Citation Help

Legal citations generally use the style laid out by The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (see below). The Bluebook has citation guidelines and examples for documents not covered in this guide. For help with legal abbreviations, use the Cardiff Index below.

Court Cases

Case citation contain four parts:

• The name(s)s of the plaintiff(s) and the defendant(s), e.g. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The names are always in italics. A comma separates the names from the next part of the citation
• A court-reported citation (preferred) or the reporter number and name where the case can be found, e.g. 347 U.S. 483. There is no punctuation between this part of the citation and the next.
  • NOTE: Cases can appear in multiple reporters if they are appealed to higher courts. 
• The year the decision was made, in parentheses, e.g. (1954).
• The court. The name of the court goes inside the parentheses with the date. This part can be omitted if it's already clear from the second part of the citation which court made the decision. 

To put our examples together, the citation for Brown v. Board of Education is:

Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

The parties in this case are Oliver Brown, the plaintiff, and the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the defendant. This U.S. Supreme Court case opinion can be found in United States Reports, the reporter for the Supreme Court, in volume 347, starting on page 483. The case was decided in 1954. No additional information is needed for this case.

Cases that do require additional information about the court look like this:

Utah Foam Products Co. v. Upjohn Co., 154 F.3d 1212 (C.A.10 1998).

This case includes information next to the date to show that this case was decided by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Laws

Citations to laws are designed to help pinpoint specific passages and can include very detailed information about sections, articles, paragraphs, and even itemized lists. Citations to constitutions, laws, and statutes include two parts, generally listed in this order:

• The name of the constitution or legal code
• Details about where to locate the cited text

For example, a citation for the second section of the first amendment to the US Constitution looks like this:

U.S. Const. amend I, §2

Federal Law

Citations to federal law are a little different from citations to the US Constitution or state laws. When citing the U.S. Code, the title number comes first, then the name of the legal code, followed by the section information. This example cites the US federal law establishing Yellowstone National Park (title 16, section 21):

16 U.S.C. §21

NOTE: While there are chapters in the U.S. Code, only the title and section number are necessary for citations. 

State Law

Citations to state law put all of the details about where to find relevant passages after the name of the state code. A citation to Utah's law prohibiting breed-specific dog bans (title 18, chapter 2, section 101) looks like this:

Utah Code §18-2-101