Essential Cases: Public Law, now in its fifth edition, provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. Having a confident and critical understanding of case law is central to developing your legal knowledge. Essential Cases provides you with succinct summaries of some of the landmark and most influential cases in public law in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law, and human rights and civil liberties. Each summary begins with a review of the main case facts and decision. The summaries are then concluded with expert commentary on the case from the literature and the author, Thomas Webb, and wider questions raised by the case for you to consider.

Essential Cases can be used in a number of ways to aid your studies. It can act as a succinct reference source alongside your core textbooks as you proceed through your course. It can also be used as a stand-alone revision aid as you approach examinations. But central to the Essential Cases series is the aim of encouraging your own critical exploration of the cases under discussion and the wider issues they raise. Where possible, a link to a free-to-access full version of the judgment is included in each summary, providing you with an opportunity to deepen your understanding by reading the judgment of the court for yourself. You are strongly encouraged to engage with the cases themselves through these links, to seek out the materials referred to in the comment section of each note (journal articles, academic blogs, governmental and parliamentary reports), and also to investigate how the case has been analysed across the range of student-focused textbooks included in your Law Trove collection. Using Law Trove in this way allows you to develop a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the law, drawing on the expertise of OUP’s public law authors.