The importance of legal citations and academic referencing
Legal citations are the references in the text or in footnotes to the legal, academic and other sources which support your argument.
Whenever you make a claim that ‘the law is x’, you should cite a legal authority for that proposition. This allows your reader to assess not only whether your claim is accurate, but also how strong the authority is. The citation is therefore an integral part of the evidence that supports arguments about what the law says and what it means.
When writing a law essay you will usually incorporate material and ideas from books, journal articles, official publications and other sources. It is essential that you use the correct referencing technique to give credit for quotes which come from other writers. You must also provide a reference even if you are not quoting directly from other work, but where that work has nevertheless helped you to formulate your own ideas.
If you fail to make appropriate references it may look as though you are claiming credit for ideas which are not your own, which is viewed in UK universities as poor academic practice or worse – please ensure you are familiar with the rules on plagiarism and the University Academic Integrity Policy.
Why referencing systems matter
As a guiding principle, citations should enable the reader to find the precise source you have quoted or relied on, and also which part of that source you have used. All referencing systems allow writers to provide that information in a type of ‘code’ which obeys very specific rules. Students and academics working within specific disciplines, like law, all use the same referencing code so that they can easily comply with it when writing legal texts, but also so that they can all ‘de-code’ references when reading each other's work. The code, or style of referencing, used in the Liverpool Law School is the OSCOLA referencing style.
The OSCOLA referencing style
OSCOLA (the Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities) is a footnote style. It does not use in-text
citations or endnotes. This guide is based on the 4th edition of OSCOLA and covers the main sources of
information that you are likely to need to cite in your work. For a more detailed guide to OSCOLA see the
OSCOLA 4th Edition Guide.
This guide will begin by describing how to write footnotes for different types of legal materials in a manner
which obeys the OSCOLA rules.
At the end of the guide there is an important section which explains when and how to add footnotes to
your text, and how to build a bibliography.
Creating footnotes
Legal citations and academic references should be dealt with together, as they arise in the text, in a single set of footnotes. Sometimes additional information and comments are placed in footnotes but you should try to avoid this in student essays, where you will be working to tight word limits. A good rule of thumb is that if the information is important enough to include, it should be in the text. If it is not important enough to warrant inclusion in the text, it is better excluded altogether.
Whether footnotes are included within the word count depends upon your programme and module. Always check with the module coordinator or the teaching team on the specific module if you’re not sure.
Footnotes are easy to create using Microsoft Word. Click the References tab and position the cursor where you want the footnote to be inserted and click the Insert Footnote button. You will see the footnote superscript number1 is inserted into your text and at the bottom of the page, ready for you to enter the reference.
Always put the footnote marker at the end of a sentence, unless it relates to a specific word or phrase, and close footnotes with a full stop.
