Law: Case Citators and Finding Cases

Case citations are a standard way of abbreviating the name and publication details of a case.

General AGLC4 format includes:

• Reported Case
  Names of parties Year Volume Law Report Series Starting page, Pinpoint.
  eg.  Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd v Western Australia (1992) 7 WAR 61, 64.

• Unreported Case (medium neutral citation)
  Names of parties [Year] Unique Court Identifier Judgment No., Pinpoint.
  eg.  Dolphin Quay Pty Ltd v Appeal Holdings Pty Ltd [2011] WASC 352, [11].

Case citators can help you confirm details of an indexed case;

• Name and date of judgment
• Parallel citations
• Presiding judge
• Litigation history
• Cases considered and cited
• Whether any later cases have considered the case

Case citators:

• CaseBase (Case Citator by Lexis Advance)
• KeyCite (Case Citator and Digest by Westlaw - covers both international and Australian materials)
• LawCite (free Case Citator from Free Access to Law Movement - used by AustLii / NZLii and CCH Intelliconnect)
• Jade Citator Search provides free access to decisions of selected Australian Courts and Tribunals, and an alert service. Register for free student access to JADE Professional.

• Enter the topic keywords into the Lexis Advance or Westlaw search field, then limit your results to cases.
• Find the relevant topic section in a legal encyclopedia, e.g. The Laws of Australia (Westlaw) or Halsbury's Laws of Australia (Lexis Advance), and look for citations / links to specific cases.
• Find a relevant journal article on the topic area and look for cases discussed in the article.
• Find a relevant textbook using the Library catalogue and look for cases mentioned > use those case citations to search in Lexis Advance or Westlaw for the actual case.
• Search Unreported Judgments for keywords in the full text of cases (see below).

If you find a case in an article, encyclopedia chapter or book, don't forget to check if the case is still good law using Lexis Advance signals or Westlaw flags.
If you find an unreported judgment, check whether it has been reported elsewhere (authorised version).

1. Using a case citator, enter the citation to locate the case. If a reported case, check for the most authorised version of the case.
   Tip: You can check the ECU list of authorised law reports.
    
2. The citator will provide a link to the full text of the case if available. Check both Lexis Advance and Westlaw for access to the full text.  Each publishes different law report series and covers different Courts.
    
3. Consult Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations or La Trobe University Legal Abbreviations Search to identify the full law report series title.

Use CASE CITATORS to search for cases that have considered a particular Statute (Act of Parliament), Bill or delegated/subordinate legislation ('legislation judicially considered').

Lexis Advance (CaseBase):

• Select the template for searching Cases from the Advanced Search option and enter the Legislation Title (and Provision number) into the correct field(s).

Westlaw (KeyCite):

• Use the Westlaw search field to enter the name of the legislation as a phrase, eg. “Trade Practices Act 1974”
• A section number can be added, but don't use any punctuation, eg. “Trade Practices Act 1974” & 52
• Use the truncation symbol to locate all subsections, eg. Constitution & 128*
  Note: the truncation symbol varies for different databases.

Jade Citator (open access)

LawCite (open access)

Unreported cases are freely available via court websites, AustLii, Jade, as well as ECU's legal database subscriptions (Lexis Advance / Westlaw).

• High Court of Australia - Judgments Database

• Federal Court of Australia - Judgments

• Federal Circuit Court of Australia (Federal Magistrates) - Judgments

• Family Court of Australia - Judgments

• Supreme Court of Western Australia - Judgments

• District Court of Western Australia - Judgments

• Family Court of Western Australia - Select Judgments