How to reference your essays for law

A common problem for law students – as indeed, all students – is how to reference your work to avoid plagiarism. I’ll attempt to answer that here using appropriate examples. You can download the Open University’s Law School Undergraduate Assessment Guide here. Section 6 deals with referencing.

As an OU Law student, you will need to refer to two categories of material:

• general academic sources, such as:
  • module materials (printed or online)
  • books (printed or online)
  • encyclopaedias and dictionaries (printed or online)
  • databases
  • journal articles (printed or online)
  • websites
  • newspaper articles (printed or online)
  • audio-visual materials (original source or online)

and

• primary sources of law:
  • UK cases
  • UK statutes
  • UK secondary legislation
  • EU cases and legislation
  • the European Convention on Human Rights
  • cases from the European Court of Human Rights
  • international sources of law.

A reference to either category of material consists of two components: a citation and a full reference. A citation appears in the main body of your work, and a full reference appears in the reference list at the end of your work.

© The Open University

Online Sources:

For an online source, such as the OU module, the citation would be the author’s name, year of publication and the section or subsection you found the information you are using. So, for this example, the citation would be (The Open University, 2015a, s6.2.1). You can use a lower-case  ‘s’ for ‘section(s)' and a lowercase ‘ss’ for subsection(s). 

In my example, you will see the lowercase ‘a’ after the year – this refers to the first unit you are taking your information from. So, for example your first unit is Unit 4, then every time you refer to Unit 4 (and ONLY Unit 4), you will ALWAYS use the suffix ‘a’ after the year (which is the year you start your course). So, if I refer to Unit 4 nine times, it will always be ‘2015a’. Another unit, for example, Unit 6 in the same assignment, will be ‘2015b’ in every instance you refer to Unit 6… and so forth. Got it?

The full online reference at the end of your assignment/TMA/essay will be composed of the authors' names, the year begun, the Module’s name, where found and when accessed:

The Open University (2015a) Open University Law School Undergraduate Assessment Guide  [Online]. Available at www.learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=884473 (Accessed 16 November 2016).

Text Books:

The format for text books follow a similar ‘code’. The authors’ names first (surname, first initial), the publication date, the name of the text, edition number, where published and the publisher’s name:

Furmston, M., (2012) ‘Cheshire, Fifoot and Furmson’s Law of Contract’, 16^th Edn., Oxford, Oxford University Press.

The in-text citation will be the authors’ name, initial, year published and page number(s) – ‘p’ if one page, ‘pp’ for multiple pages:

(Furmston, M., 2012, pp123-130)

If you are using a quote from a secondary source that is used in the online material or a text book, then you must reference it in-text:

(Furmston, 2012, p. 206 cited in Open University, 2015a)

For a journal article, you follow the same format:

Gibson, K (2014) ‘What lies ahead?’, New Law Journal, vol. 164, no. 7623, p. 12. Available at http://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/nlj/content/what-lies-ahead-0 Accessed on 26.03.2016

The in-text citation would be:

(Gibson, K., 2014)

Case law:

For case law, you MUST give the full reference in the FIRST instance (London and North Eastern Railway v Berriman [1946] AC 278), thereafter you may refer to it by a short name (Berriman). The full case name also must be in your end of assignment reference list.

Full reference list:

At the end of your assignment, you need to give a full reference list in alphabetical order. You may use the words ‘References’ or ‘Reference List’ to head these. You may also list your statutes, and cases in separate but appropriately named lists eg, ‘Cases’, ‘Statutes’.

All the above except for the references at the end of your essay/assignment/TMA are included in the word count.

How to write a law essay:

You can find out more on how to write a law essay from the link.

W101 Skills 1 – Reading and Understanding Case Law

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Note that the person bringing a claim in civil court is now called the “claimant”; before 1999 the person was called the “plaintiff”. The person defending the claim is now called the “respondent”. A person appealing a decision of a lower court is called the “appellant”. See the Supreme Court’s decisions webpage for examples.

Remember too, the case is known by the names of the parties e.g. Smith v Jones which is read as Smith and Jones. NOT Smith versus Jones. In a criminal case, the case R v Jones is read as R against Jones (where R signifies the Crown – Rex if the Monarch is male and Regina if the Monarch is female).

W101 Skills – 1: How to read legislation

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Remember that legislation is also known as statute or written law or Acts of Parliament. There is a standard format used in presenting Acts of Parliament, as shown in the picture above. Most statutes show:

• parts – each part deals with a different aspect. Each part is divided into:
  • sections – abbreviated as s (singular) and ss (plural). Sections lay out the actual provisions of the Act and are further sub-divided into:
    • sub-sections – abbreviated as sub-s (singular) and sub-ss (plural) and further sub-divided into:
      • paragraphs – abbreviated as para (singular) or paras (plural) and further sub-divided into:
        • subparagraphs – abbreviated as sub-para (singular) or sub-paras (plural).

At the end of the statute there will often be schedules and these are numerically divided. They relate to the sections of the Act and usually deal with the detail referred to from the sections. They cannot create anything new that is not contained in the main body of the Act.

© The Open University

A great resource for lawyers and law students is the Parliament webpage (upcoming and new legislation) and the Government’s official legislation webpage, where one can find most of the statutes that are in effect (and all from 1988).

Here is a PDF file with more details on how to read statutes, from the Georgetown University Law Centre. You can also view a video here from Oxford University Press which explains Acts of Parliament and also how to read them.

The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949

Up until the first decade of the 20th century, the House of Lords had the power to veto any legislation coming through the House of Commons. In 1909 the House of Lords refused to pass the "People's budget" of David Lloyd-George. Subsequently, in 1911 the Parliament Act (1911) was passed, plus restricting the House of Lords from vetoing any Act of Parliament – with the exception of one to extend the lifetime of Parliament – and also reduced the lifetime of Parliament from 7 years to 5 years (meaning that a general election should be held every five years). The Parliament Act 1911 gave the House of Lords an option to delay any Bill for up to 2 years.

The 1949 Parliament Act further reduced this period of 2 years down to 1 year. Both the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts work together. Since 1949, only 4 Bills have been passed using these Acts:

War Crimes Act 1991
European Parliament Elections Act 1999
Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000
Hunting Act 2004

As a matter of convention, the House of Lords does not veto any Bill related to a matter mentioned in an election manifesto.

Another convention is that Parliament cannot bind any previous Parliaments. What this means in practice is that any new government that is formed may make changes or repeal any previous legislation from preceding governments thus ensuring that the legislative power of the government is not restricted in any way. You can read more about conventions of the UK Parliament here.

Bear in mind that conventions are also a source of law under the UK constitution and cannot be easily changed.