Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities

The Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) is the modern method of legal citation in the United Kingdom. First developed by Peter Birks of the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, and now in its 4th edition, it has been adopted by most law schools and publishers in the United Kingdom as well as the courts.

Contents

Cases

Cases are to be cited without periods in the names or the report names. If there is a 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.

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,

For European Union cases,

For European Court of Human Rights cases,

Journals and books

Journal articles, books etc. should be cited with the author's name as shown in the work begin 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.

Books follow a similar pattern. Note the order is Author, Title (Edition, Publisher Year) page.

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.

Legislation

UK legislation should always be written without any formatting, with the year at the end. The section is abbreviated without any periods.

EU legislation should be as follows.

Hansard

See also

In the United States

External links