We have already looked at how to reference a variety of cases; those from England and Wales, those from Scotland and those from Northern Ireland, as well as dealing with the Law Report Hierarchy and Subsequent Citations. In addition, we have covered referencing EU Judgments from the CJEU, cases from the European Court of Human Rights and cases from other jurisdictions.
In this blog, we will be considering an area we have not yet covered; cases from before 1865. Why before 1865? Well, in 1865 the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting was set up by the Bar Council and started to publish the series known as the Law Reports, which you may be familiar with! These are authoritative, complete reports that are still first in the Law Report Hierarchy today, meaning that, if they are available, they should be cited in preference to anything else.
Before the Law Reports were published, cases were reported on in numerous collections printed privately by individuals. These were collectively called the Nominate Reports, and each carried the name of the reporter or judge with it. As you can imagine, these reports varied considerably in quality! They have since been reprinted for reference in the English Reports, where there are more than 100,000 of them.
Referencing Cases from before 1865
The basic format for a case before 1865 is:
Case name | (Year) | Volume | Report abbreviation | First Page
If the case has since been reprinted in the English Reports, you should also add this law report citation at the end, separated by a comma:
Case name | (Year) | Volume | Report abbreviation | First Page, | Volume | ER | First page
With the second volume number and the second first-page number corresponding to the English Reports, for example:
Boulton v Jones (1857) 2 H&N 564, 157 ER 232.
However, if a pinpoint is needed, this should be added to each law report citation after a comma, with the two law reports now being separated by a semi-colon:
Case name | (Year) | Volume | Report abbreviation | First Page, | Pinpoint; | Volume | ER | First page, | Pinpoint
The pinpoint should just be the page number of the thing being pinpointed, for example:
Henly v Mayor of Lyme (1828) 5 Bing 91, 107; 130 ER 995, 1001.
If you need to pinpoint a range of pages, guidance on this can be found in my blog OSCOLA Referencing Introduction and Quick Summary.
If a single case in one court spans several years, you can use the format “(1656-58)”, without the quote marks. Alternatively, if the exact year of the case is unknown but must fall in a particular range, use the format “(1656×58)”, again without the quote marks.
Remember that a citation in a footnote should end with a full stop, whereas bibliography entries do not. If you need to identify the court where the case was heard, this should be spelt out in the text.
Ecclesiastical Cases
If the case comes from the ecclesiastical courts, you should indicate this by separating the party names with a “c”, rather than the usual “v”. An example of this is:
James c Harmon (1514) 101 SS 24.
Yearbook References
If you need to refer to a yearbook reference, the basic format is:
(Calendar year) | YB | Term | Regnal year, | Folio, | Plea number
An example of this is:
(1400) YB Mich 2 Hen IV, fo 3v, pl 9.
In this reference, the calendar year refers to the year of the hearing and the “YB” is to let readers know that you are discussing a yearbook entry. The term will be one of four things: Mich, short for Michaelmas; Hil, short for Hilary; Pas, or Easter; and Trin, short for Trinity. These are the four terms of the year for the courts of England and Wales.
The regnal year is the next part of the reference. Here, the “Hen IV” part indicates that this hearing was in the reign of King Henry IV and the “2” part means that it is in the second year of his reign.
The folio and the plea number should both be taken from the (standard) Maynard edition.
However, you should check that the case you are citing as a yearbook reference does not have a better report in either the Rolls Series (RS), Selden Society (SS), Ames Foundation (AF) or legal history sourcebooks.
Cases not reported in the Maynard series can be found in the Rolls Series (Edward I and part of Edward III), the Selden Society (Edward II and some outliers) and the Ames Foundation (Richard II). The basic format for citing this is:
Party names | (Year) | YB | Source
An example of this is:
Helton v Kene (1344) YB 18 & 19 Edw III, RS p 194.
Here, we again have the regnal year (18 & 19 Edw III), followed by a comma, then the series abbreviation; here, RS for Rolls Series. If the case names are left anonymous, simply leave this part of the reference off.
To cite cases from legal history sourcebooks, use the format:
Party names | (Year) | Book reference | Page number
For example, the 1400 yearbook case cited above might be better cited as:
Watton v Brinth (1400) JH Baker and SFC Milsom, Sources of English Legal History: Private Law to 1750 (Butterworths 1987) 378.
A book reference takes the format:
Author, | Title of book | (Edition, | Publisher | Year)
You can find more detail on this in my blog OSCOLA Referencing Summary for Books.
Wrapping Up
I hope this helps you to reference your writing more easily. Please let me know if you have any questions! There are still a few other possibilities for citing older cases, so I may write about these in a future blog.
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