European Union Law: Institutions and Sources

Official Reports:

 Reports of the Cases Before the Court of Justice and Court of First Instance  (E.C.R. 1973-present)

 Unofficial Reports:

 Common Market Law Reports (C.M.L.R. 1962-present)

 Common Market Reports  (Common Mkt. Rep. (CCH) 1967-1988)

 European Community Cases (CEC (CCH) 1989-present)

See Rule 21.5.2 and Table 3.3 of the Bluebook for citation rules. 

 The Bluebook states, "Cite cases before the Court of Justice and the General Court to E.C.R., if therein.  If not, cite to C.M.L.R. or to Common Mkt Rep. (CCH) or CEC (CCH) if therein, in that order of preference.  Always provide a parallel citation to C.M.L.R., if possible; otherwise, provide parallel citation to Common Mkt. Rep. (CCH) or CEC (CCH)."  Table 3.3, p. 426. 

 Note that the docket number of the case precedes the name of the case. 

 A docket number that starts with “C” is case before the Court of Justice.

 A docket number that starts with “T” before the General Court (Formerly Court of First Instance).

Judgements, orders and opinions of the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance are available in full-text from 1954 to present and can be retrieved by citation (a handy template is provided; date of decision and case number are mandatory fields).  You can browse through lists of cases from 2001 to the present.  Keyword searching is not available in EUR-LEX’s interface.  If you need to do a keyword search in caselaw, go to CURIA, the Court of Justice’s official website, described below.

Access Case Law on EUR-LEX

The official web site for the Court of Justice of the European Union and General Court, CURIA offers full-text searching by case number, party names, keyword and topical searching for cases from June 17, 1997 to present.  To access a pre-1997 case, go to EUR-Lex where you may select it from a numerical list by case number (2001-1997) or by entering the citation (1954-2000).  When searching CURIA, beaware that you may see both the judgments of the Court and the Opinion of the AdvocateGeneral as separate documents or just the opinion or the judgment.  If only one documentappears don’t assume the other doesn’t exist.  Since these have to be translated intoeleven languages, it is very possible that recent judgments and/or opinions may not be available in English yet.  In that case, locate your case with a commercial service.

Access Case Law on CURIA

 Sample citations:

 Case 174/82, Officier van Justitie v. Sandoz BV, [1983] E.C.R. 2445, [1984] 3 C.M.L.R. 43.

 Case C-208/90, Emmot  v. Minister for Soc. Welfare, [1991] E.C.R. I-4269, [1991] 2 CEC (CCH) 395.

 Case T-198/98, Micro Leader Bus. v. Comm'n, [1999] E.C.R. II-3989.