Information Skills Law Faqs Databases containing case reports
International programme law students should be aware that there are three legal databases in which they may find the full text of law reports, each produced by a different organisation:
Some law reports may be found in only one of these databases, while others may be included in more than one. So, which database should you use? This will depend, to some extent, on whether you have a full citation for a particular case, a partial citation for a particular case, or whether you are simply searching for cases on a topic (without having any specific citations).
If you already have a full citation for a case (for instance, a citation in one of the International Programmes Study Guides), the citation will give you an abbreviation for the law report in which the case was published, such as All ER (which stands for All England Law Reports). An example is given below:
R v Chalkley and Jeffries (1998) 2 All ER 155
If you are not sure of the meaning of a particular abbreviation, please use the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations to find out the full title of the law report series. Then, you can check either the finding case reports online table or the Journal Finder, to find out which database (Justis, Lexis®Library or Westlaw) contains the full text of that particular law report. In the example given above, you will find that the All England Law Reports are included on Lexis®Library, so you should use that database to find the full text of this case.
Sometimes you may have only a partial citation for a case, such as the party names Brown v Stott. Notice that this citation is incomplete, because it does not provide any details about the particular law report in which the case was published. If you only have the party names you can search JustCite, the legal citator and search engine database, to find out where a case was reported, and link directly to the full-text in the Online Library databases. JustCite cross-searches the Online Library legal databases so you don't have to search them individually.
Once you have logged into JustCite with either your Athens account or student portal password, search for the case Brown v Stott using the basic search box on the homepage. You will see that the case was widely reported, for example at [2003] 1 AC 681, [2001] 2 WLR 817 and [2001] 2 All ER 97. JustCite not only provides case report citations, but also subsequent cases, legislation considered, and related journal articles, and links you to the full-text in the relevent Online Library database. For more information about JustCite see the quick start guide.
If you are unable to find the full text of a case after searching the legal databases (JustCite, Westlaw, Lexis®Library, and Justis), please contact the Online Library for assistance.
All legal databases (JustCite, Justis, Lexis®Library and Westlaw) allow you to search for cases on a topic, using keywords (e.g. "involuntary intoxication"). If you are not familiar with legal databases, you may wish to begin by searching all 4 databases. After gaining some experience of performing searches on each database, you may develop a preference for a particular database.
However, if you wish to be comprehensive in your search, you may wish to first search JustCite then search the full-text legal databases, as there is no single database which includes every law report, and thus you may find cases on one database which do not appear on another database. For instance, a free text search for cases on "involuntary intoxication" retrieved 2 cases on JustCite, 17 cases on Justis, 31 cases on Lexis®Library and 18 cases on Westlaw.
For more information on searching for cases on a topic, please click on "How do I find reports on a topic".
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