Simplified Guide to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation for BUSN1019
Simplified Guide to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation for BUSN1019
The Australian Guide to legal Citation version 4 (AGLC v4) is a footnoting and referencing system. For this assignment, you need to focus on correctly footnoting legislation and case law in accordance with this simplified guide. The full AGLC v4 document is over 300 pages long and it is not necessary for you to consider the whole document.
Footnoting Legislation:
Legislation should be cited using the following format:
[Title] then [Year] then [Jurisdiction] then [Pinpoint]
Here are some examples of how the legislation will appear in a footnote:
Corporations Act 2001 (Cth)
Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA)
If you are referring to a specific section or subsection, you must include a pinpoint reference. This is done as follows:
Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) s 12.
Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA) s 54(3).
Footnoting Case law:
Generally, case law should be cited using the following format:
[Case Name] then [Year] then [Volume] then [Law Report Series] then [Starting Page] then [Pinpoint]
Here are some examples of how case law will appear in a footnote:
Alati v Kruger (1955) 94 CLR 216.
K-Generation Pty Ltd v Liquor Licensing Court (2007) 99 SASR 58.
However, if you do not actually locate and read the case, but instead rely on information about a case from a textbook, you need to be clear that you are referring to a case as cited in a textbook. For example if you are referencing the case summary on page 495 of the textbook, you would cite it as follows:
Polkinghorne v Holland [1934] HCA 28 as cited in Andy Gibson and Sarah Osborne Business Law (Pearson, 11th ed, 2020), 495
Using Ibid
"Ibid" should be used to refer to a source in the immediately preceding footnote. (AGLC rule 1.4.1). For example, if you cite section 7 of the Partnership Act 1891 (SA) and then for the next footnote you cite section 8 of the same Act, your footnotes should look like this:
Partnership Act 1891 (SA) s 7.
Ibid s 8.
Quotations
Short quotations (three lines or less) should be in the body of the text and be incorporated with single quotation marks. For example:
Example of incorporating a short quotation
The court has previously construed such provisions by reference to general principles rather than by a textual analysis of individual enactments (See there is a footnote at the bottom of the page)
Long quotations (of more than four lines) should appear indented from the left margin, in a smaller font size, and without quotation marks. Legislation regardless of length may also appear this way. For example:
Example of incorporating a long quotation.
The purposive approach to statutory interpretation is set out in s 22 of the Acts Interpretation Act 1915 (SA) which states that:
22Construction that would promote purpose or object of an Act to be preferred
(1) Subject to subsection (2), where a provision of an Act is reasonably open to more than one construction, a construction that would promote the purpose or object of the Act (whether or not that purpose or object is expressly stated in the Act) must be preferred to a construction that would not promote that purpose or object.
(2) This section does not operate to create or extend any criminal liability.
Note: Do not quote large sections of the legislation. As a guide, only quote the most pertinent aspects. You should keep long quotations (three lines or more) to a minimum.
