The Commonwealth Law Reports are the authorised reports of decisions of the High Court of Australia. "Authorised reports" are reports where the Court itself approves the editing of its decisions for publication. Examples of other reports of decisions of the High Court are the Australian Law Reports and the Australian Law Journal Reports .

Citation of High Court cases in the Commonwealth Law Reports take the following form: a case cited as Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983) 158 CLR 1 means that the report of that case is to be found at volume number 158 of the CLR's, commencing at page 1 of the volume.