Case citators
What is a case citator?
A case citator is a legal research tool which allows you to:
- find cases
- track a case's history and it's treatment by subsequent courts
- provide links to relevant cases, legislation and secondary sources.
They allow you to determine if your case is still good law.
How to ensure cases are still "good" law (i.e. not overruled by subsequent cases)
It's important to research the judicial history of a case to ascertain whether the case has been overruled by subsequent cases or it is still being used.
- Checking the judicial history of the case may also alert you to more recent judgments on your topic. This task is usually referred to as "noting up".
- Noting up Australian cases is done by using a case citator. Common Australian case citators are Westlaw AU: FirstPoint, and Lexis Advance Research: CaseBase.
- The most noteworthy annotations in a case citator are: disapproved, overruled, applied and followed. (Annotations differ between databases.)
- A detailed description of these terms can be found via:
- Westlaw AU > Help > Content Overviews > Status Symbols Guide
- Lexis Advance Research > Help > Tutorials > Tutorials: CaseBase > CaseBase Signals
Case citator databases
If you cannot access the full-text of an authorised version in one case citator, try another one. For example, the full-text of CLR (the most authoritative report of High Court decisions) will be available in FirstPoint.
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Westlaw AUWestlaw AU provides access to Australian reported and unreported cases. It contains authorised and specialist law reports, including the Commonwealth Law Reports and Federal Court Reports.
Westlaw AU's case citator: FirstPoint provides access to case references, citation, history and digest information.
Tutorials: How to use a FirstPoint record & Case Status Symbol Guide -
Westlaw - United States and US Territories + InternationalWestlaw US and International provides access to cases law and more from the US, UK, Hong Kong and many other international jurisdictions.
Westlaw's case citator: KeyCite connects you to citing references and related sources, and enables you to determine the status of a case, statute, regulation, administrative decision patent or trademark.
Tutorials: How to use KeyCite -
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII)Austlii is a free resource containing case law and unreported judgments for all Australian Commonwealth, States and Territories.
NOTE: Austlii's case citator: LawCite is an automated compilation unlike the case citators in Lexis and Westlaw which have been manually edited and complied by experts.
Tutorial: LawCite help
