The APA manual only provides examples for American legal documents. The guidance on these pages has been put together in consultation with the Law Librarian, but if you search for advice on other websites you might find slightly different formats.
You must choose one consistent way to reference legal documents throughout your assignment, sticking as close to APA format as you can.
For Law courses, you may be required to use another referencing system (e.g. OSCOLA). Please ask your lecturer for further guidance.
It is best practice to use a narrative citation for acts of parliament: you should include the title and year of the act within the structure of your sentence, and usually the section number. Avoid putting acts of parliament in brackets whenever possible
In your list of references, just give the title and year of the act of parliament. You do not need any further information.
Copy the style of brackets from the source.
When referring to a case for the first time, include:
In Douglas v Hello! Magazine [2001] 2 WLR 992, the Court of Appeal stressed that equal weighting be given to both rights and that any case should be determined by adopting the principles of proportionality.
If you refer to the same case again, just include:
Copy the style of brackets from the source.
Douglas v Hello! Magazine [2001] 2 WLR 992
You must include an in-text citation. See the in-text citation section for more information about how to do this.
If you have questions not answered in this guide: