I have already covered the basics of referencing cases using the OSCOLA system in my earlier blog OSCOLA Referencing Summary for Cases from England and Wales. This blog goes into more detail about which law report you should cite and how you should treat subsequent citations of the same case.
Review
As a reminder, the basic layout of a case with a neutral citation is:
Case name | [Year] | Court | Number, | [Year] OR (Year) | Volume | Report abbreviation | First page
For one without a neutral citation (before 2001), it is:
Case name | [Year] OR (Year) | Volume | Report abbreviation | First page | (Court)
Which Law Report?
You may have noticed that some cases have more than one citation available. This is because it is likely that a case will be reported on in more than one law report and you will have to decide which is the best one to use. There is a hierarchy of which law report you should use to identify a case, which is as follows:
- The Official Law Reports published by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR). These include the Appeal Cases (AC), Queen’s Bench (QB), Family (Fam) and Chancery (Ch) reports. The Official Law Reports have a summary of the arguments made and must always be cited if possible. However, they are often not published until a few months after the case, so a different report may be used in the interim.
- The next best option is either the All England Law Reports (All ER) or the Weekly Law Reports (WLR). These two are equal and if both exist and there is no official one published, either can be used. The relevant judge(s) will have reviewed the report before it is published.
- The next possibility is to use a specialist law report. These will contain a headnote (a summary of any major points of the case and the issues concerned) and have been written by someone with a Senior Courts qualification. Some examples of these are Butterworths Company Law Cases (BCLC) and the Criminal Law Reports (Crim LR).
- The fourth option, if the case has not been reported on in any of the above ways, is to use another report that is not a specialist one.
- Finally, if a case has not been reported on at all, you can use the official transcript of the case from sources such as BAILII, the Supreme Court website and the Judiciary website. This must be the official version of the transcript, not a later one, as this may have been edited and no longer be accurate. Furthermore, you should not generally use cases that have not been reported on at all unless there is a very important legal principle in the transcript.
If you are still unsure which law report to use, databases such as Westlaw will usually list the citations in the correct order after the case name. The neutral citation (if there is one) will be listed first, followed by the best law report, then the other law reports in order.
Subsequent citations
If you are going to be referring to a case more than once, it is both tedious for you to write the citation in full every time and for your readers to read! Therefore, it makes sense to have an abbreviated version you can use for later citations and in text. Before you even start writing the name out in full, remember that some abbreviations are acceptable at the first mention, for example, LBC rather than London Borough Council. So, Barrett v Enfield London Borough Council becomes Barrett v Enfield LBC. There is a list of these abbreviations on pages 47–48 of the OSCOLA Referencing Guide.
Civil Cases
The case we will be using as an example here is:
Edwards v Skyways Ltd [1964] 1 WLR 349 (QB).
If you are going to abbreviate a case that has two names (here, Edwards and Skyways Ltd), it is important that you use the first name as the abbreviation. This abbreviation can then be used in subsequent text mentions and in footnotes. If it is in a footnote, make sure you cross-refer back the number of the footnote with the full reference, like so:
1 Edwards v Skyways Ltd [1964] 1 WLR 349 (QB).
4 Edwards (n 1).
Notice that this is done in brackets, with an n, then a space, then the number of the original footnote.
Criminal Cases
If the case is a criminal one, for example, R v Cunningham, it is acceptable to miss off the R v part from the first mention, but less common to do so when there are only a small number of criminal cases in your writing and it focuses more on another area of law. An example of this in a footnote is:
6 R v Cunningham [1957] 2 QB 396 (CA) OR Cunningham [1957] 2 QB 396 (CA).
11 R v Cunningham (n 6) OR Cunningham (n 6).
Obviously only use one version of the footnote! Also, remember that consistency is required in OSCOLA referencing, so whichever way you decide to refer to a criminal case, you should use this way for other criminal cases.
Shipping Cases
If the case is a shipping one, you can simply use the name of the ship concerned as an abbreviation for the case. For example:
4 Leigh & Sillivan Ltd v Aliakmon Shipping Co Ltd (The Aliakmon) [1986] AC 785 (HL).
9 The Aliakmon (n 4).
Popular Names
If a case has a popular name, this may also be used, but not at first instance and it should be given in brackets after the first reference to the case. An example of this is:
15 Mirage Studios v Counter-feat Clothing Co Ltd [1991] FSR 145 (Ch) (Ninja Turtles case).
22 Ninja Turtles case (n 15).
Finally
As always with OSCOLA, citing is fairly simple as long as you stick to the basic format and remember to consider all the possible adjustments that may be needed. Hopefully, these two blogs will let you cite cases with confidence!
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