Policy and Procedures

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Access Policy

NSW Caselaw decisions are published to provide open access to justice and legal research.

In order to balance personal privacy against open access the Robots Exclusion Protocol is used to prevent search engine robots (with the exception of NSW Caselaw Search) from indexing and providing direct links within search results pages to judicial decisions published on NSW Caselaw.

Copyright and Judicial Decisions

Authorisation

  1. Any person is authorised to reproduce, publish and otherwise deal with any judicial decision, provided that such use:
    1. is accurate and in proper context;
    2. does not indicate directly or indirectly that it is an official version of the judicial decision;
    3. is consistent with the current official version, including revisions and amendments;
    4. complies with non-publication and suppression orders and publication restrictions;
    5. excludes external robots from indexing decisions; and
    6. does not reproduce any editorial material prepared by or for the Council of Law Reporting or other law report agency without the further authority of the Council or agency.
  2. Copyright in judicial decisions continues to reside in the State pursuant to the Copyright in Judicial Decisions Notice 1995 (NSW).
  3. Pursuant to the State Arms, Symbols and Emblems Act 2004, the arms of the State must not be used in connection with the publication of judicial decisions.
  4. The State may at any time revoke, vary or withdraw this authorisation.

Linking

Any person is authorised to hyperlink to pages and decisions published on NSW Caselaw, provided the following conditions are adhered to:

  1. Hyperlinks must be presented in a way which fairly represents our role and our site.
  2. The context in which you insert the hyperlink must not give your visitors the impression that your site, or your organisation, is sponsored or endorsed by NSW Caselaw.
  3. The hyperlink must not suggest that we have created any of your content, i.e. the source material must be clear, and acknowledgement of NSW Caselaw clearly provided.
  4. You must not reproduce any crests or logos of the courts and tribunals appearing on NSW Caselaw.
  5. Even though search engine robots are excluded from indexing judicial decisions published on NSW Caselaw, some robots index the hyperlinks from other websites linking to the judicial decisions. These links may appear and rank highly in search results pages. Therefore, the following conditions also apply when linking to judicial decisions published on NSW Caselaw:
    1. Where appropriate, use the Robots Exclusion Protocol or noindex meta tags to exclude robots indexing pages providing hyperlinks to judicial decisions published on NSW Caselaw.
    2. Where it is inappropriate to exclude pages from search engine indexes, DO NOT use information identifying parties within the hypertext eg. names: REGINA v WHYTE [2002] NSWCCA 343.
      • It is recommended terms relating to reading the decision or the medium neutral citation be used to create the hyperlink. For example:
      • REGINA v WHYTE [2002] NSWCCA 343 (read decision on NSW Caselaw)
      • or
      • REGINA v WHYTE [2002] NSWCCA 343
      • The hyperlinks read decision and [2002] NSWCCA 343 will not appear in the search results pages if the criteria WHYTE is used and therefore reduces the visibility of the hyperlinks.

Definitions

  • In this instrument:
  • "amendment" means any change made to a judicial decision;
  • "authorisation" means the authorisation granted by this instrument;
  • "copyright" includes any prerogative right or privilege of the Crown in the nature of copyright;
  • "Council" means the Council of Law Reporting established by the Council of Law Reporting Act 1969 of New South Wales;
  • "current official version" means the judicial decision (including revisions or amendments) currently on the NSW Caselaw web site;
  • "hypertext" means the text within hyperlinks
  • "judicial decision" means a judgment, decision, order, award or sentence of a State court, including reasons, that has been publicly delivered, made or given;
  • "non-publication and suppression orders" pursuant to section 3 of the Court Suppression and Non-publication Orders Act 2010:
    • non-publication order means an order that prohibits or restricts the publication of information (but that does not otherwise prohibit or restrict the disclosure of information).
    • suppression order means an order that prohibits or restricts the disclosure of information (by publication or otherwise).
  • "person" means individual, a corporation and a body corporate or politic;
  • "publication restriction" is where the text of a decision has been either temporarily or permanently restricted from publication on NSW Caselaw.
  • "revision" means any change made to a judicial decision;
  • "robots exclusion protocol" is a standard used by websites to inform web crawlers and robots which areas of their website should not be processed or indexed.
  • "robots exclusion meta tags" means hypertext markup language tags that informs web crawlers and robots not to index or cache the content of the webpage.
  • "State" means the State of New South Wales, and includes the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales;
  • "State court" means:
    1. any court constituted or continued by or under a law of New South Wales; or
    2. any tribunal or other body constituted or continued by or under a law of New South Wales and exercising judicial or industrial arbitration functions.

Enquiries regarding copyright and linking to judicial decisions should be referred to the Caselaw Support Officer at: caselaw@justice.nsw.gov.au or by telephone on 9230 8256.

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Release Schedule

Decisions will generally be released to NSW Caselaw within 24 hours of delivery.

Some types of decisions may take longer. For example, where a decision is read onto the record rather than handed down in written form, there will be a delay while a written version of the decision is prepared.

A judicial officer or a member of the court or tribunal may decide that a decision will not be published on NSW Caselaw. There may be a number of reasons for this, including:

  • it is a ruling on evidence given in the course of a criminal trial;
  • the private nature of the information (for example, an adoption case in the Supreme Court); or
  • it is a minor decision in a case that is continuing.

The following courts and tribunals have different schedules to those detailed above.

Court of Appeal decisions from 1998-1988

The Court of Appeal collection of decisions published from 1998 - 1988 contains only decisions that are held in the Law Courts Library's collection and have not be reported in the New South Wales Law Reports.

Industrial Relations Commission

Decisions of Presidential Members made in relation to industrial disputes where the Commission might make a statement, recommendation(s) and/or directions with a view to resolving the dispute, are not usually published on NSW Caselaw.

All arbitrated decisions of Commissioner Members (decisions made after taking evidence from the parties) are published. The exception to this rule is decisions that are read onto the record - these will only be published where the matter involves a particular matter of interest, topicality or noteworthiness.

Land and Environment Court

All decisions of judges and commissioners and substantive adjudications by registrars are published.

As some decisions will require publication of a number of images, these may take slightly longer than one (1) business day to be available.

In addition, as some matters in Classes 1, 2, 3 and 8 may involve the giving of a decision on site; preparation and publication of such decisions may also involve some delay.

All arbitrated decisions of Commissioner Members (decisions made after taking evidence from the parties) are published. The exception to this rule is decisions that are read onto the record - these will only be published where the matter involves a particular matter of interest, topicality or noteworthiness.

Local Court

The Local Court publishes a small selection of decisions that provide interpretations of legislation and legal principles relevant to criminal, civil and other matters determined in the Local Court.

Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT)

A selection of written decisions made by NCAT are published on NSW Caselaw.

The NCAT President or Divisional Heads select decisions for publication that are likely to be of public interest and which are useful as an educational tool.

For more information about the publication of reasons for decisions, read NCAT Policy 2 - Publishing Reasons for Decisions (PDF, 270kB).

District Court

The District Court commenced publishing decisions via NSW Caselaw in September 2006. The decision to publish is at the discretion of each individual judge. If a decision has not been published and you wish to find out if it will become available on NSW Caselaw, please contact the appropriate District Court registry.

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Removal Procedure

Decisions or particular case details may be removed from NSW Caselaw from time to time. For example, an earlier decision mentioning the accused person may be removed from NSW Caselaw while the accused person is being tried or retried by a jury. Once the jury trial is finished the decision is then returned to NSW Caselaw.

If for some other reason a judgment needs to be removed from NSW Caselaw, a written request should be made to the registrar of the court, identifying the material sought to be removed and the reason for the removal, see our Contact Us page for details.

The judge who wrote the decision will consider the request. If the judge is no longer on the bench, the head of jurisdiction will consider the request. A written response will be provided.

Restricted Decisions

Some decisions are either temporarily unavailable due to further proceedings or permanently restricted from publication on NSW Caselaw.

These decisions are published with the following restricted content:

  • Medium Neutral Citation with the text "Decision restricted" in place of the case name
  • Decision date
  • Jurisdiction
  • Before

Notation: The text of this decision has been restricted.

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