A law report
Answer
Please note: this guidance should be followed by students studying our Law (LL.B.) programme at Newman. It is not the same as the style in Cite them right. If you are studying a different programme, your tutors may expect your references to law reports to be presented differently. If you need guidance, please check with your module leader.
Your in-text citations must be set out as follows:
( Name of case (in italics), Year, at: [page number] OR [[paragraph reference]] (in [square brackets]) )
If you are just summarising a case or referencing it in passing, you may not need to put a page or paragraph reference to it.
Examples
(R v Ghosh, 1982, at 1055)
(Chalcot Training Ltd v Ralph, 2020, [30])
Be careful when using paragraph references that the number you give is from the case you are reading. On LexisNexis, where quotations are made by the judge from other cases, they often have the paragraph number from the quoted case embedded in them.
Saving words in your in-text citations
Case names can quickly become expensive when it comes to your word count. You can save words by using abbreviated case names, but you must follow these rules:
The first time you cite the case, you should write out the citation in full, e.g:
- (R v Ghosh, 1982)
- (Donoghue v Stevenson, 1932)
- (R (on the application of Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, 2017)
- (J Lauritzen AS v Wijsmuller BV (The Super Servant Two), 1990)
When you cite the case again, you can just use the first party to the case's name on its own (e.g. (Donoghue, 1932)), unless:
- The first party is R (i.e the Crown, as in most criminal cases) or another government official (e.g. Attorney General or Director of Public Prosecutions). In this case use the name of the second party, e.g. (Ghosh, 1982)
- The first party is R (on the application of [name]) (i.e. a judicial review case). In this case, use the applicant's name, e.g. (Miller, 2017)
- The case concerns a ship. In this case, use the name of the ship, e.g (The Super Servant Two, 1990)
Make sure that the abbreviated name is in italics to signal it is a case, rather than the author of another source's name.
