Submissions

Information for authors and contributors

Proposed contributions are invited on the understanding that they have not been accepted for publication elsewhere. The text should have minimal formatting.
Contributions may be sent as an email word attachment. An images or graphs must be at least 300 dpi resolution and sent in jpg format.
All contributions are refereed.
Authors are advised always to retain their electronic and hard copy base.
Authors are asked to supply their full name and title, current cite and full contact details. The latter will be used to send complementary copies of the printed journal.

House style
The editors reserve the right to make alterations as to style, grammar, punctuation etc to conform to the house style of each title; the accuracy of the contribution is the responsibility of the author.

Copyright
In submitting an article for publication, it is understood that the author grants Lawtext Publishing Limited, a licence to publish in the agreed journal, and also in any subsequent electronic version. Should the article be submitted elsewhere for publication, reference should be made to Lawtext Publishing Limited as the original publishers and to the exact cite, and Lawtext Publishing Limited should be notified in advance.

Presentation and style
Title and abstract: Authors are asked to supply a proposed title for their paper, and an abstract of between 50 and 75 words. The abstract will appear on the journal’s contents page and on the Lawtext website.

Acknowledgements (eg for review or assistance) or information about the material submitted (eg previously delivered as a lecture) should also be included, preferably in an asterisked footnote at the start of the article.

Footnotes

Citations (in full) should appear as numbered footnotes (not end notes). Books should be cited as follows: author's name, (or editor(s)), title in italic, edition, publisher and year, for example: AN Actor My life as a fictional detective (2nd ed.) (Morse Publishing, 2020).

Articles should be cited as follows: author's name, title of article in single inverted commas, journal reference (in full if not internationally known) in italic, for example: AN Actor ‘TV detective series: fact or fiction?’ (2021) Lewis Psychological Journal 4(2) 90–98).

Cases should be cited as follows:
Cases with an English neutral citation number should be cited with that number before any other reference. Thereafter or in the absence of a neutral citation number, references to English cases should be to the Official Law Reports or, if the case is not reported in those reports, to the Weekly Law Reports. Otherwise reference may be made to the All England Law Reports or to any specialist reporter. Where a case has been reported in both those law reports and in an internationally available set of reports such as Lloyd's Reports, American Maritime Cases or International Legal Materials, the first reference to it should also include that report's citation.

Cases in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) should be cited with their case numbers, thus: Peters v ZNAV (Case 34/82) [1983] ECR 987.

References to an overseas case should initially be to the official law reports of the relevant jurisdiction: eg Lake Erie & Northern Railway Co v Brantford Golf and Country Club (1917) 32 DLR 219; it may be helpful if, on first reference, a parenthesis is included with an abbreviated reference to the country and court in question: e.g. Australian Woollen Mills Pty Lt v The Commonwealth (1954) 92 CLR 424 (Aus HC); where such a case has been also reported in international reports such as Lloyd's Reports, AMC or ILM, the first reference to it should include that report's citation: eg Bunge v Furness Bridge (1978) 558 F.2d 790; [1977] AMC 2109 (USCA, 5th Cir).

Articles
Length of articles can vary according to subject/inclination. A minimum length for an article is around 5000 words, maximum in one issue around 7-8000 words (a continuation can always follow in the next issue). Subheads and further divisions if necessary should be inserted where appropriate.

Case Commentaries
Case commentaries should have a title, followed by the full title and reference of the case, and should be appropriately structured and subtitled. The commentary should proceed under the following subheadings: Facts, Decision, Commentary, and should have full references throughout in the body of the commentary. Length can be anything after a minimum of c 1000 words.

Readership
Our titles have an international readership This should be borne in mind; assumed knowledge of other jurisdictions cannot be taken for granted.

Proofs

These will be sent to authors in a pdf attachment to an email. Amendments should be limited to (a) typesetting errors, (b) queries raised by the copy editor, (c) any changes, eg to the law, that have occurred since submission of the article, and (d) any errors of fact. Changing the wording of the text or rearranging it is expensive and time-consuming to implement.

We will normally ask for corrected proofs to be returned to the publisher within 7 to 10 days, although a shorter time may occasionally be requested.