NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Author self-archiving/public access policy

For information about this journal's policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.

Submissions

Articles (which should not normally be in excess of 10,000 words) should be submitted as an e-mail attachment in MS Word to the General Editor, Dr A.C.L. Davies, email, or by mail to Brasenose College, Oxford OX1 4AJ, UK. When contacting the General Editor by email, please put OJLS in the subject line of the message.

Books for review, reviews and review articles should be sent either to Professor G. de Búrca, Fordham University School of Law, 140 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023, USA email or to Dr J. Dickson, Somerville College, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HD email

Presentation

Articles should be accompanied by an abstract of not more than 150–200 words.

Copy should be double-spaced and on one side of the page only. The first paragraph after a heading or a new sub-division should be flush to the margin. Subsequent paragraphs should be indented.

Footnotes should be marked clearly in the text in numeric order after a point of punctuation (...possible to resist..¹), and listed at the bottom of the relevant page.

General Style

The OJLS uses the Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA). Please refer to OSCOLA for detailed information on citation style click here

Please note one important variation from OSCOLA: when citing an article for the first time, we require the page range (e.g. (2009) 29 OJLS 100-120) not just the starting page.

Case References

For example:

Pepper v Hart [1993] AC 593 (HL)

Or, if specific pages are referred to:

Ridge v Baldwin [1964] AC 40, 78-9.

American case citations may follow the American practice:

Brown v Board of Education, 347 US 483, 98 L Ed 873 (1954).

Note the punctuation, and that there are no full points between letters: thus the references are:

All ER WLR QB and so on.

European case references should follow the practice of the relevant jurisdiction.

Articles

These should take the following form, using standard abbreviations for commonly known journals:

D Beatty, 'The Canadian Charter of Rights: Lessons and Laments' (1997) 60 MLR 481-498.

Note: Citation of articles differs slightly from OSCOLA, in that the article page range is included.

American references may follow American practice:

F Schauer, 'Precedent', 39 Stanford L Rev 571-605, 576-7 (1987).

The OJLS should be referred to as OJLS.

Books

References should adopt the following form:

JH Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (4th edn Butterworths,
London 2002) 419–21

ACL Davies, Perspectives on Labour Law (Law in Context Series, CUP, Cambridge 2004)

An initial or initials may be supplied for an author instead of a first name.

Contributions to books

These should be cited to thus:

I Brownlie, ‘The Relation of Law and Power’ in Bin Cheng and ED Brown (eds), Contemporary Problems in International Law: Essays in Honour of Georg Schwarzenberger on his Eightieth Birthday (Stevens and Sons, London 1988)

Statutes

Modern statutes are to be cited in simple form:

Children Act 1948 s 17(2).

Older statutes, without a short title, will require the appropriate regnal year and chapter numbers.

Official Publications

These should be cited as follows:

Report of the Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Personal Injury (Chair: Lord Pearson) (Cmnd 7054, 1978) vol 1 [562].

It is sometimes useful to add: hereafter referred to as the Pearson Report in which case no further cross-reference is required.

Law Commission, ‘Evidence of Bad Character in Criminal Proceedings’ (Law Com No 273 Cm 5257, 2001) [2.89]

Hansard HC vol 357 cols 234-45 (7 February 1940 WA)
Hansard HL vol 673 col WA261 (21 July 2005)
Hansard HC vol 449 col 1199W (25 July 2006)

Cross-references and cross-citations

These should normally take the following form both for books, articles and contributions to books:

See Dewar (n 32) 23.
If Dewar is referred to in the text after the first citation, the cross-reference will be:
Above (n 32) 23.

It is normally unnecessary to use op cit or loc cit. If the cross-reference is to the immediately preceding note, the reference will be:

Ibid 23.

Sub-divisions

The main headings should be centred and numbered 1, 2 and so on; first letters of main words should be in upper case.

The next level headings should be aligned on the left and be lettered A, B, C and so on; first letters of main words should be in upper case.

The next level should be aligned on the left and be numbered (i), (ii), (iii) and so on. Only the first letter of the heading should be in upper case.

Spelling

A characteristic feature of OUP house-style is the use of -ize where this is an alternative to -ise. Note the spelling of analyse.

Quotations

Quotations within the text are enclosed within single quotation marks, and quotations within quotations are given double quotation marks. If quotations are three lines or more, they should be separated from the rest of the text, and should not be enclosed within any quotation marks. However, quotat

Language Editing

Particularly if English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript you may wish to have it edited for language. This is not a mandatory step, but may help to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. If you would like information about one such service please click here. There are other specialist language editing companies that offer similar services and you can also use any of these. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.

GUIDE FOR AUTHORS PREPARING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS

DO

Enter text in the style and order of the journal.

Insert figure captions and tables at the end of the file.

Save any tables, diagrams, figures, graphs or illustrations electronically generated as separate files and not embedded into the text file.

Type references in the correct order and style of the journal.

Type unjustified, without hyphenation, except for compound words.

Type headings in the style of the journal.

Use the TAB key once for paragraph indents.

Where possible use Times for the text font and Symbol for the Greek and special characters.

Use the word processing formatting features to indicate Italic, Greek, Maths, ^Superscript and _Subscript characters.

Indicate clearly any special characters that you have drawn by hand.

Check the final copy of your paper carefully, as any spelling mistakes and errors will be faithfully translated into the typeset version.

Supply three hard copy printouts of the paper.

DO NOT

Enter carriage returns to obtain spacing between lines, paragraphs, references etc. The space required is generated automatically by the typesetters.

Use double spaces after each sentence within a paragraph.

Use the automatic page numbering, running titles and footnote features of your word processing programme. Number the hard copies by hand at the bottom of the page.

COPYRIGHT AND OFFPRINTS

Copyright
Please note that before we can publish your manuscript, we must receive a completed licence to publish form from you. Please download the form here.

Offprints
The Author can claim 25 offprints free of charge if a completed offprint order form is sent to the Production Editor. An order form and scale of charges for additional offprints will be sent to authors along with proofs.