Cases and Arbitration Awards

A case reference is a reference to a case hearing, sometimes known as a law report. The reference is normally of the form Smith v Brown, and in first instance, is followed by a citation to the law report volume where the case has been reported, e.g.

Smith v Brown [1992] EWCA 114

Where the case is referred to more than once in the same section or chapter, the reference is usually be to the party names only, and in some instances may be to just the first party, e.g.

... in the case of Smith, the court...

In criminal cases the first party in the case is the Crown, which is cited as R, or the Director of Public Prosecutions, which is cited as DPP, or sometimes just as Prosecutor, e.g.

R. v Edwards [1991] 2 All ER 266DPP v Ara [2001] 4 All ER 559Prosecutor v Théoneste Bagosora ICTR–98–41–T (27 March 2006)

Where a criminal case is referred to more than once in the same section or chapter, the reference may be to the second party name only, e.g.

... the judge decided in Ara that the defendant ...

Where cases involve children and mental health patients, where anonymity must be maintained, the case-reference appears as the party’s initials, e.g.

T v DPP [2003] Crim LR 622

These references must be marked up in the same way as all other case references.

Case references often appear as italicised text in printed text. First instances can be further identified by searching for specific identifiers:

v ; v.
'[yyyy]'
'(yyyy)'

Further instances within a document can be identified by searching for either of the party names. You must read the surrounding text to ensure that any incomplete references (e.g. Ara) are given the correct attribute values.

The phrase Procedural Order No. nnn refers to a stage of a case. Capture these phrases as a bibliographic reference. If the phrase occurs adjacent to the usual style of reference, include it within the bibItem for that reference. If it is separate, put it in its own bibItem and infer the party names and other attributes from the context.

There are some special requirements for certain types of case reports (here through to here); if a reference to a case report can be identified as one of these, the requirements in those sections apply.

Sub-topics