Case Law
A case citation contains all the information needed to locate a particular case (also referred to as a "judgment", "decision"... etc). The text of the judgment in a case can often be found on the web, e.g. on AustLII, but many older judgments are not available online or are only available from publisher databases that can be accessed through the Library.
Historically judgments that were considered significant were "reported", i.e. edited and published in a series of law reports. All other judgments were "unreported". Now many Australian courts publish their judgments on their own websites and they are also published on the AustLII website. These are technically still called unreported versions of the judgment.
To find the text of a case it It is important to be able to distinguish between the citations of reported and unreported judgments, as the latter will normally be on AustLII but the former won't be. A system called "medium neutral citation" is used to cite unreported judgments. A medium neutral citation identifies the case by reference to the court which decided the case. The citation of a reported case refers to the law report series in which the judgment was published.
Unreported Judgments
Citations of cases published on court websites or on AustLII are called "medium neutral citations". Such citations uniquely identify the case regardless of which website it appears on or even whether it has also been published in print - hence "medium neutral".
This is an example of a medium neutral citation:
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Pollard v Trude [2008] QCA 421
The elements of a medium neutral citation are:
| Pollard v Trude |
The parties to the case |
| 2008 |
Year of the judgment |
| QCA |
The unique identifier for the court - here the Queensland Court of Appeal - usually an abbreviation of the court or tribunal name |
| 421 |
The sequential judgment number for that year |
Reported Cases
The citation format for reported cases includes an abbreviation for the title of the law report series in which they are published.
This is an example of a reported case citation:
Repatriation Commission v Hill (2005) 91 ALD 1
The elements of a reported citation are:
| Repatriation Commission v Hill |
The parties to the case (there are other formats depending on the nature of the case) |
| 2005 |
Year in which the case was decided * |
| 91 |
The volume of the law report. Not all reports have a volume number. |
| ALD |
Stands for Administrative Law Decisions, a series which contains reports of cases decided in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and relevant decisions from other courts. |
| 1 |
The page on which this particular case starts in volume 91 of the ALD |
* For exceptions see the Australian Guide to Legal Citation 3rd edition at page 47
How to find the full-text of a case
The following short video shows you how to quickly locate the text of a case through the Bond Library website. The steps involved are also described below.
The steps involved in finding a case from a citation are:
| Identify the report series from the abbreviation using the Law Library's Abbreviations and Sources for Reported and Unreported Case Law guide |
Identify the court from the abbreviation using Law Library's Abbreviations and Sources for Reported and Unreported Case Law guide |
| Note the year of publication, volume number and start page |
Note the year of judgment and judgment number |
| Follow the link in the guide to the database that contains the report series (NB some reports may only be available in print) |
Follow the link in the guide to AustLII and locate the database specific to the court or go to the court website (very recent judgments may only be available on the court site) |
| Navigate to the report volume and page number for the case (NB some databases may require you to do a search to find the case) |
Navigate to the year and judgement number for the case |
There are many guides to legal abbreviations available (e.g. the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations). We have developed a guide specifically for Bond Law Library that, in addition to explaining the abbreviations, links you directly to database or website on which the case can be found: Abbreviations and Sources for Reported and Unreported Case Law .
Case Law Databases, Citators & Digests
To find out when and how to use these tools, for example to find cases on a point of law, judicial consideration of legislation and words and phrases, use one of the introductory textbooks or legal research books in the Library, e.g.:
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