Acts/Ordinances/Statutes

State and Territory Laws - Retrospective Indexes

Locating older State acts, particularly from the 19th century, can be difficult if the year is not known. This is because legislation is published chronologically by year and most current indexes to legislation list only legislation in force, i.e. acts not repealed. Older acts which have been repealed are deleted from most current indexes. In addition, before the practice of citing acts by short titles, older acts were cited by slightly different titles. Lastly, State acts were originally numbered by regnal years and running numbers rather than by calendar year e.g. 26 Vic. no.1.

A listing of collections of 19th century state legislation may be found in Annotated bibliography of printed materials on Australian law 1788-1900, by Alex Castles, under the Index heading "Legislation". The list also includes separately published individual acts.

Most States have published retrospective chronological or alphabetical indexes which list ALL acts passed, their short titles and both calendar and regnal year. These enable researchers to verify and locate legislation in annual bound volumes.

State and Territory Laws - Retrospective Indexes is an Index of Acts/Ordinances/Statutes

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