Upgrade StorageHow to cite foreign law?
I'm completely new to legal citations, and have a beginner's question:
I'm studying at a UK business school. The citation style is Harvard with slight typographical modifications.
I need to reference German law. I'm aware how to reference this in a German paper, say for instance "(§ 100 BGB)". Also in many faculties that I experienced in Germany the law was often not part of the bibliography.
Does anything change if I refer to German law in an English paper? Do I have for instance to add something like "(Germany § 100 BGB)" to distinguish the legislation? And must this law (under the Harvard citation style) be added to the bibliography? If so, in which form?
I'm studying at a UK business school. The citation style is Harvard with slight typographical modifications.
I need to reference German law. I'm aware how to reference this in a German paper, say for instance "(§ 100 BGB)". Also in many faculties that I experienced in Germany the law was often not part of the bibliography.
Does anything change if I refer to German law in an English paper? Do I have for instance to add something like "(Germany § 100 BGB)" to distinguish the legislation? And must this law (under the Harvard citation style) be added to the bibliography? If so, in which form?
In the short term, you may be best off using mainstream Zotero and doing those cites by hand. On the question of how to include legal references in the bibliography, your supervisor's guidance would be controlling.
I think you should ask your professor/supervisor or someone at your university. Many citation styles (like Blue Book, AWLD or this guide of Washington University, http://law.wustl.edu/wugslr/index.aspx?id=5512) and many publishers, especially in the US (don't know about UK) propose very difficult and complicated ways to cite legislation, including foreign legislation. For example in a paper published in an American law journal, following Blue Book style, they made me cite § 242 BGB (in a footnote) like this:
"Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch [BGB] [Civil Code] Aug. 18. 1896,
§ 242 (F.R.G.)" (and this is probably still not quite correct but misses data like "last amended" etc.)
However, maybe Harvard referencing style is not so obsessed with complete citations of statutes. What you find on the internet (see e.g. http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm) only gives hints on how to cite English Acts of Parliament and Bills, but not regarding "foreign" materials (I assume Harvard style hasn't developed rules on that - for good or for bad).
Best is to ask someone at your business school, preferably the person who would mark your paper. It's probably useful to include legislation also in the bibliography so that an international audience would be able to locate it.
I any case, for your paper I wouldn't bother using Zotero for German or other "foreign" legislation but just add this by hand (although Zotero MLZ seems to have very much improved thanks to Frank's outstanding work).
To me it seems that all existing legal citation styles fail when it comes to writing papers on international and comparative law for an international audience.