Where’s the Catchwords Text?

Since May of this year, the High Court has not been providing any catchword text for their judgments (see eg). At first I thought it was an administrative error on Austlii’s part but Michael Pelly from the Australian today explained that the High Court has made an administrative decision not to provide catchwords. The reason given for this, Pelly says, is that they “were not thought to be useful”.

Interestingly, the Court still provides catchwords for matters when they have been given special leave to appeal but do not provide catchwords for the judgment when the reasons are published. Some case alert sites have been using these leave catchwords – at least as a structure – for the catchwords when the case is handed down. The problem with this is that the leave catchwords relate to the way the case was argued and this often differs greatly from what the Court ultimately muses upon in their reasons.

In our judgement alerts, we provide a more fluid description of a case then catchwords allow. But I for one think that catchwords are worthwhile for people to get a gist of the case if they just stumble across it on Austlii and are not lucky enough to subscribe to this blog. Particularly given that catchwords are generally written by a judge’s associate and it really cannot cut into the Court’s time too greatly to continue the practice.

Of course, catchwords will appear in reported versions of the cases but those catchwords are created by the publisher of the report and aren’t available as quickly after the decision is handed down. Also they are not free like the Austlii version, so it’s a small step backwards in the Free Access to Law Movement. I think it is unlikely that the CLRs will allow Austlii to update their case with the CLR catchwords when they are published.