The Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) is a style guide that provides the modern method of legal citation in the United Kingdom; the style itself is also referred to as OSCOLA. First developed by Peter Birks of the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, and now in its 4th edition (2012, Hart Publishing, ISBN 978-1-84946-367-6), [1] it has been adopted by most law schools and many legal publishers in the United Kingdom. An online supplement (developed for the third edition) is available for the citation of international legal cases, not covered in the main guide. [2]
Cases are to be cited with as little punctuation as possible in the names or the report names. If there is a neutral citation, [3] which is generally the case after 2001 or 2002, it should be cited before the "best" report: the Law Reports (AC, QB, Ch etc.), or the WLR or the All ER, after a comma.
The year is put in square brackets if the report uses dates to identify volumes; otherwise round brackets give the date of the judgment. For example, the All England Reports are identified by year then volume, meaning they should be cited as, for example, "[2005] 1 All ER". [4]
When something is cited for a second time, an abbreviation can be used. In a footnote referring back to a particular page and another footnote, this would be,
This parenthetical reference to a prior note or page may be disrupted if an editor inserts a new reference in the article before the reference of the parenthetical.
For European Union cases,
For European Court of Human Rights cases,
Journal articles, books etc. should be cited with the author's name as shown in the work being cited. If a journal title is abbreviated, it should follow the guide in the appendix, which includes some standard abbreviations including specific journals, law reports and some authoritative books (e.g. J for Journal, Crim for Criminal, Bl Comm for Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England ); in all cases the abbreviations do not have full stops. If the journal does not have consecutive volume numbers, the year should be shown in square brackets, as in the second example.
Books follow a similar pattern. Note the order is Author, Title (Edition, Publisher Year) page.
If a title and a subtitle have nothing in between, a colon should be used to separate them. A chapter in an edited book would be cited as follows.
UK legislation should be cited by short title, always written in roman with the year at the end, with no comma before it. The section is abbreviated with no full stops.
Older statutes (e.g. those for which no official short title exists) may be cited by regnal year and chapter where this is considered helpful.
EU legislation should be as follows.
Parliamentary debates are cited by reference to Hansard date, volume and column. Debates in Parliament are cited "HC Deb" or "HL Deb" for the Commons and Lords respectively, while committee debates use the name of the committee in roman, followed by the title of the report in italics. As with other citations, number ranges should be abbreviated to as few digits as possible, to a minimum of two.
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility and arguments of the parties, and then issues a ruling in the case based on their interpretation of the law and their own personal judgment. A judge is expected to conduct the trial impartially and, typically, in an open court.
The comma, is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical, others give it the appearance of a miniature filled-in figure 9 placed on the baseline. In many typefaces it is the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark ’.
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their names, that vary between British and American English. "Brackets", without further qualification, are in British English the (...) marks and in American English the [...] marks.
In law, a citation or introductory signal is a set of phrases or words used to clarify the authority of a legal citation as it relates to a proposition. It is used in citations to present authorities and indicate how those authorities relate to propositions in statements. Legal writers use citation signals to tell readers how the citations support their propositions, organizing citations in a hierarchy of importance so the reader can quickly determine the relative weight of a citation. Citation signals help a reader to discern meaning or usefulness of a reference when the reference itself provides inadequate information.
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot where the citation appears.
Ibid. is an abbreviation for the Latin word ibīdem, meaning 'in the same place', commonly used in an endnote, footnote, bibliography citation, or scholarly reference to refer to the source cited in the preceding note or list item. This is similar to idem, literally meaning 'the same', abbreviated id., which is commonly used in legal citation.
APA style is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences, including sociology, education, nursing, criminal justice, anthropology, and psychology. It is described in the style guide of the American Psychological Association (APA), titled the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The guidelines were developed to aid reading comprehension in the social and behavioral sciences, for clarity of communication, and for "word choice that best reduces bias in language". APA style is widely used, either entirely or with modifications, by hundreds of other scientific journals, in many textbooks, and in academia. The current edition is its seventh revision.
Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, but generally contain the same key information.
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is a style guide that prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States. It is taught and used at a majority of U.S. law schools and is also used in a majority of federal courts. Legal publishers also use several "house" citation styles in their works.
In certain jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and other Westminster-influenced jurisdictions, as well as the United States and the Philippines, primary legislation has both a short title and a long title.
Legal citation is the practice of crediting and referring to authoritative documents and sources. The most common sources of authority cited are court decisions (cases), statutes, regulations, government documents, treaties, and scholarly writing.
The Latin adverb sic inserted after a quotation indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated as found in the source text, including erroneous, archaic, or unusual spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Sic also applies to any surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might be interpreted as an error of transcription.
Parenthetical referencing is a citation system in which in-text citations are made using parentheses. They are usually accompanied by a full, alphabetized list of citations in an end section, usually titled "references", "reference list", "works cited", or "end-text citations". Parenthetical referencing can be used in lieu of footnote citations.
The Industrial Relations Act 1971 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, since repealed. It was based on proposals outlined in the governing Conservative Party's manifesto for the 1970 general election. The goal was to stabilize industrial relations by forcing concentration of bargaining power and responsibility in the formal union leadership, using the courts. The act was intensely opposed by unions, and helped undermine the government of Edward Heath. It was repealed by the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974 when the Labour Party returned to government.
Citation of United Kingdom legislation includes the systems used for legislation passed by devolved parliaments and assemblies, for secondary legislation, and for prerogative instruments. It is relatively complex both due to the different sources of legislation in the United Kingdom, and because of the different histories of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom.
The Vancouver system, also known as Vancouver reference style or the author–number system, is a citation style that uses numbers within the text that refer to numbered entries in the reference list. It is popular in the physical sciences and is one of two referencing systems normally used in medicine, the other being the author–date, or "Harvard", system. Vancouver style is used by MEDLINE and PubMed.
The Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC) is published by the Melbourne University Law Review in collaboration with the Melbourne Journal of International Law and seeks to provide the Australian legal community with a standard for citing legal sources. There is no single standard for legal citation in Australia, but the AGLC is the most widely used.
The full stop, period, or full point. is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence.
Citation of Canadian legislation is the system of citing Canadian statutes and regulations in court decisions, briefs of law, and articles in law journals. The purpose of a citation is to allow the reader to understand the source of the legislative principle being cited, and to find the law in question. It is a type of legal citation, namely a "reference to a legal precedent or authority, such as a case, statute, or treatise, that either substantiates or contradicts a given position".