Case Law: Home

Welcome

If you are researching Case Law, this guide is for you.

In this guide, you will learn about:

• Different types of Australian case reports

• Components of reported and unreported case citations

• Searching full-text case reports for Australian and foreign cases

What is Case Law?

Alongside legislation, Cases provide authority for legal principles. They are considered primary sources of the Law.

In a Common Law system such as ours, judgments and decisions from cases set legal precedents; and the term Case Law is often used to describe these precedents. Case Law essentially means legal principles arising from judicial decisions.

As law professionals, you are expected to know how to research and find case law using various databases.

Key resources for Case Law

Case Citators

Case Citators are law databases that help you find:

• the citation to a case,
• the full text of the judgment in a case,
• the cases and legislation considered in a case, and
• the subsequent legal history of a case: the later cases that consider our original case.

Case Citators may also refer you to journal articles about a case, and other related secondary materials such as encyclopedia entries.

There are three recommended case citators available through UTS Library: