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Legal Citation

Books

Don't Forget!!

Read this guide in conjunction with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation.

Law Quick Guides

Citing Books

You need to look at the details in the book itself to construct the citation.

The requirements are twofold with legal citation:

  1. first you must construct the footnote (AGLC rule 6.1); and
  2. then the entry in the bibliography (AGLC rule 1.13).

 

Footnote:

 

 Author + Title + (Publisher, edition, year) + Pinpoint.

 

 

 


Activity indicator1. Which of these citations complies with AGLC rules when citing a book in a footnote?

a. Lisa Young, Feminists and Party Politics (UBC, 2000).
b. Young, Lisa, Feminists and Party Politics (UBC, 2000)
c. Lisa Young, Feminists and Party Politics (UBC, 2000).

Response:

 

 

Activity indicator2. Which of these citations complies with AGLC rules when citing a book in a footnote?

a. Crock, M. & Sual, B. Future Seekers: Refugees and the Law in Australia (Annandale: Federation Press, 2002).
b. Mary Crock and Ben Saul, Future Seekers: Refugees and the Law in Australia (2002).
c. Mary Crock and Ben Saul, Future Seekers: Refugees and the Law in Australia (Annadale: Federation Press, 2002).
d. Mary Crock and Ben Saul, Future Seekers: Refugees and the Law in Australia (Federation Press, 2002).

Response:

 

Subsequent Reference

 

The full citation to a book or journal article is given only once in the footnotes.

The manner in which a subsequent reference is made depends on whether it is referring to a source in the immediately preceding footnote, or in a previous footnote other than that immediately preceding.

 

Where the subsequent reference is referring to the source in the previous footnote, i.e. footnote 5 is a subsequent reference to footnote 4, 'ibid' is used (see AGLC rule 1.4.3). Ibid is not to be used where there are multiple sources in the preceding footnote.

Where the subsequent reference is referring to a source other than in the previous footnote, 'above n' is used, where 'n' refers to the number of the footnote being subsequently cited (see AGLC rule 1.4.2).

 

These notes are not exhaustive, see AGLC rule 6 for other requirements for citing a book in your work.

 

 

Bibliography:

            Author + Title + (Publisher, edition, year)

 

 

Note: In a bibliography entry where there is more than one author, only the first author's name is inverted. There is no full stop at the end of the citation in a bibliography (see AGLC rule 1.13).

 


 

Activity indicator1. Which of these citations complies with AGLC rules when listing books in a bibliography?

a. Geoff Monahan and Lisa Young, Family Law in Australia (LexisNexis Butterworths, 7th ed, 2009).
b. Monahan, Geoff and Young, Lisa, Family Law in Australia (LexisNexis Butterworths, 7th ed, 2009)
c. Monahan, Geoff and Lisa Young, Family Law in Australia (LexisNexis Butterworths, 7th ed, 2009)

Response: