CaseTrace at a glance — an exciting new JADE research feature

CaseTrace is one in a number of new JADE features we are introducing in time for JADE’s second birthday on 15 April 2010.

In this post, we give you a brief glance at CaseTrace using a recent decision of the High Court of Australia, IceTV.

How CaseTrace Works

CaseTrace works looking forward in time, so you will get best results by looking within cases which have not just been delivered. You will be able to find those cases by tracking forward in time. To experiment, try a decision of the High Court, say, published in 2001 or thereabouts.

Case Trace updates immediately, as soon as BarNet’s JADE processing system (called Gertrude) reviews decisions which have just been delivered. Gertrude is checking all of the time. In the case of the High Court, we are checking every few minutes.

Because Gertrude never sleeps, this means that what you see when you follow along with this post is likely to be different if a judgment has cited the IceTV case.

Also, bear in mind that some decisions are not made available electronically immediately. Sometimes it can take months, or even years, before a Court releases a decision online. There are various reasons for this delay. We won’t bore you with them here.

Let’s get started

Using JADE’s Google-like search system, simply type the words icetv hca in as shown, and press enter (or return if you have a Macintosh).

Here is the first entry returned for our search

To jump directly, put this in your browser: http://jade.barnet.com.au/Jade.html#article=92554. Otherwise, click on the title of the case.

Click on the title of the case

On the right hand side you will see JADE’s CaseTrace facility

This is the place where you can see how frequently this decision has been cited subsequently.

And let’s click the first item.

Up pops the full reference to [2010] FCA 44.

Clicking on [more] expands the catchwords.

Let’s click on that case to jump to it within JADE.

Here are the catchwords. Clicking on the title of the case, takes you to Justice Gordon’s reasons for decision.

Here is the case.

Lets return to IceTV by pressing the back button.

Let’s look at the view full report feature.

Here’s the CaseTrace Box for IceTV on the right of the page. Click on view full report.

Full Report view lists cases where the decision may not provide a citation to the particular paragraph number.

This takes you to the bottom of the Judgement, where all detected decisions are listed.

Let’s select one to show what is available.

Let’s zoom in to the citations section.

We click on the number

Clicking on a citation reference, causes a pop up to show …

Here is the context.

Which gives the context in which the case is cited.

Enjoy. And give us any feedback. You are able to provide feedback from within JADE.