Plagiarism: what it is, and why it is cheating

Definitions Plagiarism is cheating and any student who gets caught is open to serious penalty, including failing the course that they are on, being expelled from the university, and having their cheating reported to the legal professional bodies who, understandably, have an interest in admitting only honest persons. It is very easy to avoid committing plagiarism and these notes and examples below will allow you to do so. Remember, though, if ever in doubt, ask your tutor.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines plagiarism as “the action or practice of taking someone else’s work, idea, etc, and passing it of as one’s own; literary theft.”

The word plagiarism is an unusual word – it comes from the Latin word plagiarius: a person who abducts the child of a slave or another, a kidnapper. In the modern world, a plagiarist can be seen has having snatched the work to which someone else has, in fact, given birth. The offence is committed by anyone who puts into their work the ideas of someone else without acknowledgment or who lifts sections of someone else’s thoughts (taken from print or electronic written words, audio or video) and puts it in their own work without acknowledgement.

Why referencing is important Good writing and good research are characterised by the writer always using appropriate labels (like footnotes or endnotes or references in the body of writing in brackets) to signpost from where they are getting their thoughts and information. If, in writing an answer to a TMA, a student copies out parts of the manual or of a legal textbook without indicating that they are taking the material from the work of a particular expert, then what they are in effect doing is offering the thoughts on the page as having been formulated by themselves when in fact they were drawn directly from the work of another person.

Clearly, in writing good answers to law TMAs a student, who is by definition not yet an expert in the subject, will necessarily have to rely on the work of the experts who write text books and manuals. All that is required in order for the writing to be legitimate and properly composed is that the writer properly identifies their sources at any given point.

It is a question of judgement, of course, when to use references. A good guide is that references are necessary whenever the material that you are about to write has resulted from particular work on an author’s part or is a matter of opinion. References are not necessary when you write things that are not the result of any individual’s thought or their personal opinion such as that “the Crown Court hears criminal cases”. You are also protected if you use a factual statement like that drawn from a course Manual. However, If you say in an answer:

“…the case of Green v Brown while at first sight similar to the case of Red v Blue is in fact distinguishable in this key respect…..”

and you have gained that idea from a text book, article, a website or manual you should cite the source of that idea. The reason is that it was not you who first perceived the cases as having a key difference; you are relying on the judgment of someone else. So, in that case you should credit the work involved by the other person in having made that analysis that you now adopt as part of your argument. Such acknowledgement does not make you seem less clever (by saluting the source) as the person marking your work will know the true source anyway. In any case, building up arguments by citing cases or authorities is what good lawyers do all the time.

A different situation arises were it is necessary for you to recite in the course of your answer things which are not the result of another author’s personal ideas or their hard work in arriving at a particular conclusion. If you say for example, in the course of your answer:

“…there are twenty seven countries in the European Union …..”

that information which you have taken from a book or article was not the work of an author in particular (it is a matter of general knowledge) and so the source does not need to be credited.

Not only is it an acceptable practice for students to use the ideas, analysis and opinions of other people when forming answers to questions, it is a desirable process. Good thinking commonly arises from synthesis of concepts, analyses, and ideas from a variety of sources. Those sources though must always be cited, and it does not reduce the quality of an answer at all if many sources are used.

The proper referencing system to use in Law

1. The proper way to cite cases is explained below.

When you write an answer to a law question, you will often need to refer to cases, either to illustrate the point you are making or as authority for a point of law. This is called “citing” a case. How you cite a case depends on whether you are writing an answer to an eTMA or an examination. In this Guide, we are looking at the rules for citing a case in an eTMA. The different rules for citing in an examination are included in the separate Examination and Revision Guide.

The full case reference must be given the first time that the case is referred to in your answer (e.g. Smith v. Jones [2000] 1 All ER 100). If the case has a neutral citation (e.g. Smith v. Jones [2000] UKHL 59) as well as a “traditional” law report citation, it is good practice to give both: Smith v. Jones [2000] 1 All ER 100; [2000] UKHL Civ 59. (N.B the word limit for all eTMAs has been calcu-

lated to take into account the need for you to cite cases fully the first time you use them.)

It is acceptable for subsequent references to the same decision to be in a shorter form, giving simply the name and date, or just the name (e.g. Smith v. Jones [2000] or Smith v. Jones).

When you first refer to a case, it is desirable that you indicate the level at which it was decided (e.g. Smith v. Jones [2000] 1 All ER 100 (HL) – showing that the decision to which you are referring was reached in the House of Lords). The abbreviations are:

Court Abbreviation Supreme Court SC House of Lords HL Court of Appeal CA High Court HC Privy Council PC

If you are citing a case in which different decisions were reached in different courts, for example in the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords, it is of great importance that you make clear which decision you are referring to (e.g. Smith v. Jones [1998] 3 All ER 25 (CA)).

If you are referring to, or quoting, a passage in a particular judgment in a case, it is good practice to refer to the page number on which the quote ap-pears and the name of the judge (e.g. Smith v. Jones [2000] 1 All ER 100 at p.123 per Lord Bridges). Lawyers use the term “per” when referring to some-thing a judge has said in a case. If the case has a neutral citation, you must state the paragraph number in which the quote or passage appears, and the name of the judge.

If you do not know the page number of the passage to which you are refer-ring, it is acceptable simply to cite the case as you would normally, although it is good practice still to refer to the name of the judge from whose judgment the passage was taken.

Where a case has been reported more than once, it is only necessary to provide one law report reference. You should choose the reference to the most authoritative series of law reports in which the case appears.

For example, assume that the Smith v. Jones case above had been reported in three different series of reports: the Appeal Cases at [2001] 1 AC 37, the All England Law Reports at [2000] 1 All ER 100 and the Weekly Law Reports at [2000] 2 WLR 557. The Appeal Cases is the most authoritative of these three series, and so you should cite that report. It is, however, as noted above,

good practice to give the neutral citation as well: [2001] 1 AC 37 : [2001] UKHL 59. It is desirable that you italicise, embolden or underline the names of cases (see e.g. the Smith v. Jones citations above).

2. The proper way to cite books and articles including internet articles is below.

Source Information which must be given Example reference Books

Author’s (or authors’) surname(s), initial(s)

(year of publication) Title (or Title) edition publisher place of publication

Smith, J. (2009) Becoming a lawyer, (2nd edition) Law Press, Jurisville.

Edited Books Author’s surname, initial(s) indication the book is edited (Ed(s)) (year of publication) Title (or Title) edition publisher place of publication

Smith, J. and Riaz, P. (Eds.)

Journal articles Author’s surname, initial(s). (year of publication) “Title of Article”, Title of Journal (or Title of Journal) volume number issue number date pp. xx-xx

Jones, A.B. (2009) “Options in legal careers”, Legal Careers Journal, vol.1, no.1, September-October, pp. 1-25

The internet

It is sometimes mistakenly thought that because material is in the public domain when on the internet it can be readily garnered, cut, and pasted into answers without reference. That is incorrect. Any material drawn from an internet source must be cited in an answer.

Study group workThe formation of a study group of students can be an excellent way to enhance and extend your understanding of legal topics. It is also acceptable for students voluntarily to show others their marked work if they wish and to learn from each others successes and failures. However, writing an answer, or any part of an answer that is taken from the work of another student is plagiarism. It is presenting an idea or analysis or work done as your own which was in fact the fruits of the labour of someone else. The simple way to avoid this is at the point of composing an answer on paper or on a screen, not to have in front of you any notes or scripts or answer papers from another student.

The detection of plagiarismThe university uses a variety of sophisticated electronic means to detect plagiarism. If any part of an answer that you submit as your own, and which is not referenced as coming from a particular book or article, but which in fact does come from another source, it will be identified. Additionally, tutors are bound to alert the university if they suspect that any written submission contains plagiarism because it varies significantly in style or standard from that which they would expect from a particular student. If that happens, a student can be called to an interview to discuss the issue.

Some Examples

Example 1 - plagiarism

Consider these two paragraphs, which might appear as part of a discussion of the law of murder:

William Blackstone, an 18th century legal commentator, set out the common law definition of murder as “when a person, of sound memory and discretion, unlawfully killeth any reasonable creature in being and under the king's peace, with malice aforethought, either express or implied.” The first few elements are relatively simple; however, the concept of "malice aforethought" is difficult. It does not necessarily mean premeditation.

In English law, murder is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another either intending to cause death or intending to cause serious injury (originally termed malice aforethought even though it requires neither malice nor premeditation). Following the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, the mandatory sentence is life imprisonment.

The underlined text has been matched with two different entries on the website Wikipedia by the Open University's plagiarism detection software. A few words are not underlined because they have been changed from or added to the original (changing 'complex' to 'difficult' for example) but the similarity appears too great to be a coincidence.

In some cases, students have submitted an entire essay, consisting entirely of material taken from a single website, or from several websites. This is clearly plagiarism, and is very serious. However, it is possible for a single paragraph to be identified by the plagiarism detection software, triggering an investigation and disciplinary action by the University, even if this is only a small percentage of the total word count.

Referring to Wikipedia in your Bibliography would not be sufficient acknowledgment. If you are quoting from a website or other source, you should indicate clearly which words come from the source. You must not present a quotation as if it was written in your own words.

To make this clearer, we will look at another example, this time written in the student's own words, and with proper acknowledgment.

Example 2 - writing in your own words:

Here are another two paragraphs, addressing the same issues as in Example 1:

The 18th century legal commentator,William Blackstone, defined murder in this way: “when a person, of sound memory and discretion, unlawfully killeth any reasonable creature in being and under the king's peace, with malice aforethought, either express or implied.” (Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765-1769, Book 4, ch 14, p 195)

The requirement of "malice aforethought" does not mean that planning or premeditation is required. In modern language, the 'mens rea' for murder is either intention to cause death or intention to cause grievous bodily harm (that is, really serious injury). On conviction, a sentence of life imprisonment is automatically imposed, with no judicial discretion as to sentencing.

In this example, there is still some underlined text, which has been matched to other sources. This is because in legal writing you will usually need to use common words and phrases from the relevant legal authorities. Most of the matches are individual words and phrases. The quotation from Blackstone's commentaries is entirely underlined, but it is clear that the words are being quoted, and their source is acknowledged. This is not plagiarism.

Writing in your own words, and indicating the source for any quotations, is an essential part of your legal education.