New book on legal citation
Daily Star Books has published a new book titled Bangladesh Style of Citation of Legal Authorities, co-edited by Md. Rizwan Islam, Nauriin Ahmed and K. Shamsuddin Mahmood. Bangladesh Style of Citation of Legal Authorities (BSCLA) is a legal citation which includes citation of cases, reports, statutory documents, statutes, regulations, government documents, treaties and scholarly writings, articles, books and journal articles, electronic sources, etc. The book is basically a citation guide for legal researchers with regard to the style of referring to various scholastic authorities in legal write-ups. According to the editors, the book aims “to present a citation guide which may be used by law students, legal academics, lawyers, and judges of Bangladesh for citing legal materials in such a way that the task of locating substantive authorities becomes seamless.”
The book is divided into seven chapters, having two appendixes and a complete bibliography. Chapter 1 in details talks about general rules of legal citation. To make the rules easily understandable, relevant examples have been used. Among others, this chapter deals with using footnotes, in-text referencing, explanatory phrase, referencing to Bengali sources, punctuation marks, quotations, italicisation, capitalisation, multi-authored work, title and sub-title of a work, pinpoint reference, spelling, abbreviation, sources referring to other sources, bibliographies, etc. Chapter 2 prescribes rules for using domestic primary sources such as constitution, statutes, case laws and other government documents. Chapter 3 details about using foreign primary sources, as for instances, from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom and United States of America. Similarly, chapter 4 talks about rules for using international legal materials. Chapter 5 provides rules for using decision of international judicial bodies such as ICJ, PCIJ, WTO, ICSID, ICC, ITLOS and others, while chapter 6 for using materials and decisions of regional bodies such as EU, IACtHR. Concluding chapter 7 details about rules for using secondary sources such as books, books chapters, journal articles, essays, book reviews, law commission reports, theses, conference/workshop/seminar papers, magazine articles, working papers, internet materials, interviews, written communication (e-mail), press release, speeches, radio and television broadcasts, films and audio-visual recordings, etc.
Appendix 1 of the book provides for law reports series abbreviations, while appendix 2 outlines some unique court identifiers abbreviations.
BSCLA is exceptional in two senses. Firstly, it is one of its kind publications in Bangladesh, for the first time, concerning legal citation aiming to compete with some foreign citation styles such as Harvard's Blue Book and Oxford's OSCOLA which are widely practiced in the country. Secondly, the language used in this book is very lucid and the examples are squarely quite user-friendly.
In the foreword for the book, the Chief Justice of Bangladesh Mr. Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain writes that, “By providing a concrete citation style, it will streamline the referencing style practiced in Bangladesh and introduce consistency and uniformity in the process. Although many citation style guides are available in the market, yet this is unique in nature.” Dhaka University Law Faculty Dean Professor Dr. Md. Rahmat Ullah in his foreword echoes Justice Hossain by saying that, “Even though there is no dearth of citation style guides available in the international market, having a local citation style will bring about uniformity in the local referencing style.”
Comments