Library Guides: Human Rights Law: Human rights case 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).

Case citators

LawCite and the Oxford Law Citator (link within Oxford Reports on International Law) will also find other cases and material that cite or refer to a case.

CRIN Legal Database
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.
International Human Rights Reports (1996-2007)
Hard copies from 1996- 2007 (not for loan).
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.
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.

Oxford Reports on International Law
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.
Oxford Law Citator: Click hyperlinked content with the reports, or select the orange citator link to find other sources that cite a case.

Refworld's caselaw collection (UNHCR)
Refworld is a tool for disseminating and promoting the international law relating to refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons and other 'persons of concern' to UNHCR. This collection includes international, regional and domestic caselaw.
RefWorld search tips
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.
United Nations Digital Library
Browse and search UN-produced materials including UN documents and open access publications from the Economic and Social Council, International Court of Justice, human rights bodies and research training institutions. Content incorporates UN voting data and speeches and UN maps. The platform is a collaboration between Dag Hammarskjöld Library and the United Nations Office at Geneva Library.

United Nations law collection
Contains exact reproductions of major UN legal publications including selected documents from the International Court of Justice (including yearbooks) and hearings before UN Committees (via HeinOnline).

United Nations Treaty Body Jurisprudence database
Access decisions on individual complaints on human rights violations by eight treaty bodies.
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.