, etc.
 
Hong Kong primary materials include the Government Gazette, all editions of the Laws of Hong Kong dating back to the 1901 edition, law reports, digests, indexes, and unreported judgments distributed by the superior courts. [More about sources of HK law]
 
The print primary source is supplemented by an extensive collection of digital resources in the form of CD-ROMs and Web databases.

These comprise mainly of law textbooks, including academic treatises, practitioners' books, practice manuals, casebooks, annotations, to commentaries, on various jurisdictions that are within the scope of the Library's interest. Textbooks are arranged in a classified sequence, according to the Moys Classification scheme.

These include both Western language and Chinese law journals. Western language law journals are arranged alphabetically by title. Chinese law journals are arranged in a classified sequence. A growing number of journals are also available in electronic format. Detailed information on specific titles can be found on Find@HKUL.

The Library's Chinese collection of legal materials covers those of the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, as well as works on other jurisdictions written in Chinese.
 
Focus of the collection is on PRC law resources, which include official gazettes, collections of laws and regulations, administrative regulations, administrative rules, local regulations, judicial interpretations, cases, yearbooks, handbooks, manuals, legal newspapers, journals, as well as treatises and books.
 
This is supplemented by electronic resources in both English and Chinese and which cater for Chinese legal research.

The collection contains library materials held in the Law Library relating to the Basic Law. These include materials in Chinese and English language covering:

• Selected court judgments relating to the Basic Law
• Selected consultation documents & reports issued by the Basic Law Drafting Committee and the Basic Law Consultative Committee
• Conference papers, books and other publications relating to the Basic Law
• News clippings on Basic Law from 1985

[More about HK Basic Law]

A major part of the Library's microform collection consists of the Law Library Collection of the United Nations Documents and Publications (1946-2012 ) and its supplementary segments Human Rights collection (1946-2012) and Trade & Development collection (1961-2003). Also, included are selected journal back volumes, the United Nations Treaty series and early British case law.
[About the UN microfiche collection] [UN Documentation Research Guide]
 
Also included are selected journal back volumes, the United Nations Treaty series [UN Treaty collection via UN home page] and early British case law.
 
A microform reader is available next to the collection for reading and printing from the film reels or fiches.

This collection contains general reference materials, bibliographies, dictionaries, indexes, etc., and more substantial works of reference such as collections of precedents. Major legal encyclopaedias and digests, such as Halsbury's Laws of England or the Canadian Abridgment, are shelved with the primary materials of the jurisdiction.

The Library has a good selection of legal databases, covering many jurisdictions and various subject areas. These range from bibliographical and reference to full-text databases, including indexes to US and UK law journals, collections of legislation, law reports, digests, e-books and e-journals. These are available via the Library online catalogue or webpage, in the Library or remotely.

• Basic Law Drafting History Online provides information and materials from the drafting history of Hong Kong's constitution for free public access.
• Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online is a full text image database which provides access to past revised editions of Hong Kong Laws for legal history research.

This collection contains course related textbooks and reference works recommended by academic staff for short loan or in-house use, as well as other items in high demand. Teaching staff may request online for materials to be placed on reserve.[Placing Course Reserve]

This growing collection aims at representing the research output of the Law Faculty. It includes the publications of the Law Faculty in all formats, from books and articles to research papers and unpublished materials. Law Faculty staff publications are also accessible from the HKU Scholars Hub via the Libraries webpage.

Videos on many aspects of law and practice are available for loan or for viewing in the Library. The collection also includes slides and other non-print materials.

The University of Hong Kong Libraries has been designated as a United Nations depository since April 2000 and receives masthead documents, official records, selected sales publications and electronic resources of the United Nations from the various duty stations (New York, Geneva, Vienna, and Bangkok). With the adoption of electronic deposit by the United Nations Publications Board since January 2001, the Libraries also receives masthead documents and official records in electronic format.