Case citators are legal research tools that can be used to:
Key Australian case citators
Case citator and annotator covering Australian and overseas law reports and unreported decisions in Australian jurisdictions.
Key international case citators
Authorised law reports
Authorised law reports are the most authoritative source of law. These reports have been rigorously reviewed by the judge/s prior to publication and can take up to 12 months to be published. Most Australian state or territory jurisdictions have one authorised law report series aside from Western Australian, which has two. The Commonwealth also has two. If a case appears in an authorised law report series, this series should be cited in preference to any other reported version.
Unauthorised law reports
Unauthorised law reports are a legitimate record of court decisions and are generally faster to publish as they have not been through the same rigorous review process as authorised reports. In these reports legal editors summarise the key points and assign catch words.
A reported version of a case should be cited in preference to an unreported version.
Where a case appears in an authorised report series, this series should be cited in preference to any other reported version.
The Law Reports series below are the authorised reports for the UK and should be used in preference to all other UK law reports.
Access via ICLR online.
| Admiralty and Ecclesiatical Cases (1865-75) | A. & E. |
| Appeal Cases | A.C. |
| Appeal Cases (1875-90) | App. Cas. |
| Chancery Appeals (1865-75) | Ch. App. |
| Chancery Division | Ch. |
| Chancery Division (1875-90) | Ch. D. |
| Common Pleas (1865-75) | C.P. |
| Common Pleas Division (1865-80) | C.P.D. |
| Crown Cases Reserved (1865-75) | C.C.R. |
| English and Irish Appeals (1866-75) | H.L. |
| Equity Cases (1865-75) | Eq. |
| Exchequer (1865-75) | Ex. |
| Exchequer Division (1875-80) | Ex. D. |
| Family Division | Fam. |
| Kings Bench | K.B. |
| Privy Council (1865-75) | P.C. |
| Probate | P. |
| Probate and Divorce (1865-75) | P. & D. |
| Probate Division (1875-90) | P.D. |
| Queens Bench (1865-75 and post 1891) | Q.B. |
| Queens Bench Division (1875-90) | Q.B.D. |
All decisions of the courts start as unreported judgments. The vast majority of cases will remain unreported, with only cases that change the law or of importance being published in law reports. It is possible for the unreported and reported versions of a case to differ significantly so avoid relying on unreported versions of judgements for important legal analysis or court submissions if there is reported version available. Unreported judgments are only available electronically.
Key Australian resources
Access to Australian legal material including the case citator CaseBase, the legal encyclopaedias Halsbury’s Laws of Australia and Halsbury’s Laws of England and the Australian Encyclopaedia of Forms & Precedents.
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Legal abbreviations are used extensively in law to identify legal publications and courts. Abbreviations are used for law reports, law journals, law courts and commonly used legal terms. Examples include CLR for the Commonwealth Law Reports or ALJR for the Australian Law Journal Reports. Use the tools below to decipher legal abbreviations.
A case citation is a unique identifier that refers to a specific case. Understanding the components of a citation and how they are written will help you to locate the case referred to.
These are examples of reported case citations:
Project Blue Sky Inc v Australian Broadcasting Authority (1998) 194 CLR 355
R v Petronius-Kuff [1985] 3 NSWLR 178
The elements of these citations are:
| Element | Example | Note |
| Case name |
Project Blue Sky Inc v Australian Broadcasting Authority R v Petronius-Kuff |
The case name contains the parties involved in a case and is written in italics. In civil cases the "v" is pronounced as "and"; in criminal cases it is pronounced as "against". |
| Year |
(1998) [1985] |
The year of the judgement can be found in either round or square brackets. Round brackets indicate that law reports series the case was published in is arranged by volume number; square brackets indicate the law reports series is arranged by year. |
| Volume number |
194 3 |
The reports series volume number that the case can be found in. In a square bracket the volume number indicates the volume within that year. |
| Law report abbreviation |
CLR NSWLR |
The abbreviated title of the law reports series. In this case CLR stands for the Commonwealth Law Reports, and NSWLR stands for the New South Wales Law Reports. For more information see the "Legal Abbreviations" tab in the box located above. |
| Starting page |
355 178 |
The number of the first page the case begins on in the law reports. |
Unreported cases are not published in a law reports series. Due to this, they are cited differently from reported cases.
Since 1998 unreported decisions have a medium neutral citation which includes a unique court identifier in abbreviated form.
This is an example of an unreported case citation:
X v Twitter Inc [2017] NSWSC 1300
The elements of unreported citations are:
| Element | Example | Note |
| Case name |
X v Twitter Inc |
The case name contains the parties involved in a case and is written in italics. In civil cases the "v" is pronounced as "and"; in criminal cases it is pronounced as "against". |
| Year |
[2017] |
The year in which the case was decided. For unreported cases square brackets are used. |
| Court Identifier |
NSWSC |
The identifier of the court the case was heard in, usually in abbreviated format. In this case the court was the New South Wales Supreme Court. |
| Judgement number |
1300 |
The judgement number for the year - this is allocated by the court. |
The term "parallel citations" refers to when a case has multiple citations. Cases will likely have more than one citation as after a decision is made a citation is assigned to a case. but if the case is published elsewhere a new citation will be created to reflect where it was published.
If a case has been reported in a law reports series that citation should always take precedence over an unreported citation, and if a case has been published in an authorised report series that citation should take precedence over all others. You can use a case citator such as CaseBase or Westlaw AU KeyCite to check for parallel citations.
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Finding cases by citation
Finding cases by party names
Finding cases on a topic
This guide has been created by University of Newcastle Librarians who work with your school to make sure you have access to the resources you need. The Librarians supporting the School of Law and Justice are:
