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[2023] UKSC 15 — a court's own reference, tied to no publisher.
Also known as: Court reference number, Year in square brackets before letters
Assigned by the court when judgment is given, not by a law reporter. That is the whole point: it identifies a judgment independently of who publishes it, which is what makes an online judgment citable at all.
A citation assigned by the court itself: the year in square brackets, an abbreviation for the court, and a sequential number — as in [2023] UKSC 15.
A record about how a reference is written, not about what the law says. Nothing here is legal advice.
England and Wales
Publisher-independent, which is the reason it exists. Before neutral citation a judgment could only be cited through a commercial law report, so an unreported judgment was effectively uncitable however important it was.
England and Wales · introduced 2001
Paragraphs rather than pages are numbered in the judgment, so a neutral citation can pinpoint a passage without reference to any printed edition. That is what makes the whole scheme work online.
A four-digit year enclosed in square brackets, followed by a group of capital letters and a number.
Whether the year sits in square or round brackets is itself a distinction with a meaning.
The neutral citation is one form a case reference takes.