hkeyecite 0.1.4

A library for extracting and parsing legal citations from Hong Kong court judgments

hkeyecite

A Python library that automatically finds and extracts legal citations from Hong Kong court judgments.

Give it any block of text containing Hong Kong legal references, and it will identify and parse:

• Neutral citations -- e.g. [2024] HKCFA 1
• Law report citations -- e.g. (2019) 22 HKCFAR 446
• Action numbers -- e.g. HCAL 1756/2020

It also extracts case names (e.g. "HKSAR v Harjani") and pinpoint references (e.g. "at [45]", "§ 13", or "paras. 12 and 13") when present.

Installation

pip install hkeyecite

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

What it recognises

Neutral citations

The format used by the Judiciary since 2018: [Year] Court Number

Code	Court
HKCFA	Court of Final Appeal
HKCA	Court of Appeal
HKCFI	Court of First Instance
HKDC	District Court
HKFC / HKFamC	Family Court
HKLT / HKLdT	Lands Tribunal
HKCT	Competition Tribunal
HKLBT / HKLaT	Labour Tribunal
HKSCT	Small Claims Tribunal
HKOAT	Obscene Articles Tribunal
HKCC	Coroner's Court
HKMC / HKMagC	Magistrates' Courts
CFA / CA / CFI	Older alternate codes

Law report citations

References to published law report series: (Year) Volume Reporter Page

Code	Report Series
HKCFAR	Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Reports
HKLRD	Hong Kong Law Reports & Digest
HKC	Hong Kong Cases
HKPLR	Hong Kong Public Law Reports
HKLR	Hong Kong Law Reports (historical)
HKCLR	Hong Kong Criminal Law Reports
HKCLRT	Hong Kong Chinese Law Reports & Translations

Dotted variations (e.g. H.K.L.R.D., H.K.C.F.A.R.) are automatically normalised.

Action numbers

Case filing references: Prefix Number/Year

Common prefixes include FACV, FACC (Court of Final Appeal), CACV, CACC (Court of Appeal), HCA, HCAL, HCCC (Court of First Instance), DCCJ, DCCC (District Court), and many more.

When an action number appears near a filing or hearing date, the nearby date is captured if it is within 35 characters on either side of the action number. Supported formats include:

• DD/MM/YYYY, DD.MM.YYYY, DD-MM-YYYY (using a consistent separator)
• DD Month YYYY (e.g. 3 April 2018) including ordinal suffixes (3rd April 2018), the optional of connector (3rd of April 2018), abbreviated month names (3 Apr 2018), and trailing periods on abbreviations (3 Apr. 2018)

Extracted dates are normalised to ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD). US-style date formats (e.g. MM/DD/YYYY or April 3, 2018) are not supported — this library targets Hong Kong jurisdiction only.

Metadata

When a citation is preceded by a case name like HKSAR v Harjani or Re Something, it is automatically extracted. Pinpoint references that follow a citation are also captured.

Supported pinpoint reference forms include:

• Bracketed paragraph references: at [45], [23-36], [14(2)]
• Section-symbol paragraph references: §13, § 13, §§22-23
• Paragraph labels: para 10, paras. 12 and 13, paragraphs. 10 to 15
• Page labels: p 10, p. 10, pp. 10-15

For bracketed subparagraph references such as [14(2)], the paragraph number is retained as 14 and the subparagraph suffix is discarded.

API

get_citations(text)

The main function. Returns a list of citations found in the text, sorted by position.

from hkeyecite import get_citations

citations = get_citations(text)

Each citation has:

• .matched_text -- the original text that was matched
• .normalized() -- a standardised form of the citation
• .case_name -- the case name, if one appears before the citation
• .pin_cite -- the pinpoint reference (e.g. paragraph number), if one follows
• .pin_cite_values -- the pinpoint reference expanded to sorted integer values, if possible
• .start, .end -- character positions in the source text

Action number citations also have .nearby_date, which is the nearest supported date found within 35 characters before or after the action number, normalised as YYYY-MM-DD. If no nearby date is found, .nearby_date is None.

Pass include_action_numbers=False to skip action number extraction.

from hkeyecite import get_citations

citation = get_citations("[2024] HKCFA 1 paras. 10-12 and 15")[0]

citation.pin_cite
# "10-12, 15"

citation.pin_cite_values
# [10, 11, 12, 15]

Convenience functions

from hkeyecite.find import extract_neutral_citation, extract_reported_citations, extract_action_numbers

# Extract only one type
neutral = extract_neutral_citation(text)
reported = extract_reported_citations(text)
actions = extract_action_numbers(text)

Court and reporter lookup

from hkeyecite.courts import get_court_by_code, get_court_by_case_prefix
from hkeyecite.reporters import get_reporter

court = get_court_by_code("HKCFA")
court.name      # "Court of Final Appeal"
court.name_zh   # "終審法院"

court = get_court_by_case_prefix("FACV")
court.code      # "HKCFA"

reporter = get_reporter("HKCFAR")
reporter.name   # "Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Reports"

Limitations

• Only Hong Kong citations are supported -- UK, Australian, and other jurisdictions are not covered
• Case names in Chinese characters are not extracted
• Some older or non-standard citation formats may not be recognised

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. If you find a citation format that isn't recognised or have ideas for improvement, feel free to open an issue or PR.

Acknowledgments

This project is derived from eyecite, a citation extraction library for US legal citations by the Free Law Project. hkeyecite adapts eyecite's approach for the Hong Kong jurisdiction, covering HK-specific courts, law reports, action number formats, and neutral citation conventions.

License

BSD 2-Clause License -- see LICENSE.txt for details.