Legal Citation Format

Quote in parentheses: (Copyright Policy, 2019) You don`t need to create a citation for entire federal or state constitutions. It is enough to refer to them by their name in the text. When citing specific articles and edits, create reference list entries and citations in the text as usual. The United States Constitution should be included in the reference lists and brackets of the U.S. Const. can be used. Use state legal abbreviations for state constitutions, such as In. Const. for the Indiana Constitution. In the story, write these place names: USA, USA, Indiana. Follow the Constitution numbering pattern (Roman for articles and amendments of the United States Constitution and for articles of the State Constitution, but Arabic for state amendments). In the APA style (7th edition), most legal documents are cited in the standard legal citation style, which is used as legal references in all disciplines. However, the legal style differs significantly from APA-style references for other types of sources.

“Section 11: Legal References” summarizes the main difference between APA-style references and legal references and provides a comprehensive guide to citing APA-style legal references, in-text citation forms for legal documents, and examples. In legal research, the most widely used citation guide is The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. The Bluebook uses footnotes, as opposed to parenthetical references, which are typically seen in the APA and MLA style. 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. The abbreviation of the legal series usually appears as a number, followed by the short name of the series and ends with another number. Chicago actually recommends using the Bluebook or ALWD Citation Manual to detect the ubiquity of these two systems in legal publications, commercial databases, and government records. The Chicago Manual of Style provides by far the most geographically diverse examples. They contain specific sections for citing legal documents from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. If you are writing a document that contains many references to legal documents such as laws, court proceedings and legislative documents, you are strongly advised to consult the Blue Book. 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.

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. For example: Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007) is a citation from a Supreme Court case found in volume 551 of the United States Reports (U.S.) beginning at page 393. Quotations in parentheses 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). 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. On the other hand, if you`re writing an APA, MLA, or Chicago-style article, each of them includes a special section for citing legal documents.

We encourage you to consult them according to your needs. 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. A legal citation is a reference to a legal document such as case law, law, law review article, etc. Please note that the legal examples in the APA style manual are primarily focused on the United States and the United Nations. Citation (in law, this means the volume and page in journalists or books where case decisions are published) This page provides an overview of the section on legal documents in the style of APA, MLA, and Chicago. Below are links to online guides and information on how to access the Bluebook. In the MLA Style Handbook (8th edition), page 69 provides an overview of the titles of statutes, statutes and similar policy documents, and section 2.1.3 provides information on citation of corporate authors, including government agencies.

Most legal documents are cited in the Bluebook style, the style of legal citation common to all disciplines (see 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. If you`re looking for legal citation information in the context of Hong Kong, CUHK Law School offers a comprehensive legal citation style guide (last updated May 2020) that includes many examples of Hong Kong legal documents. 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.

If you need to cite an APA-type regulation in Hong Kong, we recommend the following basic format: The items in a right reference list entry are as follows, in order: ### Here is the change number. If the change was cancelled, add (year canceled) to the end of the reference. HR and S here represent the House of Representatives and the Senate and should be used depending on the source of the bill or resolution. ### Here is an article number and x is a section number. Statutes are laws and laws adopted by legislative bodies. Federal laws can be found in the United States Code, abbreviated U.S.C., where they are divided into sections called titles, which cover different topics. New laws are included in the title to which they most belong. Land laws are published in a separate country-specific publication. Like the Bluebook, the Chicago Style (17th edition) primarily uses footnotes in its system.

Jurisdiction of the court, in parentheses (p. e.g., U.S. Supreme Court, Illinois Court of Appeals) Note: And seq is a Latin abbreviation indicating that the section number is the first in a series of a few articles codifying this law. title, source (see Bluebook for abbreviations) and section number of the act; Date of decision, in the same parentheses as decisions on jurisdiction of state courts, closely follow the above patterns, but as there are different rapporteurs who publish their decisions, this element of the model varies and is represented here by the word “rapporteur”. U.S. federal court decisions are published in different journalists and therefore have different reference list templates. They are as follows: *Section number is optional. If you refer to the entire regulation, you do not need to provide an article number. FR stands for Federal Register. Other elements follow the model of the codified federal regulatory model explained above. Reference to a specific section, namely “Reproduction by librarians: provision of copies to other libraries”: Copyright Regulations, Cap 528 § 50 (2019). Here is an example of a court decision: ## Here are the article and paragraph numbers.

The paragraph element can be omitted if you quote the entire article. The title of the hearing normally includes the name of the subcommittee. Again, S. and H.R. are for the Senate and House of Representatives and should be used according to the source of the report. Replace ###-### with the report number. Cong here represents the Congress that hears the declaration and usually appears as something like the 110th Cong. CFR stands for Code of Federal Regulations. “Volume #” must be replaced by the number and ### represents the section number. should be replaced by the Order in Council number, and the page should be replaced by the page number. All executive orders are published in 3 CFR Title above, so 3 always comes before C.F.R.

when they are cited. Title of Regulation, Chapter Number § Section number* (year). Patents are cited more as traditional sources of APA. Most of the examples in the manual are largely based on the Blue Book (some exceptions apply to secondary sources and some unpublished government documents). Similar to the Circuit Court model, the U.S. District Court bill contains all the elements, and the journalist`s designation refers to federal supplements, which publish all U.S. District Court decisions.