Legal citation
Session citation
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The Parliament of England has recorded statutes from 1235 to 1707, many of which are still in force. It was converted into the Parliament of Great Britain in 1707 (with the union of Scotland) and the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1801 (with the union with Ireland).
Statute laws are cited not by parliament, but rather by parliamentary session. A parliament usually has multiple sessions. An "adjournment" interrupts a session, a "prorogation" ends a session, and a "dissolution" ends a parliament. A session is labeled by the regnal year in which that session sat up until its prorogation.
In English tradition, a parliamentary session passes only one public act or "statute", albeit an act with various "chapters". English legal statutes are cited by parliamentary session labeled by the regnal year in which that session sat. So the citation "15 Charles II c. 4" means "the fourth chapter of the act passed by the parliamentary session that sat in the 15th year of the reign of Charles II".
If a single parliamentary session overlaps the regnal year start date, it is given a double-label, e.g. Charles II's regnal year begins January 30, so the parliamentary session that ran from October 1670 to April 1671 is labeled "22 & 23 Charles II" (the session that sat from the 22nd to the 23rd year of Charles II's reign).
If there are two sessions within the same regnal year, they are differentiated by a "session" or "statute" suffix (e.g. 13 Charles II St. 1 is a different session than 13 Charles II St. 2). Finally, some sessions were prorogued without passing an act, and thus have no legal statute label at all.
In the event of two sessions within the same regnal year, the chapter numbering would reset and the sessions are differentiated by a "session" or "statute" suffix. As a result, either an "s. 2" or "sess. 2" to indicate the second session, or an "stat. 2" or "st.2". to indicate a second statute would be added. It is sometimes alleged that "sess.2" is used if it is a new session of a continuing parliament and "stat.2" if it is the first session of a new parliament. But that does not seem to be consistently true. Whether "sess.2" or "stat.2" is used depends on the compilation. The rule they seem to follow is that if the second session's acts are contained on a separate statute roll in the records, then "stat." should be used, if it is on the same roll, then "sess." is used.
For example, Mary I, whose regnal start date is on 6 July, 1553, had three parliamentary sessions within her first regnal year - two sessions within her first parliament (Oct-Dec, 1553), and a third session in her second parliament (Apr-May, 1554). The Brawling Act 1553 is cited "1 Mar. sess. 2 c. 3" as it was passed in the second session of her first parliament [6] and Queen Regent's Prerogative Act 1554 is cited as "1 Mar. sess. 3 c. 1" as it was passed in the first session of her second parliament [7] . Both are within her first regnal year (6 July 1553 to 5 Jul 1554).
The Riot Act is cited as "1 Geo. stat. 2. c. 5", was passed in the first session of the second parliament of the first year of the reign of George I.
Before the modern era, a statute of parliament was usually only given royal assent on the last day of the parliamentary session (just before prorogation). Even if assent for a specific act was actually given earlier, it was not noted in the statute text. So the order of chapters in a statute is usually meaningless, and gives no indication of when during the session it actually passed. Historians trying to affix a conventional calendar date to a specific act have to dig for clues in the Commons Journal, or simply assume all acts were assented at once on the final day. This was changed by the Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793 (33 Geo.3 c.13) which required the clerk of parliament to explicitly record the date of passage and assent. So it is only from 1794 onwards that statutes explicitly include the calendar date of an act.
Peculiarly, before 1794, it was also the case that an act was assumed to go into legal effect not on the final day of the session (the date of royal assent), but rather on the first day of the session in which it was passed. That means that parliamentary acts applied retrospectively to the start of the session, several weeks or months before they were actually passed and assented. To avoid injustices, it was common for parliamentary legislation to explicitly specify in the text the date when a new law, regulation, or tax would begin to apply. But not always. If a commencement date was not specified, the parliamentary act applied retrospectively to the start of the session, and magistrates could prosecute or impose penalties on actions that were perfectly legal at the time. This often provoked indignation and outrage. William Blackstone, in his influential 1765 Commentaries, railed against retrospective laws, insisting laws should apply only to the future. [8] . Remembering the English experience, Americans were careful to include a categorical prohibition on ex post facto laws in the US Constitution in 1789. The 1793 Commencement Act finally remedied this, and thereafter laws only applied from the date of assent recorded by the clerk in the statute. This was reinforced in the Interpretation Act 1978.
Name variations
On statute rolls and in statute compilations up until the mid-19th Century, the long name of the session is usually written out in Latin, e.g. Anno Regni Georgii II vicesimo nono for 29 George II (1756).
Legal citation usually uses abbreviations of royal names for simplicity. In legal citation, the first monarch of a regnal name is not followed by an ordinal number, but all subsequent monarchs of that name are. Thus, the 25th year of Elizabeth I is simply 25 Eliz., but the 25th year of Elizabeth II is 25 Eliz. 2.
| Regnal name | Modern legal abbr. | 17th cent. abbr. | Latin name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anne | Ann. | Annae | |
| Charles | Car. [9] | Car. [3] | Caroli |
| Edward | Edw. | E., Ed. | Edwardi |
| Elizabeth | Eliz. | El., Eliz. | Elizabethae |
| George | Geo. | G. | Georgii |
| Henry | Hen. | H. | Henrici |
| James | Jac. | Jac. | Jacobi |
| John | Joh. | ||
| Mary | Mar. | M. | Mariae |
| Philip and Mary | Phil. & M. | P. & M. | Philippi & Mariae |
| Richard | Rich. | R. | Richardi |
| Victoria | Vict. | Victoriae | |
| William | Will. | W. | Gulielmi |
| William and Mary | W. & M. | Gulielmi & Mariae |
Statute compilations
Citation labels are not always consistent, and depends on the statute compilation used.
For historical researchers, the most prominent compilations of statutes are the popular Statutes at Large (ed. Owen Ruffhead, 1762–65) [10] and the similarly-named contemporary rival Statutes at Large (ed. Danby Pickering 1762–66) [11] The labels and numbering in Ruffhead and Pickering compilations are identical, and so interchangeable. But their regnal year titles sometimes differ from the official The Statutes of the Realm (ed. John Raithby, 1819, for the Record Commission, covering acts up to 1714). [12] So when citing old statutes before 1714 it is sometimes necessary to check for variances and make note of which compilation is being used. [13] .
The fourth major historical compilation entering the fray was the Statutes at Large of England and Great Britain (ed. T.E. Tomlins and John Raithby,1811, covering acts before 1800) [14] , which is continued as the Statutes of the United Kingdom and Ireland (acts from 1801 until 1869) [15] .
All these statute compilations (except for the Statutes of the Realm) are unofficial, put out by private editors and printers. While well-regarded and treated as authoritative by the legal profession, there was no guarantee their wording was correct and the law was as stated.
The Statute Law Commission was established in 1854 under lord chancellor Robert Rolfe, 1st Baron Cranworth to overhaul the compilation of statutes. During this process, they also composed parliamentary bills to formally repeal and clear statutes that are no longer in force, and consolidate some scattered acts into a new comprehensive bills. A Statute Law Committee was appointed in 1868 under the Lord Chancellor Hugh Cairns, 1st Earl Cairns, who took over the publication of the compilation. The committee published a series of volumes known as The Statutes Revised from 1870 to 1885, compiling existing statute law down to 1878, and regarded as official. [16] After a series of additional acts consolidating statutes, a second revised edition was put out in 1888, removing the ones that were repealed. The Statutes Second Revised edition compiles statutes from 1235 down to 1920. [17] The Statutes Revised collections follow the Statutes of the Realm labels until 1714, and the Statutes at Large labels thereafter. [13]
