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Human Rights Law

Human rights cases in multiple courts

The following databases can be searched or browsed to find human rights jurisprudence in UN Committees, and regional and domestic courts.

The databases can be searched to find individual decisions or cases in a particular court or cases on a particular topic in multiple courts.

Authorised Law reports are available on subscription databases (available to University of Melbourne staff and students)

Oxford Reports on International Law (ORIL)

To find human rights cases in international, regional and domestic courts on ORIL, you can perform an advanced search or browse to human rights cases by selecting 'Subject' from the top blue menu bar, then 'Human Rights' and browsing to the topic using the + signs in the menu on the left, and narrowing the search further by eg: court and keywords.  

Butterworths Human Rights Cases ('BHRC') 

On Lexis + Australia (vol 1 1996 to current)  is an up to date report series that includes human rights decisions from international, regional and national courts and tribunals that make a significant contribution to the way in which a particular right or freedom is interpreted or applied. It includes cases from the European Court of Human Rights as well as appeal courts from the UK, the Americas, Africa, Australia and New Zealand; the UN Human Rights Committee, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and others.

To search this resource, click on the publication button, under Guided search, which is under the main search bar, enter "human rights" in the next search box and Butterworths Human rights cases in the final search box. Then click on the search button. 

The International Law Reports 

On JUSTIS  is an up to date report series that contains decisions of international courts and arbitrators as well as judgments of national courts.

International Human Rights Reports

  • Hard copy, not for loan copies can be found in the MLS Law Library. From 1996- 2005
  • The IHRR contains jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Committee against Torture, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter American Court of Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the former Yugoslav and Rwandan War Crimes Tribunals and the Bosnian Human Rights Chamber. 

Refworld 

To search Refworld's caselaw collection, choose 'caselaw' from the tab in the top menu on the Refworld home page. From here you can browse to relevant cases by continually narrowing by court, topic, country, etc.

Alternatively, you can perform an advanced search. Use the 'search tips' page for help in searching. 

Child Rights International Network (CRIN) 

The CRIN Legal Database contains summaries of judgments from high-level national, regional and international courts around the world on children's rights issues. Each summary explains the background, significance, and CRIN's assessment of the decision's consistency with the CRC. Case summaries also include excerpts from relevant judicial discussions of the CRC and, where possible, links to full text decisions.

Human Rights Law Centre Caselaw Database

Although the focus of this database is cases on the Victorian Charter of Rights and Responsibilities 2006 (Vic), it is useful for finding selected cases in all Australian jurisdictions, in comparator foreign jurisdictions such as the UK, New Zealand, Canada, the US and India, the European Court of Human Rights and UN Committees. Cases can be searched by topic. Useful case summaries are provided. 

WorldCourts

In WorldCourts,  keyword searches can be used to search a single court or several courts simultaneously.
Note that WorldCourts can only be used to search international and regional courts, not domestic courts. 

Finding worldwide cases citing a case

LawCite 

LawCite will find cases citing your case in all courts in all jurisdictions that have a LII (AustLII, BaiLII, SAFLII etc), whether or not your case is itself contained in a LII database.

For example, the UK case of R v Ministry of Defence, Ex p Smith [1995] EWCA Civ 22;  [1996] QB 517 (available on BaiLII) has been cited in the UK, Hong Kong, Australia, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the European Court of Human Rights. 

The results can be sorted by jurisdiction, date, court or citation. Links are provided to the full text of the citing cases.


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