article

Various case citations redirect here. If you are looking for the actual text of an opinion, it is usually linked in the external links at the bottom of the article on that case.

Case citation is the system used in common law countries such as the United States, England and Wales, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and India to uniquely identify the location of past court cases in special series of books called reporters or law reports. Whilst case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, they generally contain the same key information.

Where cases are published in bound volumes the citation will contain:

  • the title of the reports;
  • the volume number;
  • page number; and
  • year of decision.

In some report series, for example in England and Australia, the volumes are not numbered independently of the year: thus the year and volume number (usually no greater than 4) are required to identify which book of the series has the case reported within its covers. In citations of this type it is usual for square brackets '*' to be applied to the year (which may not be the year that the case was decided: for example, a case decided in December 2001 may have been reported in 2002).

The Internet brought with it the opportunity for courts to publish their decisions on web sites. Decisions of courts from all over the world can now be found through the website WorldLII * and its member institutes.

Most decisions of courts are not published in printed law reports. The expense of typesetting and publishing them has limited the printed law reports to the significant cases. Internet publishing of court decisions resulted in a flood of information. The result was that a medium-neutral citation system had to be adopted. This usually contains the following information:

  • year of decision
  • the abbreviated title of the court; and
  • the decision number (not the court file number)
Rather than utilising page numbers for pin-point references, which would depend upon particular printers and browsers, pin-point quotes refer to paragraph numbers.

United States

The standard case citation format in the United States is:

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

where:

  • Roe v. Wade is the name of the case,
  • 410 is the volume number of the "reporter" in which it appears,
  • U.S. is the abbreviation of the reporter,
  • 113 is the page number where the opinion begins, and
  • 1973 is the year in which the court rendered its decision.

These numbers are used to find a particular case, both when looking up a case in a reporter and when accessing it electronically on the Internet or through LexisNexis or Westlaw.

This format also allows different cases with the same parties to be easily differentiated. For example, looking for the U.S. Supreme Court case of Miller v. California would yield four cases, some involving different people named Miller, and all involving different issues.

United States Supreme Court

Cases from the Supreme Court of the United States are officially printed in the United States Reports. A citation to the United States Reports looks like this:

Many court decisions are published by more than one reporter. A citation to two or more reporters for a given court decision is called a "parallel citation." For U.S. Supreme Court decisions, there are several unofficial reporters, including the Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) and the Lawyer's Edition (L. Ed.), which are printed by private companies and provide further annotations to the opinions of the Court. Although a citation to the latter two is not required, some attorneys and legal writers prefer to cite all three case reporters at once:

The "2d" after the L. Ed. signifies the second series of the Lawyers' Edition. United States case reporters are sequentially numbered, but the volume number is never higher than 999. When volume 1,000 is reached, the volume number is reset to 1 and a "2d" is appended after the reporter's abbreviation (American lawyers have a tradition of using "2d" and "3d" rather than "2nd" and "3rd"). Some case reporters are in their third series, and a few are approaching their fourth.

Some very old Supreme Court cases have odd-looking citations, such as Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803). The "(1 Cranch)" refers to the fact that, before there was an official court reporter, cases were gathered, bound together, and sold by private individuals who had contracted with the Court for the right to do so. In this case, the case was first reported in an edition by William Cranch, who was responsible for publishing Supreme Court reports from 1801 to 1815. Such reports, named for the individual who gathered them, existed from 1790 to 1874.

When a case has been decided, but not yet transcribed into the case reporter, the citation may note the volume but leave blank the page of the case reporter until it is determined. For example, Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. ___ (2006).

See the Supreme Court of the United States Reporter of Decisions for other edition names.

In the caption of a Supreme Court case, the first name listed is the name of the appealing party, followed by the party responding to the appeal. In most cases, the appealing party was the losing party in the prior court. This is the same practice used in cases in the federal courts of appeal.

Lower federal courts

United States court of appeals cases are published in the Federal Reporter (F., F.2d, or F.3d). United States district court cases are published in the Federal Supplement (F. Supp. or F. Supp. 2d). Both are published by Thomson West; they are technically unofficial reporters, but have become widely accepted as the de facto "official" reporters of the lower federal courts because of the absence of a true official reporter.

When lower federal court opinions are cited, the citation includes the name of the court. This is placed in the parentheses immediately before the year. Some examples:

State courts

State court decisions are published in several places. Many states have their own state reporter, which publishes decisions of that state's highest court. These reporters have the same abbreviation as that state.

In addition to the official reporters, Thomson West publishes several series of "regional reporters" which cover several states each. These include the North Eastern Reporter, Atlantic Reporter, South Eastern Reporter, South Western Reporter, North Western Reporter, and Pacific Reporter. California, Illinois, and New York also each have their own line of West reporters, because of the large volume of cases generated in those states. Some smaller states (like South Dakota) have stopped publishing their own official reporters, and instead have certified the appropriate West regional reporter as their "official" reporter.

Here are some examples of how to cite West reporters:

  • Jackson v. Commonwealth, 583 S.E.2d 780 (Va. Ct. App. 2003) - a case in the Virginia Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court) published in the South Eastern Reporter
  • Foxworth v. Maddox, 137 So. 161 (Fla. 1931) - a case in the Florida Supreme Court published in the Southern Reporter
  • People v. Brown, 282 N.Y.S.2d 497 (1967) - a case in the New York Court of Appeals (New York's highest court) published in the New York Supplement. The case also appears in West's regional reporter: People v. Brown, 229 N.E.2d 192 (N.Y. 1967).

Abbreviations for lower courts vary by state, as each state has its own system of trial courts and intermediate appellate courts.

When a case appears in both an official reporter and a regional reporter, either citation can be used. Many lawyers prefer to include both citations. Some state courts require that parallel citations (in this case, citing to both the official reporter and an unofficial regional reporter) be used when citing cases from any court in that state's system.

Some states, notably California and New York, have their own citation systems which differ significantly from the various federal and national standards. Citations in California style put the year between the names of the parties and the reference to the case reporter. Citations in New York style wrap the year in brackets instead of parentheses. Both New York and California wrap an entire citation in parentheses when it is used as a stand-alone sentence. New York puts the terminating period outside the parentheses, but California puts it inside. New York wraps just the reporter and page references in parentheses when the citation is used as a clause.

Either way, both state styles differ from the national/Bluebook style of simply dropping in the citation as a separate sentence without further adornment. Both systems use less punctuation and spacing in their reporter abbreviations.

For example, assuming that it is being placed as a stand-alone sentence, the Brown case above would be cited (using the official reporter) to a New York court as:

  • (People v. Brown, 20 NY2d 238 *).

And, again, as a stand-alone sentence, the famous Greenman product liability case would be cited to a California court as:

  • (Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57.) *

Like the United States Supreme Court, some very old state case citations include an abbreviation of the name of either the private publisher or a state-appointed officer who collected the cases. For example, the citation in Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (1804), is an abbreviation for volume 3 of Caines' Reports, page 175, named for George Caines, who had been appointed to report New York cases. Most states gave up this practice in the mid- to late-1800s, but Delaware persisted until 1920.

Unpublished decisions

A growing number of court decisions are not published in case reporters. For example, only 7% of the opinions of the California intermediate courts (the Courts of Appeal) are published each year. This is mainly because the editors of reports choose only significant decisions for publication, due ot the cost of publishing and the importance of avoiding information overload. It is also argued that this is in part because in many states, especially California, the legislature has failed to expand the judiciary to keep up with population growth (for various political and fiscal reasons). To deal with their crushing caseloads, many judges prefer to write shorter-than-normal opinions that dispose of minor issues in the case in a sentence or two. They avoid publishing such abbreviated opinions, however, so as not to risk creating bad precedents.

Attorneys have several options in citing "unpublished" decisions:

  • For recently-decided cases which will eventually be published, the docket number from the court can be used as a citation.
  • Cases which are intentionally left officially unpublished are nonetheless often "published" on computer services, such as LexisNexis and Westlaw. These services have their own citation formats based on serial numbers (issued sequentially from 1 as documents are added to the database each year). A Westlaw citation looks like this: Fuqua Homes, Inc. v. Beattie, No. 03-3587, 2004 WL 2495842 (8th Cir. November 8, 2004).

Some court systems—such as the California state court system and the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—forbid attorneys to cite unpublished cases as precedent. Since 2004, federal judges have been debating whether the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (FRAP) should be amended so that unpublished cases in all circuits can be cited as precedent. In 2006, the Supreme Court, over the objection of several hundred judges and lawyers, adopted a new Rule 32.1 of FRAP requiring that federal courts allow citation of unpublished cases effective January 1, 2007. The rule will take effect unless Congress vetoes it.McDonald, Molly, "Door slowly opens for unpublished opinions", ABA Journal eReport, April 21, 2006.

Vendor neutral citations

With the rise of the web, many courts placed new cases on websites. Some were published while others never lost their "unpublished" status. The major legal citation systems required cites to the officially published page numbers, in which publishers such as West Publishing claimed a copyright interest. (In view of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, that the mere alphabetical listing of telephone subscribers was an inadequate amount of effort to be valid to obtain copyright, the claim of copyright on page numbering of court decisions is probably not valid.)

A vendor neutral citation movement led to provisions being made for citations to web-based cases and other legal materials. A few courts modified their rules to specifically take into account cases "published" on the web.

Pinpoint citations

In practice, most lawyers go one step farther, once they have developed the correct citation for a case using the rules discussed above. Most court opinions contain holdings on multiple issues, so lawyers need to cite to the page that contains the specific holding they wish to invoke in their own case. Such citations are known as pinpoint citations, or "pin cites" for short.

For example, in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the word "person" as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn. A full pin cite to Roe for the page with that holding would be as follows:

And a parallel cite to all three U.S. Supreme Court reporters, combined with pin cites for all three, would produce:

  • Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 158, 93 S. Ct. 705, 729, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147, 180 (1973).

But in its opinions, the Court usually provides a direct pin cite only to the official reporter, as follows:

  • Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 158, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973).

Even then, such citations are still quite lengthy, and obviously look quite mysterious and intimidating to laypersons when they try to read court opinions. Since the 1980s, there has been an ongoing debate among American judges as to whether they should relegate such lengthy citations to footnotes to improve the readability of their opinions. Most judges do relegate some citations to footnotes (though Justice Stephen Breyer's refusal to use footnotes in his opinions is well-known).

Types of citations

There are two types of citations: proprietary and public domain citations. There are many citation guides; the most commonly acknowledged is called the Bluebook, published by students at several eminent law schools, led by Harvard Law School. The ALWD Citation Manual is a recent (as of 2004) publication that is quickly winning supporters. Public domain citations are those which usually refer to the official reporters and not some kind of publication service such as Westlaw or LexisNexis or some particular legal journal or specialization specific reporter.

States with their own unique style for court documents and case opinions also publish their own style guides which include information on their citation rules.

References

External links

Law By State

England and Wales

The standard case citation format in England and Wales is:

Style of cause (year of decision), of report volume report (series) page jurisdiction/court
Donoghue v Stevenson, * A.C. 562 (H.L.).
R v Dudley and Stephens, (1884) 14 Q.B.D. 273.

In England and Wales as with most other Commonwealth countries, the abbreviation "R" for rex (king) or regina (queen), is used for cases in which the state is a party (typically criminal cases or judicial review cases). Square brackets "" are used when the year is essential to locating the report (e.g. the official law reports either - as with Donoghue v Stevenson, above - do not have volume numbers or, if there are multiple volumes in a single year, they are numbered 1, 2, etc.). Round brackets "( )" are used when the year is not essential but is useful for information purposes, e.g. in reports which have a cumulative volume number such as R v Dudley and Stevens, above.

Law Reports

The term "reporter", meaning a law report or a series of them, is not widely used in England and Wales.

Before 1865, English courts used a large number of privately-printed reports, and cases were cited based on which report they appeared in. (This system was also used in the United States and other common law jurisdictions during that period).

In 1865, many English cases were reprinted in a set of volumes called English Reports, abbreviated E.R. Between 1865 and 1875, decisions were published in a single series of law reports simply known as the "Law Reports" (L.R).

Since 1875 the official law reports have been split into a number of different series, the current series are the Appeal Cases (A.C.), Chancery (Ch.), Family (Fam.) and Queen's Bench (Q.B.) (or King's Bench—K.B.—depending on the monarch of the time). These 4 series are cited in preference to all others in court. There are 2 main unofficial law reports which report all areas of law, the Weekly Law Reports (W.L.R.) and the All England Reports (All E.R.). In addition there are a number of unofficial specialist law reports which focus on a particular area, e.g. the Entertainment and Media Law Reports (E.M.L.R.) or the Criminal Appeal Reports (Cr. App. R.). See the table below for a list of the most common current and past law reports.

Abbreviation Law Report years
A. & E. Admiralty and Ecclesiastical (L.R.) 1865 -
A.C. Appeal Cases (L.R.) 1890 -
All E.R. All England Law Reports 1936 -
B.C.L.C. Butterworths Company Law Cases 1983 -
B.H.R.C. Butterworths Human Rights Cases 1996 -
B.M.L.R. Butterworths Medico-Legal Reports ???? -
C.C.R. Criminal Cases Reserved (L.R.) 1865 - 1875
Ch. Chancery (L.R.) 1891 -
Ch. App. Chancery Appeal(L.R.) 1865 - 1874
Ch. D. Chancery Division (L.R.) 1875 - 1890
Con. L.R. Construction Law Reports 1985 -
C.P. Common Pleas (L.R.) 1865 - 1876
Cr. App. Rep. Criminal Appeal Reports 1987 -
E.C.H.R. European Court of Human Rights Cases 1960 -
E.G.L.R. Estates Gazette Law Reports 1975 -
Eq. Equity Cases (L.R.) 1865 - 1875
Ex. D. Exchequer Division (L.R.) 1875 - 1890
F.C.R. Family Court Reports 1987 -
G.C.C.R. Goode Consumer Credit Reports 1882 -
H.L. House of Lords (L.R.) 1866 - 1875
I.R.L.R. Industrial Relations Law Reports 1972 -
I.P. & T. Butterworths Intellectual Property and Technology Cases 1999 -
J.P. Justice of the Peace Law Reports 2003 -
I.T.L.R. International Tax Law Reports 1998 -
K.B. King's Bench 1901 - 1951
L.G.R. Butterworths Local Government Reports 1997 -
L.R.C. Law Reports of the Commonwealth 1995 -
O.P.L.R. Occupational Pensions Law Reports 1992 -
P. & D. Probate and Family 1850 -
P.C. Prive Council (L.R.) 1865 - 1874
P.L.R. Estates Gazette Planning Law Reports 1988 -
Q.B. Queen's Bench (L.R.) 1952 -
Q.B.D. Queen's Bench Division (L.R.) 1875 - 1890
R.P.C. Reports of Patent Cases 1939 -
S.T.C. Simon's Tax Cases 1973 -
T.C. Official Tax Case Reports 1883 -
W.L.R. Weekly Law Reports 1953 -

Simple Examples

The case usually known by the short form Furniss v. Dawson has the official citation A.C. 474, meaning that its report begins on page 474 of the 1984 volume of the official "Appeal Cases" reports. The same case can also be cited as [1984 2 W.L.R. 226, meaning that a report of it can also be found beginning at page 226 of the second volume from 1984 of the Weekly Law Reports.

The Internet

There is now a free-access database of UK case law, BAILII, which is part of the WorldLII system referred to above. However it only contains relatively recent decisions (most decisions are in cases decided after 1996). It remains to be seen whether the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting will release the copyright on the older case decisions so that they can be published on BAILII. As a result most online research is still done on the subscription commercial sites Justis and Lexis. Even on these sites, cases are organised, and cited, by the volume and page numbers of the paper law reports from which they are derived.

External links

Canada

The standard case citation in Canada looks like this:

Hunter v. Southam, * 2 S.C.R. 145.

The format can be broken into its component parts:

Style of cause (year of decision), of reporter volume reporter (series) page jurisdiction/court
R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., * 1 S.C.R. 295.
R. v. Oakes, * 1 S.C.R. 103.
Re Canada Trust Co. and O.H.R.C. (1990), 69 D.L.R. (4th) 321 (Ont. C.A.).

The Style of Cause is italicized as in all other countries and the party names are separated by "v." (english) or "c." (french). Prior to 1984 the appellant party would always be named first. However, since then case names do not switch order when the case is appealed.

Undisclosed parties to a case are represented by initials (eg. R. v. R.D.S.). Criminal cases are prosecuted by the Crown which is always represented by "R.". Constitutional references are always entitled "''Reference Re" followed by the subject title.

Usually either the year of the decision or the year of the reporter is cited, but not usually both. Only if they are different years can they both be cited at the same time. If they are the same, one should always use the reporter year.

Reporters

Abbreviation Reporter years
A.R. Alberta Reports 1976 -
B.C.L.R. British Columbia Law Reports 1977 -
D.L.R. (4th) Dominion Law Reports 1984 -
F.C. Federal Court Reports 1971 -
N.B.R. (2d) New Brunswick Reports 1969 -
N.S.R. (2d) Nova Scotia Reports 1969 -
O.R. (3d) Ontario Reports 1986 -
S.C.R. Supreme Court Reports 1970 -

Neutral Citation

In 1999 the Canadian Judicial Council adopted a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case a law report.

The standard format look like this:

Year of decision Court identifier Ordinal number
2000 SCC 1

There is a unique court identifier code for most courts. There are a few courts in Quebec and Ontario that have yet to adopt the system. A list of the court identifiers include:

Court Identifier Court from year
SCC Supreme Court of Canada 2000
FCT Federal Court of Canada - Trial Division 2001
FCA Federal Court of Canada - Appeal Division 2001
TCC Tax Court of Canada 2003

References

  • Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 5th edition (McGill Law Journal) ISBN 0-459-24042-0, ISBN 0-459-24068-4 (this is not available online)
  • Canadian Citation Committee Neutral Citation Standard for Case Law

Australia

The standard case citation format in Australia is:

Style of cause (year of decision) of reporter volume reporter (series) page
Mabo v State of Queensland 2 (1992) 175 CLR 1.

Reports

Abbreviation Reporter Years
AAR Administrative Appeals Reports -
ALJR Australian Law Journal Reports -
ALR Australian Law Reports 1983 -
CLR Commonwealth Law Reports 1903 -
FLC Family Law Cases
FLR Federal Law Reports -
NSWLR New South Wales Law Reports -
Qld R Queensland Reports -
VR Victorian Reports -

Neutral Citation

Australian courts and tribunals have now adopted a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case in a law report. Most cases are now published on AustLII using neutral citations.

The standard format looks like this:

Year of decision Court identifier Ordinal number
* HCA 1

There is a unique court identifier code for most courts. The court and tribunal identifiers include:

Court Identifier Court
HCA High Court of Australia
FCA Federal Court of Australia
FCAFC Federal Court of Australia - Full Court (Appeals bench)
FamCA Family Court of Australia
FMCA Federal Magistrates Court of Australia
FMCAfam Federal Magistrates Court of Australia, family law decisions
AAT Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia

References

New Zealand

The standard case citation format in New Zealand is:

Style of cause (year of decision) of reporter volume reporter page
Taylor v New Zealand Poultry Board * 1 NZLR 394
R v Howse (2005) 21 CRNZ 823

Reporters

Abbreviation Reporter Years
NZLR New Zealand Law Reports 1881 -
CRNZ Criminal Reports of New Zealand 1983 -
NZAR New Zealand Administrative Reports 1976-
NZFLR Family Reports of New Zealand 1981-
DCR District Court Reports 1981-

Additionally, a number of other report series exist for specialist areas such as Family, Employment and Tax Law.

Neutral Citation

New Zealand courts and tribunals have begun to adopt a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case in a law report. Most cases are now published on AustLII using neutral citations, although such formats are only used for Court of Appeal and Supreme Court judgments. Outside of AustLII, only the Supreme Court uses such citations in relation to its own judgments.

The standard format looks like this:

Year of decision Court identifier Ordinal number
* NZSC 1

There is a unique court identifier code only for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. These identifiers are:

Court Identifier Court
NZSC Supreme Court of New Zealand
NZCA New Zealand Court of Appeal

See also

External links

Case law | Legal citation | Legal research

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Case citation".

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