Looking for something specific? Use this search box to explore our referencing guides, examples, and tips. Whether you’re unsure about in-text citations, putting together your reference list, or dealing with trickier rules like secondary referencing, this search will help you find the right guidance quickly and easily.
OSCOLA referencing style is used when submitting work for a module for the School of Law. Due to the complexity of particular sources, some entries are very detailed. Make sure to fully read each page.
OSCOLA 5th Guidance Documents
From September 2026 we will be using the 5th edition. Please see the Law Subject Page for more information.
OSCOLA 4th Guidance Documents
The following links are to external guidance on OSCOLA 4th edition referencing:
The full official guidance on OSCOLA referencing
A tutorial with useful self-tests for those starting with OSCOLA
Use this tool to decipher abbreviations or to create your own using the preferred abbreviations given here
- Using material from selected other jurisdictions - follow the official guidance for legal citations used by the country in question. For additional jurisdictions, see the World Legal Information Institute's webpage.
Cite primary sources (cases and legislation) as in their home jurisdiction, with the exception that full stops in abbreviations should be removed.
Cases
If the name of the law report series cited does not itself indicate the court, and the identity of the court is not obvious from the context, you should also give this in either full or short form in brackets at the end of the citation. When citing a decision of the highest court of a US state, the abbreviation of the name of the state suffices.
Legislation
Give the jurisdiction if necessary.
For guidance on international law, we recommend these links:
International Law
In the absence of any guidance below, please use guide above for other foreign jurisdictions. These recommendations are from OSCOLA.
Australia
- Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th edn, Melbourne University Law Review Association 2018).
Canada
- McGill Law Review, Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (8th edn, Carswell 2014).
- Canadian Citation Committee, ‘A Neutral Citation Standard for Case Law’ (2000).
France
- Follow the form of citation and presentation generally adopted by the Recueil Dalloz.
Germany
- Hildebert Kirchner, Abkürzungsverzeichnis der Rechtssprache (13th edn, de Gruyter 2013).
Ireland
- Jennifer Schweppe and others (eds), OSCOLA Ireland (2nd edn, legalcitation.ie 2016).
Israel
- ‘The Uniform Citation Rules’ (1989) 39 The Lawyer and (1998) 44 The Lawyer (in Hebrew).
New Zealand
- Alice Coppard and others (eds), New Zealand Law Style Guide (3rd ed Thomson Reuters 2018).
South Africa
- Follow the style used in the South African Law Journal House Style (2018).
USA
- Association of Legal Writing Directors and Darby Dickerson (eds), ALWD Citation Manual: A Professional System of Citation (3rd edn, Aspen Publishers 2006).
- The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (20th edn, Harvard Law Review Association 2020).
For jurisdictions not covered above, please see the World Legal Information Institute website.