What is case law?
Case law is:
- the general term for the legal principles developed by judges to determine legal disputes
- recorded in judicial decisions or judgments; only decisions from courts of record (e.g. cases that clarify/settle a principle of law heard in the superior courts, Supreme, Federal and High Court) are recorded in law reports
- also known in Australia as "common law" or "judge-made law"
- valuable as precedents but constitutes only a small number of cases heard each year.
Three main ways to find case law
- Topic search (using search words and phrases).
- Citation search (when you have the citation or party names).
- From judicially considered legislation (when you link from legislation to related cases using a case citator such as CaseBase).
Using a case citator such as FirstPoint or CaseBase helps to find the preceding and subsequent judicial history of a case, as well as listing the legislation considered by the case, and relevant journal articles.
