OSCOLA referencing for UAE law students — the working guide

OSCOLA (Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities) is the dominant citation style at UK-curriculum UAE law programs — Heriot-Watt Dubai’s LLB and law-adjacent modules, Middlesex Dubai’s LLB, AUD’s LLB, Murdoch Dubai’s law program. It’s a footnote-based style with specific conventions for cases, statutes, secondary literature, and online sources. Where Harvard and APA collapse into in-text citation, OSCOLA spreads across footnote and bibliography.

This is the working guide we use at the studio for OSCOLA-referenced legal writing.

Footnotes, not in-text citations

OSCOLA uses footnotes for citations, not in-text references. Each citation gets a superscript number in the body text and a corresponding footnote at the bottom of the page. The footnotes are numbered sequentially through the document.

In Microsoft Word, References → Insert Footnote generates the formatting. Don’t manually create superscript numbers — the auto-numbering reorders correctly when you edit.

For repeated citations to the same source, OSCOLA uses ibid (for the immediately preceding citation) or short-form citation (for sources cited earlier with a different intervening citation). Ibid on its own means “the same source as the immediately previous footnote.” Patel (n 5) means “the source first cited in footnote 5.”

Case citation — UK cases

The standard UK case citation looks like:

R v Smith [2019] UKSC 12, [2019] 2 WLR 1234.

Components:

• Case name in italics, with v (not vs) lowercase, no italics on v itself in some sub-variants.
• Neutral citation in square brackets — [2019] UKSC 12.
• Law report citation following — [2019] 2 WLR 1234.

For older cases before neutral citation was adopted (pre-2001 in UK), just the law report citation: Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562.

Case citation — UAE cases

UAE court decisions don’t follow neutral citation. The OSCOLA approach for foreign jurisdictions allows adaptation. UAE court decisions are commonly cited as:

Federal Court of Cassation Decision No 234/2023 of 14 March 2023 (UAE).

For Dubai Court of Cassation:

Dubai Court of Cassation Petition No 567/2022 (Civil) of 22 November 2022.

Many UAE law programs accept similar formats. Check your handbook for the specific convention your module teaches.

Statute citation

UK statutes:

Companies Act 2006, s 172.

For UAE federal legislation:

Federal Decree-Law No 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Employment Relations, art 5.

For Civil Code articles:

UAE Civil Code (Federal Law No 5 of 1985), art 125.

The OSCOLA generic convention for foreign legislation allows this format. Be consistent throughout the document.

Secondary literature

A book:

James Penner, The Law of Trusts (12th edn, Oxford University Press 2022) 47.

Components:

• Author’s first name then surname, comma.
• Book title in italics.
• Edition and publisher in parentheses, with year.
• Page reference at end without p. prefix.

A journal article:

Patel R, ‘Constitutional Standing in UAE Federal Litigation’ (2023) 45 ICLQ 247, 251.

Components:

• Author surname-initial format.
• Article title in single quotation marks, sentence case.
• Year in round parentheses.
• Volume and abbreviated journal name.
• Starting page; specific page cited after comma.

Online sources

UAE Government, ‘Federal Decree-Law on Corporate Tax’ (Ministry of Finance, 9 December 2022) https://mof.gov.ae accessed 22 October 2024.

The angle brackets around the URL and accessed convention are specific to OSCOLA and not optional.

Bibliography format

The bibliography at the end of an OSCOLA document is divided into sections:

1. Cases — alphabetical by case name.
2. Legislation — chronological or by jurisdiction, depending on the conventions of your program.
3. Books — alphabetical by author surname.
4. Journal articles — alphabetical by author surname.
5. Online sources — alphabetical by author or organisation.

The format within the bibliography slightly differs from the footnote format — author surname comes first in bibliographic entries, the surname-initial reverses, and there’s no page reference (which only goes in the footnote).

Where students lose marks on OSCOLA

Five common errors in UAE law student work:

1. Using full stops in abbreviations. OSCOLA generally omits internal full stops — WLR not W.L.R., UKSC not U.K.S.C.. Adding them is a marker irritant.

2. Inconsistent foreign-source format. Some UAE cases formatted one way, others another. Pick a format for UAE cases and use it throughout.

3. Missing pinpoint references. OSCOLA requires specific page or paragraph numbers when citing to a source. Smith [2019] UKSC 12 without a pinpoint is incomplete for most citations.

4. Word order errors in case names. Smith v R is wrong if the defendant is Smith and the Crown brings the case. R v Smith is correct.

5. Italicisation errors. Case names italicised; statutes not italicised; book titles italicised; article titles in single quotation marks.

Reference manager support

OSCOLA support is patchier than Harvard or APA. Zotero has an OSCOLA style file; the maintenance lags slightly behind Harvard updates. Manual review of OSCOLA citations is usually still required even when using Zotero — particularly for case citations.

EndNote has OSCOLA support that some UK law schools provide directly.

When The Essay Atelier writes OSCOLA-formatted briefs

Our law writers handle OSCOLA citation throughout — cases, statutes, secondary literature, and the bibliography format. UAE-jurisdiction sources are formatted using the program-specific conventions where they differ from the OSCOLA defaults.

If you’re drafting OSCOLA-referenced work and want a second opinion on the citation hygiene before submitting, send the editors the document. Most law marks are made on substance; some are reliably lost on citation. Get the citation right.