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Case Law: Understanding Case Citations

This is a study guide designed to help you find legal cases.

Case citations

 

The purpose of a case citation is to provide sufficient information so that the cited case can be located. It performs the same task as referencing in general - that is, to identify a source of information. However, a case citation is very abbreviated.

According to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, these are the components of case citations:
Types of case reports Components of case citations
Reported
  1. Party/ Case Name
  2. Year
  3. Volume Number
  4. Law Report Series
  5. Starting Page

Unreported

(Medium Neutral Citation)
  1. Party/ Case Name
  2. Year
  3. Unique Court Identifier
  4. Judgment Number

Components of reported case citations

 

Here are examples of what a reported case citation looks like:

Green v The King (1949) 79 CLR 353.

R v Petronius-Kuff [1985] 3 NSWLR 178.

Now, let's break down the citations according to citation components:

Case Name Green v The King R v Petronius-Kuff
Year (1949) [1985]
Volume Number 79 3
Law Report Series CLR NSWLR
Starting Page 353 178

 

  • The case name contains the parties involved in the case and is always in italics.

  • The letter R stands for "Rex" (the King) or "Regina" (the Queen). Normally it is pronounced "the Crown" (AGLC4 rule 2.1.4).

  • The letter "v" is always pronounced "against" in criminal cases, or "and" in civil cases. It is never pronounced "v" or "versus" in Australian or UK cases (AGLC4 rule 2.1.11).

  • The year of the judgment can be in either round or square brackets.

  • Round brackets indicate that the law report series is arranged by volume number. Eg: Green v The King (1949) 79 CLR 353.

  • Square brackets indicate that the law report series is arranged by year. Square bracket citations may not necessarily have a volume number. Eg: R v Petronius-Kuff [1985] 3 NSWLR 178.

  • CLR stands for Commonwealth Law Reports. NSWLR stands for New South Wales Law Reports.

Components of unreported medium neutral citations

 

This is a format for citing unreported cases since they became available online only, from approximately 1999 onwards.

Medium neutral citations should only be used where a court or a tribunal itself allocates the medium neutral citation.

See the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC), Appendix B, pages 328-332 for a comprehensive list of Australian medium neutral unique court and tribunal identifiers.

Here is an example of a Medium Neutral Citation:

Work Health Authority v Outback Ballooning [2019] HCA 2.

 

 Case Name Work Health Authority v Outback Ballooning
 Judgment Year  [2019]
 Court Identifier  HCA
 Judgment Number  2

  • Judgment Year: The judgment year is always in square brackets.

  • Court Identifier: HCA stands for High Court of Australia (court names are always abbreviated in medium neutral citations).

  • Judgment Number: 2 (allocated by the court, this is the second judgment of the High Court in 2019). In Medium Neutral Citations, judgments are arranged by judgment number, not by page.

  • Pinpoints must refer to paragraph numbers (because there are no page numbers), and be in square brackets. With a pinpoint to paragraph 3 this medium neutral citation would be:

Work Health Authority v Outback Ballooning [2019] HCA 2, [3].

 

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Refer to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th edition), chapter 2, for more information on how to cite cases.