Law Library User Guide

Legal citations are references to legal authorities such as cases, statutes, regulations, law journal articles and books. By rule and custom, correct citation form is required by courts, law firms, law journal articles and law schools to identify and locate legal authority.

Legal citations consist of the following:

• The name of the case, statute, article, or rule.
• A description of where the authority can be found in legal authority is usually in this order:
  • Volume number
  • Name of publication
  • Page number
  • Date

The structure of a citation for the United States Supreme Court is:

                                              Reporter
                                             ↑
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).    → Year of decision
              ↓                      ↓            ↓       
Name of case            Vol #       Page #   
                                                   case begins  

 

In plain English, the decision Gideon v. Wainwright will be found in volume 372 of the official reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States, know as United States Reports, beginning on page 335. The court handed down the decision in 1963.

Cases may also be published in several different sets of books, and citations to more than one set may be available. These are called parallel citations.  Parallel citations to Gideon look like:

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799 (1963).

This means that you would find the Gideon decision in the United States Reports and also in volume 83, page 792 of the Supreme Court Reporter, published by West, and in volume 9, page 799 of the Lawyer’s Edition, 2^nd Series, published by Lexis.  Reporters published by private companies may include topical explanations of the case, called headnotes.  West Publishing headnotes are organized into the West Key Number system by topic.

  

Reporters

Other sets of books also contain cases, and are organized by jurisdiction or region.  These include:

             Federal Reporters

The abbreviations F., F. 2d, and F. 3d cover the Circuit Courts of the United States and are published by West. The Federal Supplement covers the cases from the District Courts of the United States, with the abbreviations F. Supp., F. Supp. 2d, and F. Supp. 3d.

             Regional Reporters

These report cases from a group of states.  Abbreviations for these sets include A., A. 2d, and A. 3d (Atlantic); N.E., N.E. 2d, and N.E. 3d (North Eastern Reporter); N.W. and N.W. 2d (North Western Reporter); So., So. 2d, and So. 3d (Southern Reporter); S.E., and S.E. 2d (South Eastern Reporter); S.W., S.W. 2d, and S.W. 3d (South Western Reporter); and P., P. 2d, and P. 3d (Pacific Reporter).  All are published by West.

             State Reporters

These report cases from a specific state (Md., Va., etc.).  Not all states have their own reporters; cases from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia are published in the Atlantic Reporter.

Session Laws

This is the form of legislation as it is enacted into law by the legislature.  Federal session laws appear as follows:

                                                       Abbreviated title of book (Statutes at Large)
                                                                                                          ↑
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, Pub. L. No. 91-190, 83 Stat. 852 (1970).
             ↓                                                                   ↓                   ↓          ↓         ↓
Popular name of law                                 Public Law #     Vol. #      Page #   Year
                                                                                                                          Enacted

Codes

U.S. jurisdictions also organize statutes by subject; these are known as codes.  The United States Code is the codification of U.S. laws that are currently in force and of a permanent and general nature.  These appear as follows:

                                                                      Title of book                  Year of
                                                                   (United States Code)    compilation
                                                                              ↑                               ↑
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969,  42 U.S.C. §4321 et seq. (2001).
                      ↓                                               ↓                   ↓
         Popular name                                 Title #             Section # or
                                                                 (by subject)     Part # 

There are also codes published by private companies, including the United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.) published by West and the United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.) published by Lexis. These contain the laws as well as certain editorial enhancements, including legislative and amendment information, and short digests of cases that pertain to and may interpret the section of the law you are looking at.  These editorial enhancements are called annotations and include cases that apply and or interpret statutes, law review articles and treatises that may help explain the meaning of the statute.

Regulations

These are rules promulgated by agencies that have delegated authority to carry out functions by the legislature.  The primary sources for administrative rulemaking at the federal level are the Federal Register (Fed. Reg.) and Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.).

Federal regulations are first published as promulgated in the Federal Register: 

Vol. #               Page #
  ↑                      ↑
69 Fed. Reg. 58,343 (Sept. 30, 2004).  → Date of publication
          ↓
       Title of publication

They are then codified by subject into titles and published in the Code of Federal Regulations:

Title #        
(by subject)  Section #
  ↑                      ↑  
46 C.F.R. §12.03-1 (2005).  → Year of compilation
         ↓
    Title of publication

Secondary sources, such as law review articles, help explain and analyze the law.

        Author                  Title of Article
             ↑                              ↑
Nancy Modesitt, Reinventing the EEOC, 63 SMU L. Rev. 1237 (2010). → Year of pub.
                                                                ↓         ↓               ↓
                                                            Vol #     Journal   Page #

These are large sets that help explain legal concepts in a general way and may contain citations to cases that further interpret the law.  The two most often cited are Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S.) and American Jurisprudence 2d (Am. Jur. 2d).

Vol #               Sec. #                        
 ↑                         ↑ 
88 C.J.S. Trial § 192 (1955).    → Year of publication
        ↓        ↓
    Title     Topic
    of Set 

Vol #                               Sec. #
  ↑                                        ↑
17 Am. Jur. 2d Contracts § 74 (1964).   → Year of publication
          ↓                     ↓
     Title of set     Topic