Case citation is a systematic format used to identify a particular case. There are two types of commonly used case citations: neutral citation and law report citation.
Although sequence of information may vary, depending on the use of citation style, the display of information within a case citation generally includes the following components:
For more details on citation style, you may refer to our Legal Research & Writings guide.
Case citator contains alternate citations, a case summary, citation history, cases cited by a case and subsequence cases of a case, together with its treatment, through which you could trace whether a case is still in good law. You may find some examples below (arranged in alphabetical order):
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Neutral citations are assigned to all Hong Kong judgements. Since it is independent from law report citation system, it is considered to be “neutral”. Over time Legal authorities of different jurisdictions have introduced the implementation of neutral citation. For instance, in the UK the enactment of neutral citations was made in 2001, while in Hong Kong it was made in 2018.
Below is an example from the 622nd judgment made under the Hong Kong Court of First Instance in 2022:
Want to know more about the neutral citations of different jurisdictions? Check out the links below for some selected jurisdictions (arranged in alphabetical order):
Instead of addressing which court the judgment was made from, law report citations indicate the law report in which the case was reported and where to find it (i.e. volume number and number of first page). Judgments published in law reports are the preferred version for court submission by legal practitioners and those reported in authorised law report are of higher priority. These authorised law reporting agencies are generally recognised or selected by the judicial unit of that jurisdiction for publishing.
Below is an example of a case reported in the 2nd issue of the Authorised Hong Kong Law Reports and Digest in 2021:
Abbreviated forms of the court and law report is used to offer a quick means of reference, and prevent the citation from being too lengthy. To look for abbreviated forms, you may make use of the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations, which is available online and convenient to use. Also, the Index to Legal Citations and Abbreviations (R K112 R15) available from the Law Library’s Reference Collection (2/F) is an alternative tool if you wish to utilise a print format.
More references on legal abbreviations in Hong Kong:
Consolidated Index to All Reported Hong Kong Decisions (1996 - present; PR KT4358.2 C75)
