Most UK law reports are available online from either Westlaw UK or the Lexis Library. Westlaw UK provides the best starting point for England and Wales cases.
Courts and Tribunals Judiciary: Structure of the courts and tribunal system
LexisNexis UK Blogs: Law reports: hierarchy and the status of authorities
Law reports publish judgments made in cases which raise significant legal issues. The full text of a judgment is published along with a summary of the legal issues and a list of cases referred to in the main text.
Law reports are available both online and in print. A single case can be reported in a number of different reports. The Law Reports, the All England Law Reports and the Weekly Law Reports are the most widely quoted law reports.
To find a law report or judgment, it helps to understand how they are cited.
Law Report Citation
Attorney General v Associated Newspapers Ltd [1994] 2 AC 238 (HL).
Citation consists of the names of the parties, followed by:
An abbreviation for the court is not added using OSCOLA citation where a full judgment citation is also given (as below).
Standard Judgment Citation ('neutral citation')
R (Al-Skeini) v Secretary of State for Defence [2007] UKHL 26.
Citation consists of the parties followed by:
Where a case has also been reported in one of the published law report series, recommended practice is to give both a judgment citation (where available) and a law report citation, e.g.
R (Al-Skeini) v Secretary of State for Defence [2007] UKHL 26, [2008] 1 AC 153.