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Researching Case Law

Find cases

Case law, or common law, can be described as the principle of law arising from the decisions, and reasons for decisions, made by judges in court. Decisions, or judgments, from superior courts and tribunals are available initially as an unreported judgment, with selected decisions subsequently reported in law reports.

Searching for cases can done in different ways. Sometimes you will have a known law report citation and you can find the case by that citation. Other times you will have to do a broad search and find cases on a specific topic of law.


Searching for cases

When you are searching for cases in various legal databases be aware that there are different terms and connectors used. Download this ‘Basic Search Tips for Major Legal Databases’ as it provides a summary of the wildcards and connectors used in popular legal databases.

 

Note

Depending on what information you have on a specific case, there are detailed instructions on searching using different approaches. Select the relevant search approach you are interested in from the left menu under the Find Cases heading.


Australian Case Law Databases

These are the main databases or websites to research for Australian cases:


International Case Law databases

These are the main databases to research for International cases: