As we mentioned in the Home tab, when Cases are deemed important enough by the Courts for various reasons, they are published in a Law Report and given a unique citation, that has a systematic style, that is designed for exact identification and easy retrieval.
Reported Case citations include the party names, sometimes called the name or title of the Case, and other unique references, which you can use to locate the Case, such as the volume number.
This set of conventions is used when you cite Cases in your assignments using the Australian Guide to Legal Citation.
Example of a reported Case citation:
Koowarta v Bjelke-Peterson (1982) 153 CLR 168
Citation Element | Description | Comments |
Koowarta v Bjelke-Peterson | Party names | Plaintiff v Defendant - the "v" is pronounced "and" in civil cases and "against" in criminal cases |
(1982) | Year | Round or square brackets? see below for more information |
153 | Volume number | |
CLR | Law report abbreviation | See the Abbreviations Guide for more information |
168 | Beginning page number |
Polly Peck Holdings Plc v Trelford [1986] 2 WLR 845
Square brackets enclosing the year in the Reported Case citation, indicates that the year of publication - 1986 - is also the volume number. This means that the Report is organised by year. In this example, you would need to locate the 1986 volume of the Weekly Law Reports in order to locate the Case if you looking for a print version of the case. When searching for cases online, you would need to include the year when you search. If more than one part is published in the year, they are identified with sequential part numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) In this example, the Case cited is published in the 2nd part for 1986. The part number is not unique, every year may have parts 1 and 2. The Law Reports are arranged on the Library shelves by year.
Wright v Grasweld P/L (1991) 22 NSWLR 317
Round brackets enclosing the year of publication indicate that the Case can be found, using the volume represented by the number 22 in the citation. This means that Report is organised by volume number. In this example, volume 22 of the New South Wales Law Reports contains the Case. The year of publication is also included in the citation, but the round brackets indicate that the year is secondary to the volume number. So you would need to look for the volume number, if you were to look for this case in our print collection. It isn't necessary to look for the year as well. If you were to use one of the Databases to look for the case, then you don't need to include the year in your search. The volume, Report abbreviation and the start page are enough (22 NSWLR 317). If more than one volume is published in a year, then each will have its own unique volume number. These kinds of Reports are arranged on the Library shelves by the volume number.
For more information on brackets, read this article: Legal Research tips: Square brackets versus round brackets.
Abbreviations in Case Titles
For example: Re Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs; Ex parte Fejzullahu and Others (2000) 171 ALR 341
Rule 2.2 of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation specifies a citation format for Reported Judgments.
To reference Reported Cases, you will need to include the following elements in the citation: Case Name (Year) Volume Law Report Series Starting Page, Pinpoint.
Footnote example | Bibliography example |
1 Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Teoh (1995) 183 CLR 273, 280. | Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Teoh (1995) 183 CLR 273, 280 |
For more examples on this, have a look at our UWA AGLC4 Referencing Guide.
You have already found out that when a Judgment is handed down by a Court, it is published very quickly on the Court webpage first. Soon afterwards, decisions can also be published in online free legal Databases, such as AustLII and Jade and fee-based Databases such as Lexis+ and Thomson's Westlaw AU.
These decisions are referred to as Unreported Judgments, because they have not been published in a Law Report Series. An Unreported Judgment may subsequently be reported in one or more Law Report Series. When this happens, you will only be able to access the Reported version through the subscription, fee-based Databases.
Continue onto the Medium Neutral Citation tab, to find out more about Unreported Judgments. You will notice that they are a little different to Reported citations.
The Unreported Judgment below, is an example of a medium neutral citation. The term medium neutral citation is a fancy way of saying a Court given citation.
This method of citing Unreported Judgments was devised in the late 1990s, by the High Court of Australia, in order to accommodate the citation of Judgments, when they were first made available online. As these Judgments don't have page numbers, pinpoint references are managed by sequentially numbering all paragraphs in the online Judgment. All Unreported Judgments from the late 1990s are available online.
Example of a medium neutral Unreported Judgment citation:
Browne v Dunne [2000] HCA 23 at [4]
Citation Element | Description | Comments |
Browne v Dunne | Party names | Plaintiff v Defendant - the "v" is pronounced "and" in civil cases and "against" in criminal cases |
[2000] | Year | Always use square brackets |
HCA | Court abbreviation | See the Abbreviations Guide for more information |
23 | Judgment number | The 23rd judgment published by the High Court of Australia in 2000 |
at [4] | Pinpoint reference | Sequential paragraph number within the judgment |
Before 1999 Unreported Judgments were published as paper pamphlets and cited to reflect this format. In pre-1999 works you will see Unreported Judgments cited like this:
Example of a pre-1999 Unreported Judgment
Browne v Manning (Unreported, Supreme Court of Western Australia, Hawkins J, 3 September 1992) p. 23
Citation Element | Description | Comments |
Browne v Manning | Party names | Plaintiff v Defendant - the "v" is pronounced "and" in civil cases and "against" in criminal cases |
(Unreported, | Judgment form | Unreported, Court, Judge and Date enclosed in round brackets |
Supreme Court of Western Australia, | Court name in full | |
Hawkins J, | Judges name/s | |
3 September 1992) | Date of delivery | |
p. 23 | Page number |
For more information medium neutral citations, have a look at this article: Short and sharp - legal research tips what are and are not medium neutral citations?
Although there is debate about the precedent value of Unreported decisions, in practice and in academia, they are used if they contain the only statement of the law on a particular subject.
Rule 2.3 of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, specifies a citation format for Unreported Judgments, that is slightly different from the standard legal citation format described above.
Medium Neutral Citation
Osborne [2001] VSCA 228 (Unreported, Winneke P, Buchanan and Vincent JJA, 14 December 2001) [18] (Winneke P)
Without Medium Neutral Citation (pre-1990s documents)
Bruinsma v Menczer (Unreported, Supreme Court of NSW, Santow J, 16 November 1995)
The UWA AGLC Referencing Guide offers more information on citing unreported judgments using the AGLC style.
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