Irish courts, established by the Courts (Establishment and Constitution) Act, 1961, are the Supreme Court, High Court, Court of Criminal Appeal, Circuit Court and District Court.
Irish cases may be reported in the Irish reports (IR) and|or the Irish law reports monthly (ILRM), or unreported. The Library's subscriptions to databases Lexis Library (legal) and JustisOne give us access to the full text of the Irish reports, and our subscription to database WestlawIE gives us full text access to the Irish law reports monthly.
JustisOne and Lexis also provide access to unreported cases, as do the websites of the Courts Service of Ireland and the Irish Legal Information Initiative (IRLII) by UCC.
Confused by an abbreviation? Look it up in the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations.
What's a citator?
"A citator is a guide published primarily for use by judges and lawyers when they are in the process of preparing such papers as judicial decisions, briefs, or memoranda of law. Its purpose is to provide a judicial history of cases and statutes as well as to make a note of new cases. A citator indicates whether or not the law in a particular case has been followed, modified, or overruled in subsequent cases." (West, 2008)
A citator (a "citator signal" in Lexis) principally looks at the relationship between cases, showing which cases were cited in a given case, and which case(s) that case has subsequently been cited in.
The green | amber | red traffic light system in JustisOne shows how a case has been treated in subsequent cases and is intended as an indicator of "good law".
Cases with little or no red | negative treatments rank highly and may be considered "good law". This is a good way of identifying leading cases. Note: JustisOne automatically lists search results according to this ranking, so leading cases will be near the top unless you choose other criteria.
Like the traffic light system in JustisOne, Lexis provides little icons beside (most) cases as indicators of "good law" in case overview. See tables showing cases referring to this case in case overview. Note the disclaimer in the notes that follows the table below.
From the OSCOLA Ireland website: See chapter 2.2 of the OSCOLA Ireland guide (2nd ed.) for rules on citing Irish case law (Pg. 11-17), or the quick reference guide.
Below are links to databases the Library subscribes to. You will need to access them via the Library website so that you can be associated with our paid subscriptions. Please note: you will be asked to login with your DCU username and password.
