''Halsbury's Statutes of England and Wales'' (commonly referred to as ''Halsbury's Statutes'') provides updated texts of every
Public General Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace ...
,
Measure of the
Welsh Assembly, or
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...
Measure currently in force in England and Wales (and to various extents in
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
and
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
), as well as a number of
private and
local Acts, with detailed annotations to each section and
schedule
A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such thing ...
of each Act. It incorporates the effects of new Acts of Parliament and secondary legislation into existing legislation to provide a consolidated "as amended" text of the current
statute book.
''Halsbury's Statutes'' was created in 1929. The full title of this work was ''The Complete Statutes of England Classified and Annotated in Continuation of
Halsbury’s Laws of England and for ready reference entitled Halsbury’s Statutes of England''. As indicated by the title, the new work was to be a companion to ''Halsbury’s Laws of England'' and therefore bears the name of
Lord Halsbury.
The first edition, in twenty volumes, appeared between 1929 and 1931. The new encyclopedia was based on the design of the earlier ''
Butterworths’ Twentieth Century Statutes (Annotated)'', a work in five volumes covering the Acts of 1900 to 1909, which had been kept up to date by annual supplemental volumes. Like its companion,
''Halsbury's Laws'', it was arranged by subject matter. This new work, however, expanded on the previous statutory work in that it included all primary legislation in force at the time of publication.
The second edition in 33 volumes was published from 1948 to 1954.
The current edition (the fourth), in fifty volumes, was published between 1985 and 1992, and is supplemented by an annual hardbound supplement and periodic loose-leaf updates. It is published by
LexisNexis Butterworths.
Individual volumes are reissued when there has been a significant impact on the subject matter concerned through changes in legislation.
The complete set consists of the main volumes, the index, tables of statutes, secondary legislation and cases, the annual Cumulative Supplement and the quarterly
looseleaf service. ''Halsbury's Statutes'' is also available as a searchable electronic archive on a paid subscription basis.
See also
*''
Is it in Force?'' (published annually)
*''
Destination Tables'' (published periodically)
*''
Halsbury's Laws of England''
*''
Halsbury's Statutory Instruments''
*
UK Statute Law Database
legislation.gov.uk, formerly known as the UK Statute Law Database, is the official Web-accessible database of the statute law of the United Kingdom, hosted by The National Archives. Established in the early 2000s, it contains all primary le ...
References
External links
Summary of ''Halsbury's Statutes''
{{Authority control
1929 non-fiction books
1948 non-fiction books
1985 non-fiction books
English law
Encyclopedias of law
British encyclopedias
British online encyclopedias
20th-century encyclopedias
Halsbury's Laws