How to cite a legal case in OSCOLA
A court decision or legal judgment. Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities. Required in UK law.
Quick answer
To cite a legal case in OSCOLA, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
Author, A., 'Brown v. Board of Education' (1954) 347 U.S. 483
This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for OSCOLA. For the exact style required by your journal, paste your references into DEEPNOTIS and pick that style from the dropdown — the app covers 2,800+ variants.
What you need
For a legal case, OSCOLA expects these fields at minimum:
- Case name
- Year
- Reporter volume and page
- Court
- Jurisdiction
Common mistakes
- Mixing bibliography formatting with in-text citation rules. Reference-list entries and in-text cites follow different patterns — use the style's official guide for both.
- Forgetting the DOI. When a DOI exists, most styles now require it (usually as a full https://doi.org/… URL).
- Inconsistent capitalization. APA uses sentence case for titles; MLA and Chicago use title case. Mixing them is the single most common style error.
Cite every reference in OSCOLA — at once
Upload your .docx and DEEPNOTIS re-formats every citation in OSCOLA, automatically. Free up to 5 documents.
Last updated: 5 May 2026