Legal Research

CanLII Search Bookmarklets

By Simon Fodden

This might have been better as a comment responding to Omar’s post just prior to this one, in which he lamented the lack of a Canadian Citer, but since it involves Javascript, I was afraid it might not survive intact as a comment.

I know it’s not quite what Omar wanted — that’s way beyond my ability — but faute de mieux I’ve refreshed a tool I put together a couple of years ago: Javascript bookmarklets that search CanLII. As I’m sure most of you know, the idea behind a bookmarklet is to make these little patches of coding into bookmarks by dragging them your browser toolbar, from where they can be run with a simple click. (Or, of course, you can save them as bookmarks using your right-click menu.)

I’ve made six distinct bookmarklets, each of which searches CanLII for something different. The list below should make it clear. In all cases, if you have a term highlighted on a web page, the bookmarklet will search for that term; if nothing is selected, the bookmarklet will ask you for your search term.

Now a caveat: I work on a Mac, so these may or may not work in Windows. Please test them out and let me know which works on what browser in that operating system. If they fail, I’ll try to remake a batch for Windows. On a Mac they work in Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome.

Search all of CanLII
Search only legislation on CanLII
Search only caselaw on CanLII
Search only boards and tribunals on CanLII
Search only case name, citation, or docket no. on CanLII
Search only statute name on CanLII

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).