Citing cases - some useful guidance

Guidance on how to cite cases, particularly if they are unreported or County Court, can be found courtesy of Bournemouth University:

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/infoskills/documents/unreported.ppt

The guide mentions the OSCOLA - Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities. More information on OSCOLA can be found on this webpage: http://denning.law.ox.ac.uk/published/oscola.shtml

A useful summary of the hierarchy of law reports, or which is the best one to cite, can be found on the Bodleian Law Library's website: http://denning.law.ox.ac.uk/lrsp/overview/law_reports.php#bestreport. This originates from a 1998 practice direction: http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/cms/797.htm

Neutral Citations

The official neutral citation system was introduced for the United Kingdom in January 2001 and with effect from 14 January 2002 the practice of neutral citation was extended to all judgments given by judges in the High Court in London. The neutral citation is a unique identifier for each judgment and is assigned centrally by the courts. 

• The abbreviation for the Supreme Court is UKSC and for the House of Lords it was UKHL. Judgments from the Privy Council are identified by UKPC.

• England and Wales Court of Appeal judgments are identified by EWCA Crim (for the Criminal Division) and EWCA Civ (for the Civil Division).

• The England and Wales High Court is identified by EWHC, with the various Divisions being indicated in brackets after the judgment number. (QB) indicates the Queen's Bench Division, (Fam) indicates the Family Division, (Ch) indicates Chancery, and so on.

• Neutral citations have also been adopted by Tribunals. Judgments from the UK Immigration Appeals Tribunal are indicated by UKIAT, for example

Further details regarding the neutral citation system used in England & Wales can be found here:

Practice Direction on the form of Judgments, Paragraph Marking and Neutral Citation (11 January 2001)

Practice Direction on Neutral Citations (14 January 2002)

Once a judgment is reported in a law report series, the neutral citation appears in front of the more usual law report series e.g. Smith v. Buckland [2007] EWCA Civ 1318; [2008] 1 W.L.R. 661

See the BAILLI webiste for more details.

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