WEBVTT

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So here we're looking at the
structure of an act, and we're

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using legislation.gov.uk. It's
freely available and it has a

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very useful table of contents
that helps you see all the

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different sections.

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Now our Acts of Parliament
differ in length. Some can be

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extremely long, like the Data
Protection Act 2018 and its

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sections go into the hundreds
and because of that it's divided

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into parts and then divided into
chapters. So we can see here

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that part one is quite short, so
we don't have any chapters. But

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when we get to Part 2 it gets
quite long, so then it gets

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further divided into chapters.

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Now, not all acts are long, some
can be quite short. So if we

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look at the Theft Act 1968, this
is a much shorter act and it's

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not divided into parts and
chapters.

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So some key things with the
structure of acts. The first

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thing is the introductory text.
Now this contains some useful

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information. It will contain the
short title of the Act, which is

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the Theft Act 1968 and it will
contain the long title.

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To the bottom right of the long
title you will find the date of

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Royal Assent, which for this act
with the 26th of July 1968 and

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that can be really useful when
working out when sections come

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into force.

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The Act also uses titles for
each of the sections, which

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helps with navigation. So we can
see here that Section 1 covers

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the basic definition of theft,
Section 2 dishonesty and so on.

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How this helps the researcher is
that if I were, say, researching

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into burglary, from a quick skim
of the table of contents, I can

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see that section 9 covers
burglary and section 10 covers

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aggravated burglary. So those
would be places I would want to

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start when doing my research.

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You also have schedules to an
act, and schedules contained

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detailed information, and they
also often claim contain repeals

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and revocations and
consequential amendments, as we

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can see with this app there.

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This is a brief introduction to
the structure of an act. In

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later recordings we're going to
look at specific sections.

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