OSCOLA referencing for law students
Footnotes, cases, legislation and the deliberately minimal punctuation that catches almost every first-year.
OSCOLA exists because legal sources carry information that brackets cannot hold. A case citation tells you the court, the year, the report series and the page, and each of those changes how much authority the case has. Compressing that into (Smith, 2019) would destroy the point.
It is published by the Faculty of Law at Oxford and is genuinely standardised, so unlike Harvard there is a right answer.
The basic mechanics
A superscript number goes after the punctuation, and the citation appears in a footnote at the bottom of the page.
In the text
The court declined to extend the duty of care to purely economic loss.1
Footnote
1. Murphy v Brentwood DC [1991] 1 AC 398 (HL) 475.
Note what is absent: no full stop after v, no full stops in AC or HL, and no comma before the page number. That sparseness is the house style.
Cases
Reported UK case
Case name | [year] or (year) | volume | report abbreviation | first page | (court)
Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562 (HL).
R v Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 (HL).
Square or round brackets? Square where the year is essential to locating the report. Round where the volume number alone would find it, in which case the year is extra information.
Neutral citation
Since 2001, English cases carry a neutral citation that comes first.
Patel v Mirza [2016] UKSC 42, [2017] AC 467.
Pinpointing a page
Murphy v Brentwood DC [1991] 1 AC 398 (HL) 475.
No p. and no comma. The bare number is the page.
Legislation
Act
Human Rights Act 1998.
Section of an Act
Human Rights Act 1998, s 3.
Subsection
Equality Act 2010, s 13(1).
Statutory instrument
Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, SI 2008/1277.
No italics on statute names, and no full stop after s. Multiple sections usess: Equality Act 2010, ss 13–15.
Secondary sources
Book
Andrew Burrows, A Restatement of the English Law of Contract (2nd edn, OUP 2020) 84.
Author's name in normal order, first name first. That differs from almost every other style and is worth checking twice.
Journal article
Paul Craig, 'Ultra Vires and the Foundations of Judicial Review' (1998) 57 CLJ 63.
Chapter in an edited book
Jane Stapleton, 'The Golden Thread at the Heart of Tort Law' in Peter Cane and others (eds), The Law of Obligations (OUP 2018) 112.
Website
Law Commission, 'Automated Vehicles: Joint Report' (Law Com No 404, 2022) <https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/example> accessed 14 March 2026.
Angle brackets around the URL, and accessed in lower case with no comma before it.
Subsequent citations
OSCOLA uses short forms once a source has been cited in full.
| Form | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ibid | Same source as the footnote immediately before | ibid 476. |
| Short case name | Case already cited in full | Murphy (n 1) 476. |
| Author (n x) | Book or article already cited | Burrows (n 4) 91. |
(n 1) means "see footnote 1". OSCOLA has dropped op cit and loc citentirely, so do not use them.
Bibliography
Required for dissertations and theses, and divided into three sections in this order:
- Table of cases, alphabetical by case name
- Table of legislation, statutes then statutory instruments
- Bibliography of secondary sources, alphabetical by author surname
One change in the bibliography: author surnames come first, reversed from the footnote form.Burrows A, A Restatement of the English Law of Contract (2nd edn, OUP 2020), with no full stop at the end.
Five errors that mark a first-year draft
- Full stops in abbreviations. It is AC, not A.C. Never v. for versus.
- Italicising statutes. Cases are italicised, legislation is not.
- Superscript before the punctuation. The number goes after the full stop.
- Using p. for pages. OSCOLA uses the bare number.
- Author surname first in footnotes. Footnotes use normal name order; only the bibliography reverses it.
Law markers notice referencing more than most, because citation accuracy is itself a professional skill being assessed. Ourcitation styles guide compares OSCOLA with the systems you may meet in joint-honours modules.
Last updated: 30 July 2026 · Written by the AssignWise editorial team ·Spotted something wrong?
Frequently asked questions
OSCOLA is the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, the standard style for law in UK universities. It uses footnotes rather than in-text citations, and it is deliberately sparing with punctuation.
Footnotes. A superscript number goes after the relevant punctuation in your text, and the full citation appears at the foot of the page. There are no author-date brackets anywhere in OSCOLA.
For essays, usually not, because the footnotes carry the detail. For dissertations and theses, yes, and it is divided into separate sections for cases, legislation and secondary sources.
Case name in italics, then the year, then the law report citation. Square brackets around the year where it is essential to finding the report, round brackets where the volume number alone would locate it. Add the court in brackets if it is not obvious from the report series.
It is deliberate. OSCOLA omits full stops in abbreviations and avoids commas where the meaning is clear without them, which keeps dense legal citations readable. Adding punctuation back is one of the most common errors.
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