Australian Case Law

Finding Case Law

By case citation

Recent decisions from courts and tribunals are published as unreported judgments. These can be located on databases and court websites freely available to the public. Select decisions are also published in law reports.

Law Reports are available on subscription databases available through the library. Researchers can find both reported and unreported decisions using the case's citation, which includes the case name and an abbreviated form of the court or publication details. 

Case citation formats

A case citation is the system used to organise, identify and locate a case. Citations vary depending on whether the case is reported or unreported. Case citations are a convenient, standard way of abbreviating the name and publication details of a case. Each case has its own, unique citation(s). 

Reported cases

Citation format is generally:  Party Names (Year) Volume Publication Abbreviation Starting Page

Eg. R v Hughes (2000) 202 CLR 535

If a reported case series is organised by year (rather than volume), the year is placed in [square brackets].

Unreported cases

Medium neutral citation allocated by the court: Party Names [Year] Unique Court Identifier Judgment Number [Pinpoint]

Eg. Quarmby v Keating [2009] TASCC 80 [11]

No medium neutral citation and unreported judgments from overseas: Party Names (Court, Judge(s), Date of judgment) Pinpoint

Eg. Barton v Chibber (Supreme Court of Victoria, Hampel J, 29 June 1989) 3

Abbreviations

Various indexes and guides can help you interpret legal abbreviations for cases, law reports and journals. A list of these can be found via the below link.

The difference between reported and unreported cases

Reported cases are those judgments published in law reports. Cases that are published in law report series are those which deal with significant points of law or establish precedents. Reported cases include the authorised report series for each court, and subject or jurisdiction based report series. Reported cases are available on Lexis+ Australia, Westlaw Australia and CCH.

Unreported cases are those cases not considered to establish an important precedent, or may be too recent to be reported in a reports series. Unreported judgments are those handed down by judges in court. They are available in Lexis+ Australia, Westlaw Australia, AustLII, BarNet Jade, and the judgment databases on the individual court websites (available in the case law by jurisdiction). 

Citing the authorised version of a case

In each Australian jurisdiction there is one series of law reports designated as authorised. If a decision appears in an authorised report series, this is the version that must be cited in student essays and scholarly publications - see Rule 2.2.2 in the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th ed.) (AGLC4).

In all Australian courts, there is a convention that the authorised report of a judgment be cited and handed up in court in preference to other versions. In a number of jurisdictions, this convention has been formalised by Practice Direction.

Please see our Authorised Reports Research Guide to find:

• information about what authorised reports are and why they are used;
• which version of a case to use when there is no authorised report;
• a list of authorised report series from Australia and other jurisdictions; and
• the Library's holdings of authorised reports online and in print

Can I cite an unreported judgment?

If a case has not been published in an authorised report, you can cite the unreported case.  A case citator can help you determine whether a case has been published in an authorised report or gone on to appeal in a higher court.

Further information on citing case law can be found in the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th edition).