Case Citator
Is this case still good law?
Before you cite a Supreme Court decision, check how later cases treated it. The Case Citator shows whether it's still good law — and the exact passages that say so.
New to citators? Read what a case citator is and why Philippine legal research needs one.
Case Citator
Check whether a Supreme Court case is still good law.
Dela Cruz v. Office of the Solicitor General
G.R. No. 214830 · 2016
Treatments
Applying the standard in Dela Cruz, the Court reiterated that threats alone may warrant amparo relief.
The Court declined to extend the extraordinary-diligence standard to the factual setting before it.
Cites
How it works
From a citation to a verdict.
The Citator reads forward and backward — how later cases used your case, and which cases your case leaned on.
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Paste a G.R. number.
Drop in a Supreme Court citation — "G.R. No. 214830" or just the number. BatasDB resolves it to the case in our library.
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We read how later cases treated it.
Every later decision that mentions the case is classified by how it used it — followed, affirmed, cited, distinguished, questioned, or overruled — with the passage that says so.
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You get a one-word status.
The treatments roll up into a single verdict: good law, questioned, or overruled — so you know at a glance whether the case still stands.
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And the cases it relied on.
The Citator also lists the authorities the case itself cited, so you can trace the doctrine backward as well as forward.
Three verdicts
One word tells you where the case stands.
Every lookup resolves to a single status, so you never have to read every treatment to know if a case is safe to cite.
No negative treatment found — the case still stands as authority.
A later case criticized, limited, or distinguished it — read before relying.
A later ruling reversed or abandoned the doctrine — no longer controlling.
Why this is hard
Three problems most citators ignore.
A Philippine Supreme Court decision is a dense document — it quotes, narrates, argues, and decides, all in one. Extracting treatments correctly means understanding who is saying what.
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Who is speaking?
A single Supreme Court decision can quote lower-court findings, reproduce party arguments, and include a dissent — all in one document. A treatment is only real if the citing court's own ratio says it. We classify the narrator before we classify the treatment.
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Citing ≠ endorsing.
Quoting "in Dela Cruz, the Court held X" is not the same as the citing court adopting X. Hundreds of "followed" edges in naive citators are actually just cross-citations or quoted blocks. Our verifier re-reads each edge against the source and kills label inflation.
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Coverage is honest, not inflated.
We only link a treatment to a case when we're confident the link is correct. For a G.R. number that's near-perfect; for common party names like "People v. Santos," a wrong link is worse than no link. We report ~20% coverage and are working to push it higher.
Never cite an overruled case again.
Check any Supreme Court case in seconds, with the evidence right next to the verdict.
The Case Citator is free — no account, no sign-up. Just paste a G.R. number.