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Case Law: Unreported Cases

This Guides provides information relating to Law Reports, Citations and Citators, how to look for specific Cases, using different methods. It also includes links to Databases, to enable you locate Australian Cases and Cases from other Jurisdictions.

Unreported decisions

We have learnt that Unreported Judgments are decisions of the Courts that have not been published in any Law Reporter, but instead have been "published" on a Court website. But this doesn't mean that they never become published in a Law Report. Even though they do start off as recent / new decisions, they may become reported, in due course, in a Law Reporter, or several Law Reporters. 

You can find Unreported Judgments on the websites of the Courts that deliver the Judgment, via Lexis+ and Westlaw AU (subscription databases) and on AustLII or BarNet Jade (free databases). You will find links to the these databases in the panel on the right.

You can also find Unreported Judgments from the Supreme Court of Western Australia (1958-1990, some issues missing) in the Beasley Law Library, third floor, law reports collection. 

TOP TIP: Always check if an Unreported decision has subsequently been reported. If an Unreported Case has been reported, this is the version you need to cite in your essay. For more information in relation to this, please see the Case Law examples in our AGLC4 Referencing Library Guide, in the TIP ABOUT UNREPORTED CASES section. 

Find unreported cases

Banner images: Image 1 retrieved from Pixabay. Image 2 by UWA Library. Image 3 retrieved from SBS. Image 4 retrieved from SL Blogs. Image 5 retrieved from Wikimedia.

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