The ''Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities'' (''OSCOLA'') is a style guide that provides the modern method of

legal citation 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 writin ...

in the United Kingdom; the style itself is also referred to as OSCOLA. First developed by Peter Birks of the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

Faculty of Law, and now in its 4th edition (2012, Hart Publishing, ), it has been adopted by most law schools and many legal publishers in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. An online supplement (developed for the third edition) is available for the citation of international legal cases, not covered in the main guide.

Cases

Cases are to be cited without periods in the names or the report names. If there is
neutral citation
which is generally the case after 2001 or 2002, cite it before the "best" report: the ''Law Reports'' (AC, QB, Ch etc.), or the WLR or the All ER. * '' Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co'' 8931 QB 256 * '' Transfield Shipping Inc v Mercator Shipping Inc (The Achilleas)'' 008UKHL 48, 0091 AC 61 Use round brackets if the year is not needed to identify the report, but square brackets when it is. For example, the All England Reports are identified by year then volume, meaning you should use something such as "

005 ''005'' is a 1981 arcade game by Sega. They advertised it as the first of their RasterScan Convert-a-Game series, designed so that it could be changed into another game in minutes "at a substantial savings". It is one of the first examples of a ...

1 All ER". When you cite something for a second time, an abbreviation can be used. In a footnote referring back to a particular page and another footnote, this would be, * ''Carlill'' (n 12) 854 * ''The Achilleas'' (n 13) 2::N.B. The foregoing 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, * Case 240/83 ''Procureur de la République v ADBHU'' 985ECR 531 For European Court of Human Rights cases, * ''Omojudi v UK'' (2009) 51 EHRR 10

Journals and books

Journal articles, books etc. should be cited with the author's name as shown in the work being cited. Journal abbreviations are in roman, with no periods (full stops). If the journal does not have consecutive volume numbers, the year should be shown in square brackets, as in the second example. * Alison L Young, 'In Defence of Due Deference' (2009) 72 MLR 554 * Paul Craig, 'Theory, "Pure Theory" and Values in Public Law'

PL 440 Books follow a similar pattern. Note the order is Author, ''Title'' (Edition, Publisher Year) page. * Joseph Raz, ''The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality'' (2nd edn, OUP 2009) 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. * Justine Pila, 'The Value of Authorship in the Digital Environment' in William H Dutton and Paul W Jeffreys (eds), ''World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities in the Century of Information'' (MIT Press 2000)

Legislation

The title of UK legislation should always be written in Roman with the year at the end. The section is abbreviated without any periods. *

Employment Rights Act 1996 The Employment Rights Act 1996 (c. 18) is a United Kingdom Act of Parliament passed by the Conservative government to codify existing law on individual rights in UK labour law. History Previous statutes, dating from the Contracts of Employmen ...

, s 86(1)(a) EU legislation should be as follows. * Council Directive 2001/29/EC of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society

001 001, O01, or OO1 may refer to: *1 (number), a number, a numeral *001, fictional British agent, see 00 Agent *001, former emergency telephone number for the Norwegian fire brigade (until 1986) *AM-RB 001, the code-name for the Aston Martin Valkyrie ...

OJ L167/10

''Hansard'' and Parliamentary reports

* HC Deb 3 February 1977, vol 389, cols 973-76 * Joint Committee on Human Rights, ''Legislative Scrutiny: Equality Bill (second report); Digital Economy Bill'' (2009-10, HL 73, HC 425) 14-16

References

External links

''OSCOLA'' websiteAn online tutorial
from

Cardiff University , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...

Law of the United Kingdom Legal citation guides Academic style guides