OSCOLA Referencing for UK Law Students: The 10-Minute Crash Course
Cases, statutes, books, journal articles, and the OSCOLA footnote rules every UK law student gets wrong.
OSCOLA is footnote-based, not author-date. Every citation lives in a footnote; the bibliography sits at the end, split into Cases, Legislation, and Secondary Sources.
Cases
Format: Case name (italics) [Year] Court Volume Reporter First page. Example: Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] UKHL 100. Use square brackets when the year is essential for finding the case; round brackets when it's just descriptive.
Legislation
UK statutes: short title and year, no full stop. Example: Human Rights Act 1998. Pinpoint a section with 's' (no period): Human Rights Act 1998, s 3.
The mistake examiners catch
Putting a full stop inside a footnote that ends with an abbreviation, or italicising case names in the footnote but not the bibliography. Be consistent - OSCOLA marks for consistency more than any other UK style.
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