Incorporated Council of Law Reporting

Supreme Court

Practice Direction (Judgments: Form and Citation)

Practice – Supreme Court – Judgments – Standard form of judgments in High Court and Court of Appeal – Neutral citation to be adopted in Court of Appeal and Administrative Court – Law Reports to be cited in preference to all other series – Citation of reproductions of reports in electronic form

This practice direction is made with the concurrence of the Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR, Sir Andrew Morritt V-C and Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss P. It represents the next stage in the process of modernising the arrangements for the preparation, distribution and citation of judgments given in every division of the High Court, whether in London or in courts outside London.

Form of judgments

1.1 With effect from 11 January 2001, all judgments in every division of the High Court and the Court of Appeal will be prepared for delivery, or issued as approved judgments, with single spacing, paragraph numbering (in the margins) but no page numbers. In courts with more than one judge, the paragraph numbering will continue sequentially through each judgment, and will not start again at the beginning of the second judgment. Indented paragraphs will not be given a number.

1.2 The main reason of these changes is to facilitate the publication of judgments on the World Wide Web and their subsequent use by the increasing numbers of those who have access to the Web. The changes should also assist those who use and wish to search judgments stored on electronic databases.

1.3 It is desirable in the interests of consistency that all judgments prepared for delivery, (or issued as approved judgments) in county courts, should also contain paragraph numbering (in the margins).

Neutral citation of judgments

2.1 With effect from 11 January 2001 a form of neutral citation will be introduced in both divisions of the Court of Appeal and in the Administrative Court. A unique number will be given by the official shorthand writers to each approved judgment issued out of these courts. The judgments will be numbered in the following way:

Court of Appeal (Civil Division)	[2000] EWCA Civ 1, 2, 3 etc
Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)	[2000] EWCA Crim 1, 2, 3 etc
High Court (Administrative Court)	[2000] EWHC Admin 1, 2, 3 etc

2.2 Under these new arrangements, paragraph 59 in Smith v Jones, the tenth numbered judgment of the year in the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal, would be cited: Smith v Jones [2001] EWCA Civ 10 at [59].

2.3 The neutral citation will be the official number attributed to the judgment by the court and must always be used on at least one occasion when the judgment is cited in a later judgment. Once the judgment is reported, the neutral citation will appear in front of the familiar citation from the law report series. Thus: 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 allotted by the court in all future versions of the judgment.

2.4 If a judgment is cited on more than one occasion in a later judgment, it will be of the greatest assistance if only one abbreviation (if desired) is used. Thus Smith v Jones[2001] EWCA Civ 10 could be abbreviated on subsequent occasions to Smith v Jones, or Smith's case, but preferably not both (in the same judgment).

2.5 If it is desired to cite more than one paragraph of a judgment each numbered paragraph should be enclosed with a square bracket. Thus: Smith v Jones [2001] EWCA Civ 10 at [30]-[35], or Smith v Jones [2001] EWCA Civ 10 at [30], [35], and [40]-[43].

2.6 The neutral citation arrangements will be extended to include other parts of the High Court as soon as the necessary administrative arrangements can be made.

2.7 The Administrative Court citation will be given to all judgments in the Administrative Court, whether they are delivered by a Divisional Court or by a single judge.

Citation of judgments in court

3.1 For the avoidance of doubt, it should be emphasised that both the High Court and the Court of Appeal require that where a case has been reported in the official Law Reports published by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales it must be cited from that source. Other series of reports may only be used when a case is not reported in the Law Reports.

3.2 It will in future be permissible to cite a judgment reported in a series of reports, including those of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting, by means of a copy of a reproduction of the judgment in electronic form that has been authorised by the publisher of the relevant series, provided that (1) the report is presented to the court in an easily legible form (a 12-point font is preferred but a 10 or 11-point font is acceptable) and (2) the advocate presenting the report is satisfied that it has not been reproduced in a garbled form from the data source. In any case of doubt the court will rely on the printed text of the report (unless the editor of the report has certified that an electronic version is more accurate because it corrects an error contained in an earlier printed text of the report).

Concluding comments

4.1 The changes described in this practice direction follow what is becoming accepted international practice. They are intended to make it easier to distribute, store and search judgments, and less expensive and time-consuming to reproduce them for use in court. Brooke LJ is still responsible for advising the Judges' Council on these matters, and any comments on these new arrangements, or suggestions about ways in which they could be improved still further, should be addressed to him at the Royal Courts of Justice, WC2A 2LL.