Understanding law citations

An essential part of finding law reports is to understand how a case is cited. Once you have the citation it is easy to find the case. Cases are commonly cited in this way:

Civil cases:

Olley v Marlborough Court Ltd [1949] 1 KB 532
Olley and Marlborough Court Ltd - the parties involved in the case, the claimant (plaintiff) and the defendant.
[1949]1 - the year the case was published and the volume number of the law reports series
KB 532 - the abbreviation for the series of law reports - Kings Bench - and the page number - page 532

To check what the abbreviation of a law report series or journal title stands for, go to http://www.legalabbrevs.cardiff.ac.uk/
or Raistrick’s Index to legal citations and abbreviations

Criminal cases:

R v Duggan [2003] 1 Cr. App. R. 26
R (The Crown) and Duggan - in criminal cases the parties are the Crown and the defendant, R being the Queen (Regina) or King (Rex)
[2003] 1 Cr. App. R. 26- the report would appear in volume 1 of the 2003 series of Criminal Appeals Reports series on page 26.

An important case may be published in several different series of law reports, and may also have a neutral citation.

These started to be assigned to cases in 2001 and give a unique identifier to each case irrespective of any published law report in print or electronic sources. Cases are given paragraph numbers, not page numbers, so the precise place in the case is cited. So the criminal case above can also be cited as:

[2002] EWCA 2627 CA (Crim Div)
This indicates that the case was heard in the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, and was given judgement number 2627.

Campbell v Frisbee [2002] EWHC 328 (Ch) at [8]
The neutral citation here shows that Campbell v Frisbee was a decision handed down in 2002 by the Chancery (Ch) Division of the High Court of England and Wales (EWHC) which has been attributed with the case number 328. Your attention is specifically directed to the eighth paragraph [8]

These are the neutral citation formats used for the different courts:

• EWCA Civ - Court of Appeal Civil Division
• EWCA Crim - Court of Appeal Criminal Division
• EWHC (Admin) - High Court (Administrative Court)
• EWHC (Ch) - High Court (Chancery Division)
• EWHC (QB) - High Court (Queen's Bench Division)
• EWHC (Comm) - High Court (Commercial Court)
• EWHC (Admlty) - High Court (Admiralty)
• EWHC (Fam) - High Court (Family Division)
• EWHC (Pat) - High Court (Patents Court)
• EWHC (TCC) - High Court (Technology & Construction Court)
• UKHL - House of Lords
• UKPC - Privy Council
• EW is used for courts covering England and Wales
• UK is used for courts covering the whole of the United Kingdom

Care must be taken to avoid confusing neutral citations with the traditional type of citation especially as they will often appear together.
e.g. Campbell v Frisbee [2002] [2002] EWHC 328 [2002] E.M.L.R. 31

EWHC is the neutral citation
EMLR refers to the printed series Entertainment and Media Law Reports