Using Case citators

What is a case citator?

Searching with case citators

Finding references with citators

Case citators at QUT Library

A case citator is a legal research tool for finding cases by party name/s, citation, or topic.

Case citators will help you find:

• the correct citation if not known
• case details (name, date decided, judges, court and citation)
• parallel citations - alternate citations for the same case. Remember to use the most authorised version available
• signals or flags summarise the subsequent judicial consideration the case has received
• a list of cases that have subsequently considered this case
• a list of cases considered in the case
• judicially considered words and phrases
• catchwords and digests provide a summary of the facts of the case
• litigation history tells you where the case was heard before, if it is an appeal
• journal articles considering the case, and
• links to full text cases and articles where available on the publishers website

The case citator search template allows you to search in a number of different fields both individually or in combination:

Citators will usually provide all the parallel citations for a case, so you can see which you should cite in your references.

The below example from CaseBase (Lexis Advance's citator) shows the parallel citations for cases in order of hierarchy from authorised (if available) to reported to unreported:

​