The phrase "a symbolic case" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a situation or example that represents a larger concept or idea, often in discussions or analyses.
Example: "The trial became a symbolic case for the fight against discrimination, highlighting the struggles faced by marginalized communities."
Alternatives: "a representative example" or "an emblematic instance".
Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh have denounced the "light-bulb ban" — actually, a new set of federal efficiency regulations that the traditional incandescent can't meet — as a symbolic case of environmentalist overreaching, and Michele Bachmann invoked it in the Tea Party's response to the State of the Union.
And in "The Rosa Parks Story," a two-hour film that has its premiere Sunday night on CBS, Rosa (the glorious Angela Bassett) is an activist with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which is looking for a symbolic case or act.
"It is a symbolic case for Brazil," she said.
This decision is a symbolic test case of something much deeper.
Studies showed that the pipeline would not have a momentous effect on jobs or the environment, but both sides made it into a symbolic test case.
I understand why many people believe that in the hugely important, and hugely symbolic, case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, America would be best served by justice being dispensed in an open federal court.
Mr. Obama, too, has arranged for a symbolic arrival, in his case on a train trip starting in Philadelphia on Jan . 17 repeating part of Abraham Lincoln's journey to Washington.
In such cases a symbolic object may be "removed" from the patient by sleight of hand.
Judge Davies called the tape "shocking, violent and painful," taking note of the significance of the case as a symbolic and emotional issue.
It also revolves around a symbolic essential substance: in this case, a crystalline icelike material, mined from a meteor, that can awaken the power of speech in selected human hearts.
While the music and movie industries have won court victories against file-sharing services like Kazaa, Grokster and Napster, analysts said that the Pirate Bay case has a symbolic dimension because of the public way in which the operators have thumbed their noses at media companies.
