Legal Neutral Citation
From 14 January 2002, neutral quotations were extended to all judgments of High Court judges in London (neutral quotations «may» be submitted for High Court judgments by judges outside London): see Practice Direction (Judgments: Neutral Quotations) [2002] 1 WLR 346. Since its introduction, the system of neutral citations has been extended to jurisdictions other than the Court of Appeal and the Administrative Tribunal. Here is a list of courts that issue neutral citations and their format: Neutral citations make it easier to search for judgment online from sources such as the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) website. «. Due to the much wider availability of unreported cases from electronic sources and the electronic promulgation of legal reports, the Lord Chief Justice issued Practice Direction (Judgments: Form and Summons) [2001] 1 W.L.R. 194 on January 11, 2001. This introduced three points: the provision of a number assigned by the court for each judgment; paragraph of judgments; and approval of the judicial citation of cases reported from an electronic version of the reports. The first two innovations together offer a «neutral citation» that uniquely identifies a case and a passage of it, whether reported or not. This includes the year, an abbreviation for the court, the case number, and then any reference to a particular paragraph in square brackets. So: In 1999, Canadian courts began assigning neutral citations to their judgments (start date varies by court). The neutral citation is only a case identifier and does not indicate where a case can be found. It consists of three parts: Search for quotes on ICLR Online. Information on ICLR legal citations, including a section on neutral citations.
www.iclr.co.uk/searching-citation-iclr-online/ cases can then be reported in a printed series of legal reports. If so, the OSCOLA reference style used by the law school dictates that the neutral citation precedes each citation for a printed series of legal reports. Separate the quotation marks with a comma. For example, let`s say you`re looking at a 2019 Supreme Court of Canada decision. The citation options in your database are as follows: The court assigns the neutral quote when the decision is made, so a very recent case will only have a neutral quote until it is included in a print journalist. If only the neutral quote is available, it can be used alone: If you are quoting a print legal journalist, the traditional form of legal citation requires the following: Most neutral quotes are given by the court, but in some cases they have been provided informally by the BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute), or to provide an independent reference by the publisher to a judgment (regardless of whether it is reported elsewhere or not), before the implementation of neutral citations or because the court cannot or does not do so (in this case, the letter B appears before the file number). 2.3 The neutral quotation is the official number assigned to the judgment by the court and must always be used at least once if the judgment is cited in a subsequent judgment. As soon as the verdict has been announced, the neutral quote appears before the well-known citation from the series of legislative reports.
Also: Smith v Jones [2001] EWCA Civ 10 at [30], [2001] QB 124, [2001] 2 All ER 364, etc. The paragraph number must be the number assigned by the court in all subsequent versions of the judgment. A neutral quotation is the clear reference to a specific judgment of the HM Courts and Tribunals Service. Unlike most quotations, neutral quotations do not refer to a specific report of a case, but to the judgment itself. A neutral citation alone cannot therefore be used to find a legal report without additional research; However, it is especially useful if you are citing or tracing an unreported case. The neutral citation is simplified and includes only the following: The SCR (Supreme Court Reports of Canada) uses square brackets. Place the comma before the date of the tape. Do not put the court abbreviation (CSC) at the end of the quote, as the name of the court is included in the journalist`s name.
A neutral citation is a unique reference number assigned by the court for a judgment in a common law jurisdiction. The elements of a typical case citation, including a neutral quote, are as follows: […] Neutral citation of judgments 2.1 As from 11 January 2001, a form of neutral citation will be introduced in both chambers of the Court of Appeal and the Administrative Court. A unique number is assigned by the official reporters to each approved judgment rendered by these courts. Judgments are numbered as follows: «Indexed as»: In recent cases, the title «Indexed as» appears at the beginning of a case. If you ever have doubts about the style of cause of a case, this is useful information. Check the first page of the judgment and if the case has an «indexed as» reference, use it for citation purposes. If we look at Appendix B-3, we can see that the neutral citation for the Supreme Court of Canada is SCC. Therefore, we select the citation from this list that has this abbreviation: 2019 SCC 65. This is our neutral quote, and we can now proceed to cite this case according to model #1. As of 1 January 2016, neutral citations were introduced for judgments and decisions of ecclesiastical courts (i.e. consistorial courts, the Court of Arches of Canterbury and the Court of Chancery of York): see Practice Direction (Faculty Jurisdiction) [2016] PTSR 99. This last appeal in the Latimer case has a parallel neutral quote.
The journalist`s printed quote follows the neutral quote. Note that the comma in the quote to the printed journalist comes immediately after the neutral quote and not after the journalist`s year. Do not include phrases such as and others that may appear in the titles of legal reports.