(773) 809-3180
 

What Is the Legal Citation Format

What Is the Legal Citation Format

In general, you should shorten as much as possible without losing the necessary information. For example, the Blue Book recommends shortening procedural sentences to abbreviations such as “In re” or “Ex parte” and using all commonly understood abbreviations to shorten the names of the parties, such as “Univ.” instead of “University.” In addition, the names of the source and the court are usually abbreviated; In the following example citation, Federal Rules Decisions is abbreviated to “F.R.D.” and the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to “W.D. Pa”. Sources and courts tend to have official abbreviations for this purpose, usually provided visibly to anyone who needs to quote them. The page number in a case citation is the page where that case begins in the source. If you want to refer to both a specific page and the overall case, separate that page reference with a comma. For example, if your reference is a case that starts on page 100 of your source, but you specifically want to refer to a six-page statement, the page number in your citation would be “100, 106.” Below are links to online guides and information on how to access the Bluebook. The abbreviation of the legal series usually appears as a number, followed by the short name of the series and ends with another number. Most legal citations consist of the name of the document (case law, law, law review article), an abbreviation for the legal series, and the date. Other legislative documents such as witness statements, hearings, non-legal bills and related documents may also be cited. Your reference list templates (below) may include a URL if available, but the URL is optional. The quotations in the text follow the same patterns as court decisions and cases. You should check the Blue Book for state laws, as some states use chapter or article numbers instead of sections.

Similarly, the Blue Book contains all the necessary abbreviations and symbols. Some federal laws may include public numbers that you can use in the reference list entry instead of USC publication information. Citation (in law, this means scope and page in journalists or books where case decisions are published) Most legal documents are cited in the Bluebook style, the style of legal citation common to all disciplines (see the Bluebook style in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 2015). The APA departs from the bluebook style for legal documents and uses these templates and templates in bibliographies. This resource lists some of the common legal references that ABS users need to do their jobs, but is not exhaustive. Please note that legal conventions outside the United States may differ. The most commonly used style manual for citing legal documents is the Bluebook: A Unified Citation System. The APA, PLA, and Chicago Manual of Style all refer to the Bluebook to cite specific documents such as cases.

The citations in the text are formatted in the same way as the above court decisions (name of the act, year). The years can be confusing because laws are often passed in a different year than the one they are published; You should always use the year of publication of the law in the compilation you are considering. Once you have quoted a particular authority in its entirety, you can then use a short quote. The specific content of a short quote is flexible, but varies depending on the type of authority cited. Acceptable short forms for a particular citation are covered in each entry. If the Act has been repealed or amended, indicate this fact and the year in which it occurred in parentheses at the end of the quotation if the Act was repealed or amended. You can also add additional information in the same way. If you quote a section of this Constitution that has since been amended or repealed, note the date of this fact in parentheses at the end of the quotation, for example, For short quotations, it is sufficient to quote by document number, although to avoid confusion, the state should be indicated, unless it is a federal law. The citation may be followed by more information in parentheses, such as a brief explanation of the relevance of the case or a citation from the case. This can be followed by a subsequent history of the case, such as subsequent confirmations of the decision if desired. Short forms may also use id.

to indicate that this quote comes from the same authority as the previous one. These documents include rules, regulations, decrees and expert opinions. Their citation patterns in the text follow typical APA patterns: (first item of reference list entry, year) without italics. In the abbreviated form of a case, you are free to shorten the name of the case to the first part or even to an abbreviated form of that party`s title. However, if the first party is a State entity, geographical entity or other such creation, this quotation may not be useful. (Since there are so many cases where the first party is the U.S. government, for example, listing a case name like “United States” doesn`t limit it enough to be helpful.) In these cases, quote with the name of the second part instead. If the entire Constitution is no longer in force, add to the quotation the date on which the Constitution was originally adopted as follows: A legal citation is a reference to a legal document such as a case, a law, a summary article of law, etc.

Parenthetical citations and narrative citations in the text are formatted in the same way as any other source (first item in the reference list entry, Year), although, unlike other sources, court decisions and cases italicize the title in the citation in the text. For example (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954). Note: The Blue Book does not mention a method for writing short quotes for hearings. The Bluebook Style Guide is used in the American legal profession to cite all relevant sources. In addition, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends its use for all citations of legal documents. The following is a summary of the basics. It`s worth noting that the Bluebook system is considerably complex in most of these points, but here`s the level of detail it recommends for a student`s basic needs, for example. There is no abbreviated form for constitutional citations.

For example: Morse v. Frederick, 551 USA 393 (2007) is a citation from a Supreme Court case found in volume 551 of the United States Reports (U.S.) starting at page 393. Abbreviated citations for statutes should include the section number as well as the minimum information required to determine which of your previously cited authorities the citation refers to.

Comments are closed.