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The most consequential notation in the catalogue, in the plain sense that misreading it changes what the law is taken to say. A square bracket rather than a round one around a year tells you whether the volume can be found without it; a subsequent-history signal tells you whether a case is still good law, and an overruled judgment reads exactly like a sound one without it. Every record names its jurisdiction, because the conventions genuinely differ — English practice, American practice and academic style guides each prescribe differently, and a citation stripped of which one it follows is frequently unresolvable. Nothing here interprets a case or tells anyone what to do about a legal problem: these are records about how a reference is written.
Party names, year, court, report — in an order that differs by country.
[2023] UKSC 15 — a court's own reference, tied to no publisher.
Square means the year is needed to find it; round means it is not.
The number after the citation, pointing at one paragraph.
See, cf, contra — a small vocabulary saying how the source relates.
Affirmed, reversed, overruled — whether the case is still good law.
Latin shorthand for 'the thing I just cited'.
s 3(2)(a) — section, subsection, paragraph, in a fixed hierarchy.
§ for a section, ¶ for a paragraph, doubled for a range.
Anything inside them was changed by the person quoting.
The symbol, a year and a name — and why it is no longer required.
An embossed or printed device making a document an official copy.
A notary's own device, certifying a signature rather than a document.
A solid black bar over text that has been withheld.
A heading on correspondence, keeping it out of evidence.