The Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) is designed to facilitate accurate citation of authorities, legislation, and other legal materials. It is widely used in law schools and by journal and book publishers in the UK and beyond.
Nota bene: This is a footnote style of referencing.
OSCOLA is edited by the Oxford Law Faculty, in consultation with the OSCOLA Editorial Advisory Board.
The information detailed within this webpage is based on the Book:
Whenever you paraphrase or quote a source or use the ideas of another person, you need to cite the source of the material.
Number your footnotes continuously through your document, starting at 1.
Do not use full stops in abbreviations. Separate citations with a semi-colon.
The following provide examples of how you reference primary sources.
This guide provides you with examples of how to cite references correctly in the text of your assignments.
OSCOLA does not purport to be comprehensive, but gives rules and examples for the main UK legal primary sources, and for many types of secondary sources. As far as possible, the guidelines in OSCOLA are based on common practice in UK legal citation, but with a minimum of punctuation. When citing materials not mentioned in OSCOLA, use the general principles in OSCOLA as a guide, and try to maintain consistency.
The following provide examples of how you reference secondary sources.
The OSCOLA style is not available in the EndNote software, But can be downloaded from this page (below).
EndNote Online is free web-based implementation of EndNote. OSCOLA is one of the styles available when using EndNote Online.
Mendeley is a free reference manager and an academic social network. Manage your research, showcase your work, connect and collaborate with others.
OSCOLA is available as a style to download and add.
To quickly insert a footnote in word use Ctrl-Alt-F then insert your reference.
University of Oxford provide a faq section on their website supporting OSCOLA enquiries: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/oscola-faqs
Cardiff University provide a thorough tutorial for Citing the law, which will show you how to:
Cardiff also provide the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations: This database allows you to search for the meaning of abbreviations for English language legal publications, from the British Isles, the Commonwealth and the United States, including those covering international and comparative law.
The information contained within these pages is intended as a general referencing guideline.
Please check with your supervisor to ensure that you are following the specific guidelines required by your school.