Template:Infobox UK Supreme Court case/doc

Usage

This is a template to be applied to cases in the new United Kingdom supreme court. It is heavily based on the United States supreme court template in order to increase consistency and because the SCOTUS cases is really pretty.

The source code is a bit untidy so if anybody is willing to fix that I would appreciate it.

To include the template on any Supreme Court case article, use this

{{Infobox UKSC case |Litigants= |ArgueDate= |ArgueYear= |DecideDate= |DecideYear= |FullName= |Neutral Citation= |Other Citations= |Prior= |Procedural= |Holding= |Majority= |Dissent= |Area of Law= |Applied= |Reversed previous case= |Distinguished previous case= |Reversed= |Distinguished= |Followed= |ECtHR= |ECJ= }}

Parameters

You should be able to leave out any info that is not relevant but there are no additional parameters that are not included in the basic template form.

Litigants

The short name of the case should go here, for example R v Horncastle or Louca v Germany

Argue & Decide dates

The dates and years where the case was decided. Most case reports only include the date of the decision but you can find the date of the arguments on the official transcripts or on these pages 2009,2010,2011

Full Name

The full case name, including all of the superfluous bits and flourishs that make it unreadable, for example R. v Horncastle (Michael Christopher),R. v Blackmore (David Lee),R. v Carter (David Michael),R. v Marquis (Abijah), R. v Graham (Joseph David) (for R v Horncastle) or Brinkibon v Stahag Stahl und Stahlwaren Handelsgesellschaft GmbH

Citations

The neutral citation takes the form [YEAR] COURT CASE# and will look like [2009] UKSC 14 or [2011] UKSC 12. The neutral citation for the Supreme Court hearing should be put in this box.

The other citations is for a list of reports the case is featured in. Generally it is only worth putting citations from the most authoritative reports and ignoring the rest.

The most authoritative set of reports are the major reports published by the ICLR (because they are checked by the Judge and Counsel in a given case). These are either Appeals Cases report which takes the form [YEAR] VOL AC PG# (so for example Horncastle is reported at [2010] 2 AC 373) or reports from the High Court (which use QB, Ch, or Fam instead.)

The second tier of reports are the Weekly Law Reports and the All England Law Reports ([2010] 2 WLR 47 and [2010] 2 All ER 359 respectively). Other reports are generally not worth including unless the case is heavily specialised (which is unlikely in the Supreme Court).

Note that the date in neutral citations will always match the date of the judgement, but the date in the law reports may be later than the year the case was heard in. This is because reports take time to compile and the date on the report is the publishing date rather than the year the report describes.

Case History

Prior refers to prior appeals, so if the case was heard in the court of appeal or in the high court (when sitting as an appellate court) include the neutral citation here. Do not include the first instance hearing.

Procedural If there were any hearings in the appellate courts before or after the main case, they can be included here. So in an article about R(E) v JFS([2009] UKSC 15) you could include the preliminary matter decided at [2009] UKSC 1 here. If you were writing about Manchester CC v Pinnock ([2010] UKSC 45) you could include the subsequent clarifiication at [2011] UKSC 6 here. Again just use the neutral citation.

Holding

Briefly summarise the main points of the decision. This is likely to be a fairly crude summary but should express the general sentiment of the decision as well as the result.

Majority/Dissent

Include the names of the judges of each opinion here. It is likely that all the judges who sat gave independent judgments so you can just list their names as appropriate. If a judge clearly followed the opinion of one other then you can insert them; Lord Brown (Lady Hale concurring). If a judge does not give an opinion but rather states that they are endorsing 2 or more judgments they could be written as (Lord Hope endorsing the majority view) or (Lord Clarke concurring with Mance and Brown)

Area of Law

The broad areas of law involved. Should be expressed separated by a comma and as wikilinks.

The Bottom Bit

If the case had a significant effect on the law by, for example reversing or distinguishing a well held proposition, or if it applied a rule developed in an earlier case insert the name of the case into one of the top 3 boxes.

If the case was subsequently reversed (by the SC) or distinguished, or if the case was followed in a later case, use the next 3 boxes (although SC decisions are likely to be followed pretty much universally so only include cases in the followed box if they are significant.

If the case was subsequently the basis of an application to the European Court of Human Rights or a referral to the European Court of Justice, include the case name here.

Everything Else

Please comment on the talk page if you have an opinion about the template or wish to report a bug. I've basically created all these rules myself and they don't as yet represent consensus so feel free to make changes to the template and documentation.