| JUDGMENTS — Arrangements for preparation, distribution and citation
— Form of judgment — Neutral citation — Citation in court of electronic
version of reported judgment
Practice Direction (Judgments:
Form and neutral citation)
CA: Lord Woolf CJ: 11 January 2001
Lord Woolf CJ, at the sitting of the court, handed down the
following practice direction.
This practice direction is made with the
concurrence of the Master of the Rolls, the Vice-Chancellor and the President
of the Family Division. 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. |
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