All subjects have their own terminology and law is no different. On starting a Postgraduate Diploma in Law last October one of the hardest things I came across was the titles of cases. For example, a famous case in contract law is this one:
Williams v Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd [1991] 1 QB 1
There’s a lot of information here. It tells you the two sides of the case, its year and where it was reported. Reading it seems pretty weird. Then you might get asked to read it out loud. It’s important read a case properly. In a moot for example, if you say “Williams v Roffey and Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd 1999 1 QB 1” you will lose moots. It’s important to follow a number of rules:
The first rule is that it’s never ‘versus’. Although there’s a ‘v’ you don’t say “versus”. This will be jumped on immediately by any of your teachers. In civil cases you say “and” and in criminal cases, you say “against”. So ‘Williams v Roffey’ is to be read as “Williams and Roffey”. This is almost rule number 1 of law. It’s never versus.
The second rule is to understand the Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) way of citing a case. This breaks the case title down into the different parts of the citation:
The third rule is to identify the law report.
Law reports are the documents where the case was reported. It’s important to cite the law report because that’s the official record of that case. As case law (the stuff decided in court cases) is such an important part of UK law we have to show precisely where that piece of law came from. So when you read the case you want to say the title of the case and what number issue of what law report in what year it was reported.
The law report title will be in abbreviated form. Here is a non-exhaustive list of UK law report abbreviations from Oxford University:
The Law Report Series
AC Appeal Cases
Ch Law Reports, Chancery Division
QB Law Reports, Queen's Bench Division
KB Law Reports, King's Bench Division
Fam Law Reports, Family Division
P Law Reports, Probate Division
Other commercial series
All ER All England Reports
BCLC Butterworths Company Law Cases
Cr App R Criminal Appeal Reports
Cr App R (S) Criminal Appeal Reports Sentencing
FSR Fleet Street Reports
ICR Industrial Cases Reports
IRLR Industrial Relations Law Reports
LLoyd's LR Lloyd's Law Reports
P & CR Property, Planning and Compensation reports
SC Session Cases (Scottish)
WLR Weekly Law Reports
So if we look back at Williams v Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd [1991] 1 QB 1 this tells us that it was reported in the Law Report, Queen's Bench Division.
We can now break the citation up into its different parts and we can then learn how to read those parts:
So rather than “Williams v Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd [1991] 1 QB 1”
You’d say:
“Williams and Roffey Bros & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd as reported in the first volume of the Law Reports, Queen Bench Division for the year 1991 starting at page 1”
Rule four is about neutral citation. They are independent of a specific report (hence neutral). The letters in the title refer to a court, not a report and the number at the end refers to the case number of that year. A neutral citation would look like this:
Rock Advertising Ltd v MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd [2018] UKSC 24
UKSC stands for United Kingdom Supreme Court. The year was 2018 and this was the 24th case of that year.
We can now break the neutral citation up into its different parts:
And we can then learn how to read those parts:
So rather than “Rock Advertising Ltd v MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd [2018] UKSC 24”
You’d say:
“Rock Advertising Ltd and MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd, neutral citation, 2018, United Kingdom Supreme Court, number 24”
Rule five is about ‘Re’.
Re is a Latin phrase meaning “in the matter of”. It is used in cases that are non-adversarial (not cases where one person is against another) and refers to the primary matter of a case such as the name of a company. One such case was in 1993 when the Inland Revenue petitioned the courts for a winding-up order of a company called Selectmove who owed tax:
Re Selectmove Ltd [1993] EWCA Civ 8
You don’t say “Re”. You say “in the matter of”.
So rather than Re Selectmove Ltd [1993] EWCA Civ 8
You’d say:
“In the matter of Selectmove Ltd, neutral citation, 1993, England and Wales Court of Appeal Civil Division number 8”
And finally:
When reading out numbers whether of the issue, page or case they must be read out as a whole number, not digit by digit. So you’d say “one hundred” not “one, zero, zero”.
It feels a bit clunky but once you’ve got the hang of it it starts to feel easier. Definitely, something I wish I’d known before I started studying law!