Info Case pages
Case pages
Parties, opinions, paragraphs, printed pages, footnotes and citations.
Case pages are built from the court's published text. For Canadian decisions the source is the Supreme Court of Canada's official website; for U.S. Reports it is the Harvard Caselaw Access Project, GovInfo bound volumes and the Court's own prints. The page is a reading surface, not a headnote service: editorial summaries and syllabi are not part of the judgment.
Finding a case
Use /cases to browse and sort the loaded decisions, search from /search, or follow a citation from a statute or another judgment. Case URLs use a readable slug derived from the case key, such as /cases/2015-scc-34 or /cases/us-389-347.
The header
The header carries the style of cause, the primary citation, the court, the decision and hearing dates, the docket, the language of the text, the parties and, when the parser can derive it, the vote breakdown and split. The primary citation falls back through neutral, official and report citations, so an older decision shows its S.C.R. citation when no neutral citation exists.
The Parties row lists names and roles as the publisher prints them. It is populated from the official source, not inferred from the prose, and may be unavailable for older or U.S. cases.
When the official source prints a Counsel block ("Solicitors for the appellant …"), the header shows it too. Counsel is stored per language edition, like the parties.
Opinions and the table of contents
The table of contents is organised by opinion, not by ten-paragraph chunks. Each opinion carries its judge count and its paragraph range (or printed-page range for U.S. Reports): for example Majority (5) ¶ 1–151 or Dissent (4) ¶ 152–275. Section headings nest under their opinion where the publisher stored a structure or heading-like paragraph runs preserve one.
When a majority side writes more than one opinion and the judge counts are known, those opinions sit under one counted Majority entry, so a three-judge lead plus a two-judge concurrence reads as five judges against a four-judge dissent. Multiple dissents are grouped the same way. The header's split uses the majority and dissent totals (5–4); a court with no dissent side shows its ordered group counts instead (4–4–1).
Headings collapse like statute headings. The jump box accepts a paragraph number, a page number (for paginated U.S. cases) or a section number, and expands the target's ancestors before scrolling.
Paragraphs and printed pages
Canadian judgments use paragraph anchors: ¶ 21, para-21, and links such as /cases/2015-scc-34#para-21. U.S. Reports cases are paginated by the printed volume: each row is a page, the gutter shows p. 347, and the anchor is page-347. The table of contents labels each opinion with its paragraph or page span, and pinpoints from other judgments land on the exact printed page.
Official formatting
The page keeps the structure of the official release rather than flattening it into uniform paragraphs. A judgment's front matter is separated from its reasons: the official caption and court information form a centred block, a syllabus or headnote (where the source prints one) is set apart from the judgment text, and counsel or appearance lines are shown as their own block.
Inside the reasons, block quotes and quoted provisions are indented as quotations with their attribution or citation line, instead of running into the surrounding paragraph. Italic emphasis (case names, statutory names, quoted words and *supra* citations) is carried through from the official HTML or the official PDF's fonts. A paragraph that continues after a quotation resumes as ordinary prose; the paragraph number still anchors the whole unit, so #para-27 always lands on the same numbered paragraph.
U.S. Reports pages keep their printed-page gutter while the volume's running heads, page numbers and Cite as lines are removed from the text. Where the official print breaks a page into several paragraphs, each is shown as its own paragraph under the page anchor. The parser repairs the official PDF text layer's lost fi/fl ligatures and line-end hyphenation for volumes parsed from the bound reports.
Footnotes
Footnotes appear where the source puts them. U.S. Reports notes are printed under the page that cites them and are numbered per opinion, so the page shows [n] under its own text. Canadian notes are collected at the end of the judgment when the source does not attach them to a page. Footnote references in the body link to the note; the note keeps the printed label (*, 1, …) where the publisher used something other than a plain number.
What the case cites
Below the text are Cases cited and Statutes and regulations cited. Each entry links to the target (or to CanLII when the case is not held), and each keeps the pinpoints the judgment used. The lists are derived from the same citation edges as the inline links, so a fixed target improves both surfaces together.
AI briefs
Some case pages offer an on-demand AI brief. It is generated only when requested, is rate-limited, and is clearly marked as an aid rather than authority. The judgment text remains the source; read the brief as an index into the reasons, not as a replacement for them.