Via legal analysis, values are given to the judicial decisions, which make up part of the CENDOJ Documentary Collection, the database that is available in a restricted environment for members of the judiciary.

The legal analysis of the judicial decisions provides significant added values, such as:

• assessment of the importance of the judgment based on standard documentary criteria
• classification of the ruling
• identification of the matter or matters raised
• overview of the judicial decision analysed
• classification in accordance with the Thesaurus developed by the CENDOJ
• links to other sources of information of a jurisprudential and legislative nature and to publications by the General Council of the Judiciary.

All judgments from the Supreme Court are analysed, as well as a selection of those from the National High Court and the other collegiate bodies since 2006.

The analysis of judgments passed by the Supreme Court, the task is performed by members of the court's Technical Office, under the coordination of its headquarters. Judicial decisions from the National High Court and the other collegiate bodies are analysed by members of these courts which, in all of these cases, provides an excellent guarantee of quality.

With regards to the governing regulations and selection of the analysts, specific orders have been passed by the General Council of the Judiciary, to carry out periodic selection procedures to replace and find new members.

The Documentary Collection offers an itemised case law search engine which includes the analysis of judicial decisions, along with legislation search engines, consolidated with the different versions that the regulation has gone through during its existence. It also includes the documentation of courses organised by the General Council of the Judiciary and monographic publications, as well as all circulars, directives and consultations issued by the State General Prosecutor's Office since the year 2000. It also shows a personal area, where you can save searches, documents, print, send, etc. In addition you can see the latest document dossiers and there is a search engine to access all of them.

The CENDOJ Documentary Collection also contains the historical collection of the Supreme Court, from 1852 to 1978.

CENDOJ LEGAL THESAURUS

A Thesaurus is a controlled and structured list of concepts, with the objective of helping users to recover information, also suggesting related concepts that better express their ideas.

The Judicial Documentation Centre has created the Case Law Thesaurus, which contains over 22,000 terms corresponding to all jurisdictional orders.

This Thesaurus is a valuable tool to conceptually organise the matters addressed in judicial decisions. In this manner, the use of standard terminology facilitates the recovery of information, making it possible to manage and systematise the vast amount of judicial decisions within the Case Law Collection.

It is worth noting that the tool is continually updated, and is subject to the addition, amendment and withdrawal of terms, modifications that are often suggested by the actual users.