Kent Law School Skills Hub

Citing English Cases

When referring to cases in your assessments, you need to provide the full case citation.
Italicising names
The general convention is that case names should always be italicised, whether in a footnote or in the
main body of the text. So, R v Brown is R v Brown, 1 or could be shortened to Brown. This allows us to
distinguish between Brown (a person involved in the case) and Brown (the case itself).
Case citations
The case citation is made up of the case name, the neutral citation and/or law report, e.g.
Rhodes v OPO & Anor [2015] UKSC 32, [2015] 2 WLR 1372
Rhodes v OPO & Anor [2015] UKSC 32, [2015] 2 WLR 1372
Case name | Neutral citation | Law report
When citing a case for the first time, you need to include the full citation in a footnote. Where the full
name is set out in the text, the footnote can simply include the neutral citation and/or law report.
Remember: you can save words in later footnotes by referring back to the initial reference. 2
Neutral citations
The neutral citation provides the year, court and judgment number of cases that are available (for
free) on BAILLI. Neutral citations are a relatively modern invention, and some cases will not have one.

Abbreviation Court
UKSC (formerly UKHL) Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (formerly the House of Lords)
UKPC Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
EWCA Court of Appeal of England and Wales
EWHC High Court of Justice of England and Wales

Some abbreviations will be followed by an indication of the specific court or division (e.g. Civ for the
Civil Division of the Court of Appeal or Ch for the Chancery Division of the High Court).
Law reports: which is the “best” report?
Many important cases will be included in law reports. Some cases are reported in a number of
different reports, but you only need to include the best one in your citation.
The “best” reports are The Law Reports by the Incorporated Council of Law Reports, including Appeal
Cases (AC), Chancery Division (Ch), House of Lords (HL) and King’s/Queen’s Bench Division (KB or QB).
Where one of these isn’t available, you should use the Weekly Law Reports (WLR) or All England Law
Reports (All ER) if possible, before considering other reports.

1
Note: when reading aloud, R is read as “the Crown”, while v is read as “and” or (in criminal cases, like Brown) “against”.
2
E.g. if footnote 1 include the full case citation for Rhodes v OPO & Anor, the footnote for a later reference to the case
could simply Rhodes (n 1), i.e. the case name (or an abbreviation of it) and the initial footnote. See OSCOLA, page 5.

Kent Law School Skills Hub