Business Law 100: Referencing

Curtin Business
School
Communication
Skills Centre

Business Law 100: Referencing

Writing at university requires you
to source and acknowledge
others ideas.
To do this you must reference to
allow the reader to distinguish
your ideas from those of others.
In Business Law 100, the
referencing style used is Chicago
(v16).
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What do I reference?
You must reference when you:
paraphrase (using others ideas but putting
them in your own words);
summarise (giving a short account of someone
elses ideas);
quote (using someones exact words); and
copy (figures, charts, graphs, tables).
(Adapted from Bretag, Tracey, Joanna Crossman, and Sarbari Bordia. 2009. Communication skills. Australia: McGraw-Hill)

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Chicago referencing
Comprises two parts:

1. In-text citations

2. The reference list

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Examples of Chicago in-text

referencing
Boddy (2012) points out that.
According to MacDonald (2012).
Silvestro was ordered to pay costs
of $119.20 (Taylor 2012, 1).

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Authors surname
and date

Authors surname
and date

Authors
surname, date,
page number
and quotation
marks (this is a
quote).

Examples of Chicago end-text

referencing
Boddy, Natasha. 2011. Bullies in Public Sector
Cost 2.7m. The West Australian,
December 2.
Carey, Adam. 2012 Ticket Inspector Fails in
Job Appeal. The Age, February 16.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/ticket
-inspector-fails-in-job-appeal20120215-1t6ct.html
Do, Christina. 2013. Lecture 2: Sources of law:
Legislation and Case law. PowerPoint
lecture notes. http://lms.curtin.edu.au
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Newspaper
article

Online
Newspaper
article

Lecture
notes

Examples of Chicago end-text

referencing
Lambiris, Michael and Laura Griffin. 2013.
First Principles of Business Law:
Interactive Tutorials and Sourcebook.
Sydney: CCH Australia.
MacDonald, Kim. 2012. Watchdog Chases
Restaurateur. The West Australian,
February 8.
Taylor, Belle. 2012. Baby Heartbreak. The
West Australian, February 7.

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Textbook

Newspaper
article

Newspaper
article

Citing case authorities

After a case is decided, a written law report is published, setting out what the
case was about and what the judge decided. The reports of individual cases
are published in collections called law reports series. Each of these
collections has its own name, eg the Commonwealth Law Reports (CLR).
Each case has its own citation, consisting of a name; a year; the abbreviation
of the law report series in which the law report is published; and a page
number, eg:
Note case name in italics, but NOT
citation

Taylor v Johnson (1983) 151 CLR 422.

The first time you cite a case in an assignment, the case must be cited in full,
as above. Thereafter you are permitted to abbreviate it to the parties names
(Taylor v Johnson)

Citing law and citing from reported

cases
When you state a rule of law you MUST cite authority for
that rule. So an example would be:
In domestic or social arrangements the court will presume that
parties do not intend to be bound, as in Balfour v Balfour [1919] 2
KB 571.

When you are reading a law report (an actual reported

decision) this is the law. In law this is a primary source.
Where you summarise the law that comes from reported
cases, using your own words, it is not normally
necessary to provide a reference using Chicago, other
than the case citation in-text shown above.
A more specific in-text reference will be necessary if you
quote from the judgment. For example:
. Balfour v Balfour [1919] 2 KB 571 at 574
(this is the page number where the quote can be
found)

Citing Law and citing from case

summaries

Law reports are often very long and detailed. For the purposes of study,
it is often helpful to read summaries of reported cases, rather than the full
reported decision. The textbook and topic files on blackboard provide
summaries of many reported cases.

For your second assignment and your final exam preparation, you will
rely on the summaries in the textbook. In law, this is a secondary
source.

So, if you quote directly or paraphrase from the textbook you should
reference this as a secondary source using the Chicago method.
Example of in-text citation of case from Understanding Business
Law:
(Jackson v Horizon Holidays [1975] 1 WLR 1468, cited in Understanding
Business Law - Curtin Custom 2014, 92)
End text reference (Reference list):

Understanding Business Law (Custom publication for Curtin

University: Business Law 100), 2014, Chatswood: LexisNexis
Butterworths.

Citing legislation
Law made by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law or
an Act of Parliament.
Each Act has a name. An example is the Damage By Aircraft Act
1999 (Cth).
As with cases, you can abbreviate the name of the legislation
after the first time you have cited it in full i.e. Damage By Aircraft
Act 1999 (Cth) (DBA Act). So thereafter you would refer to it intext as the DBA Act, with the relevant section and/or subsection
number i.e. s 3(1) DBA Act.

Damage By Aircraft Act 1999 (Cth).

The enacting legislature

The name of the Act

In italics

Not in italics

The year of enactment

In italics

Reference list
The Curtin University Chicago Author-Date
(16thed) referencing guide for Curtin University
students notes at p.11 that legislation and legal
authorities (reported cases) are only to be
included in a list of references if it is important
to an understanding of the work.
In this unit, we do not expect either cases or
legislation to be included in the Reference list.

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