Pasted Citations Now Resolve to the Right Case

Pasting a citation should take you straight to the case it refers to. We fixed a problem where certain citation formats — particularly neutral citations and reporter references with unusual spacing or punctuation — failed to resolve correctly or pointed to the wrong judgment without any warning.

What changed

Citation resolution reads the text of a citation you paste and matches it to the judgment it refers to. Some valid citation formats were not being parsed correctly. Neutral citations in certain year and number combinations, and reporter citations where spacing or punctuation differed from the most common style, would either return no result or silently resolve to a near match rather than the exact case.

We corrected how citations are parsed so that the natural variation in spacing, punctuation, and element ordering that appears in real documents is normalised before matching. Neutral citations and the common reporter formats now resolve to the exact judgment. Where a citation genuinely cannot be matched, Niyam now says so clearly rather than returning the closest approximation without acknowledgement.

The distinction matters. Previously, a near match was returned as though it were the correct result, placing the full burden of verification on you. Now, when a citation resolves, it resolves to the right case. When it does not resolve, you are told plainly, so you can use a name or party search instead.

How to use it

1. Paste a citation into the resolution field exactly as it appears in your source — spacing, punctuation, and all.
2. Review the resolved result. The parties, court, and year are displayed so you can confirm the right case at a glance.
3. Open the judgment to read the full text, navigate using the table of contents, and follow related judgments.
4. If a citation cannot be resolved, Niyam now reports that directly. Use a party name or keyword search as your fallback.

Why it matters

A citation is the most precise way to ask for a case, and it should be the most reliable path to it. When resolution silently substitutes a near match, you risk reading or relying on the wrong decision — and the problem is not always obvious in the moment. The parties may be similar, the year adjacent, the subject the same. Making resolution exact, and making its failures transparent rather than hidden, removes a quiet source of error from everyday research.

In a corpus covering Supreme Court and High Court judgments across decades, closely related citations are common. Same court, adjacent years, sequential case numbers — the density of near matches makes exact parsing a baseline requirement, not a refinement.

Good to know

• The fix covers neutral citations and the common reporter formats. For unusual citation styles not yet in the corpus, a party name or keyword search is the reliable fallback.
• Resolution draws on the full corpus of Supreme Court and High Court judgments in Niyam's collection.
• When a citation has no match, Niyam now tells you so directly. You will not be left uncertain about whether a near match is the case you actually wanted.
• The judgment view after a successful resolution includes a table of contents, related cases, and headnotes where available, so you can orient yourself quickly once you arrive.
• Copying a citation from a judgment within Niyam and pasting it back into the resolution field will always round-trip correctly.