Case Law and the Canadian Abridgement – Case Law Indexes
Reporters are fully indexed. Browsing the indexes to key case law reporters can quickly yield results!
There are two main types of law reporters:
General law reports
- Decisions from a specific court (e.g. Supreme Court Reports (SCR))
- Several courts within a specific jurisdiction (e.g. Ontario Reports (OR))
- Several courts within several jurisdictions (e.g. Dominion Law Reports (DLR))
Specialized law reports
- Include decisions discussing specific subjects of law independent of court or jurisdiction (e.g., Canadian Cases in Environmental Law (CCEL), Family Law Reports (FLR), Canadian Criminal Cases (CCC), etc.)
Note however that some cases are published in more than one reporter. Recall that how cases are selected for publication can vary from publisher to publisher. The criteria used to determine whether a judgment is to be selected for inclusion matters!
For example, the Ontario Reports are selected based on whether the case:
- Makes new law by dealing with a novel situation or by extending the application of existing principles;
- Includes a modern judicial restatement of established principles;
- Clarifies conflicting decisions of the lower courts; etc.
You can often search a case law index in many different ways:
- by the names of the parties or the style of cause;
- by subject;
- by the legislation cited;
- by case law cited;
- by judicial definitions of a word or a phrase.