When citing legal cases you will need to be aware of the difference between a neutral citation and law report citations.
In a neutral citation, the abbreviated court name will start with ‘UK’ or ‘EW’ to indicate that the court’s jurisdiction extends to the United Kingdom or England and Wales.
Keeping this in mind can help you distinguish between neutral citations and law report citations.
When you use a neutral citation, you should follow it with a citation of the most authoritative (‘best’) law report.
Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations http://www.legalabbrevs.cardiff.ac.uk/
Use this to work out what a legal abbreviation stands for e.g. WLR = Weekly Law Reports Or to find out the preferred abbreviation for a law report series or journal title e.g. Family Law Journal is Fam LJ
Since 2001, all judgements in the High Court and above are assigned a unique “neutral citation” by the court which helps identify cases.
Here are some examples of the neutral citations you are most likely to see when studying law...
Pre-2001, legal cases were given law report citations. These law report series have different levels of authority. You should always use the most authoritative law report in your citation.
Below are some examples of different law reports, their abbreviations and authority...
Citation order:
Format:
Party names [Year case reported] Court Judgement number for that year, [year] Volume number Law report series First page of law report
Example:
R (Nicklinson) v Ministry of Justice [2014] UKSC 38, [2014] 3 WLR 200
