Case law

Research Guide for finding cases and law reports at the State Library of NSW and freely available online

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Key to library resources

Access anywhere with a library card In the Library (or anywhere with a Library card for NSW residents)
Available to access in the library Only in the Library
Publicly available online Publicly available

Cases at the Library - law reports with abbreviations

Below is a list of selected law reports held by the State Library.

This list is sorted alphabetically and the relevant abbreviations are shown before the report title.

You will need to request most of these resources from our stack storage.

Some items are held at our offsite storage facility and will generally be available after 4pm on the next business day.

Can't find the abbreviation on the list below, try the La Trobe University Legal Abbreviation search, and check our catalogue for possible holdings. 

Can't find the abbreviation on the list above, try the La Trobe University Legal Abbreviation search, and check our catalogue for possible holdings.

Legal information at the Library

This Guide has been developed by staff of the Legal Information Access Centre (LIAC), State Library of NSW. The State Library holds an extensive collection of case law, legislation and looseleaf publications.

Defining cases and law reports

A decision of a court or a tribunal is often called a 'judgment', 'case', 'determination' or 'finding'.  In this guide we use the term case.

Finding law reports using the Catalogue

Tip! Type in exact name of law report - for example Motor Vehicle Reports

Why can't I find a case?

Not all cases are available.  

Courts select and provide decisions for publication, usually on the grounds of legal significance.  

Just because a case is well known doesn't mean that it has been published in print, or on the internet. If you know the names of the parties, you could try searching on a case citator to find it on the internet.

Abbreviations - law reports

If the title of the law report or journal is abbreviated, you will need to find the full title before searching the Library Catalogue.

Case citators at the State Library and online

You can use the following citators to help you find a case and use the tips for making the most of each citator:

If you want to find out more about citators, use this guideWhat is a case citator? produced by Macquarie University.