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Case law

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

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Notice

ACCESS THE COLLECTION

Temporary closure of the Macquarie Street building

The Macquarie Street building, including the Bashir Reading Room, is temporarily closed for a major refurbishment until late 2025.

During the building work, all reading room services (except study rooms and the Children’s Library), along with a temporary bookshop and cafe, are available in the Mitchell building.

To access collection material please visit the temporary Bashir Reading Room in the Mitchell building or visit the Special Collections area in the Mitchell Library Reading Room to request original material.

For more information and FAQs, visit Transforming the Macquarie Street building.

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 4 pm on the next business day.

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

Find out more about requesting items from storage

Log in as a Library member to request books and other collection materials. You can request most material via the catalogue; however, you will need to speak to a staff member to request some material.

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 guide: What is a case citator? produced by Macquarie University.