Australian Case Law

What is a case citation?

A case citation is a unique identifier of a court case.  It is a good way to search for a specific case. There are different types of citations, but the two most common types are:

• Medium neutral citation 
• Reported case citation.

Medium neutral citation

A medium neutral citation is created by the court when its decision is handed down. It consists of the parties’ names, the year, the unique court identifier, and the judgment number. For example the citation [2003]FCA901 means it was the 901st case heard in the Federal Court of Australia in 2003.

Reported case citation

Cases that raise significant points of law or expand on our understanding of the law are reported in a law report series.

A reported case citation consists of the parties' names, the year, the law report series volume number, the abbreviation of the law report series, and the page number on which the case commences.

Case citators

These enable you to search for cases using party name/s, citations, legislation and topics - you can click through to the full text of cases published in the subscribed law reports of each publisher.