OSCOLA – short for Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities – does exactly what it says on the tin: i.e. provides a standard for citing legal authorities. As part of this, OSCOLA referencing divides authorities into primary sources (case reports and legislation) and secondary sources (pretty much everything else).
But the range of formats within this second category can make citing secondary sources with OSCOLA confusing.
So check out our guide to find out how this works.
Secondary sources in OSCOLA pretty much include anything that isn’t a legal document but that you want to cite in your work, such as:
So unless the document you’re citing is a case report, a statute or a statutory instrument, there’s a good chance it will be a secondary source.
Like primary sources, you should cite secondary sources in footnotes, indicated using superscript numbers (e.g. 1, 2, 3) in the main text.
The information required in the footnote will depend on the source type, but there are some pointers worth keeping in mind for all sources:
To demonstrate how citing secondary sources works in OSCOLA referencing, we’ll focus on how to cite a book:
Author, | Title | (Edition, | Publisher | Year) | Pinpoint
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The pinpoint here is the specific page or paragraph number being cited, while the edition only has to be specified if the source is not a first edition. In a footnote, then, we would cite a book like this:
1. Bill O’Rights, Constitutional Protection (2nd edn, Hodder & Fouslon 1998) 245.
You can indicate consecutive citations of the same source using ‘ibid.’ and a new page number. For non-consecutive citations of the same source, you can give the author’s surname and cross-reference it with the first note.
While you will list primary sources in a table of authorities in OSCOLA, you will add secondary sources to a separate bibliography. Within this, list sources alphabetically by author surname with all relevant publication information.
As with footnotes, the exact information required will depend on the source type. Usually, though, it will be similar to the first footnote, only with:
For example, we would list the source cited above as follows:
O’Rights, B, Constitutional Protection (2nd edn, Hodder & Fouslon 1998)
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