Dear Suzanne,
Your query highlights serious failings in the official search engines
covering EU case law. I'm afraid the following explanation is rather
lengthy (I'm copying this to Eurotalk, so apologies for double posting).
The home page of the new EUR-Lex offers two ways of retrieving case law
texts:
1) Simple Search / Case Law
2) Case Law collection
The Simple Search provides a range of search options - search terms,
date, type of procedure, etc - though not case number or names of
parties. However, the database that is searched contains only a small
proportion of the texts actually available. For example, there were 24
Advocate-General's Opinions delivered in November/December 2005, but
only 4 of these are retrieved by a simple search. On the date of the AG
Opinion in the Caulfield case, five AG Opinions were delivered, but only
one is retrieved in a simple search, and that's not the one you wanted.
No warning is provided that the case law database is very restricted.
The Case Law collection is much more comprehensive but provides limited
search options. Basically, you must search by case number, or browse the
lists of cases month by month. The lists for browsing show only date and
case number, but not the names of parties, so are of limited value. Even
if you know the case number, you may not be able to find the text you
want. This is because "joined cases", where two or more related cases
are dealt with at the same time, are recorded only under the case number
of the lead case. So a search for case C-257/04 (the Caulfield case)
fails because it was joined with case C-131/04, and is listed, and
searchable, only under the latter number. So although the AG Opinion you
wanted is actually available in EUR-Lex, I would defy anyone to find it!
It's worth noting that the EUR-Lex simple search screen does include an
option to search by names of parties, but this option is disabled, and
no explanation is given. That is a serious deficiency, since the names
of the parties may well be the only information that many searchers
have.
When searching for European case law, it might be better to abandon
EUR-Lex, and to use the search form of the CURIA website of the Court of
Justice (http://curia.eu.int/en/content/juris/index_form.htm), which is
where the old EUR-Lex used to send you (the new EUR-Lex doesn't tell you
about this option). Here you can search by date, case number, names of
parties, subject field, or words in the text.
But even on the Curia site, searching for names of parties can still be
problematic. Only the first named party is consistently searchable in
the 'Names of Parties' field. And, in joined cases, only the names of
parties in the lead case are searchable in this field. So to search by
names of parties in the other cases (e.g. Caulfield or Marshalls Clay),
you have to search in the 'Words in the Text' field, not in the 'Names
of Parties' field.
This is not at all obvious, so the Court of Justice really ought to
modify its search engine so that the names of all parties are searchable
in the correct field. But I wouldn't bet on that happening.
Chris Lamb
CORDIS
Brussels
-----Original Message-----
From: European Documentation Centres (EDC)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Suzanne White
Sent: 07 March 2006 12:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Eur-lex
Hello all,
I was trying to help a lecturer find an Advocate General's opinion on
Caulfield v Marshalls Clay Products using the new Eur-lex. There is an
option on Simple Search to narrow the search down to Advocate General's
opinions however I couldn't find this particular one.
I just Googled it and of course found the opinion on Emplaw in full.
Does anyone know why I was unable to locate the case on Eurlex even if I
tried searching once I knew the date? Has anyone had similar problems?
Suzanne White
Coventry University
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