How to Read a Legal Citation

A citation (or cite) in legal terminology is a reference to a specific legal source, such as a constitution, a statute, a reported case, a treatise, or a law review article. A standard citation includes first the volume number, then the title of the source, (usually abbreviated) and lastly, a page or section number.

CASES

Case citations designate the volume number of the reporter in which the case appears, the name of the reporter, the page on which the case begins, and the year the decision was rendered. Thus, each citation is unique. Cases, or judicial opinions, can be published by more than one publisher. If this occurs, the case name may be followed by one or more “parallel citations”. The official reporter is the one with whose publisher the court has contracted to publish the reports; any other citation is called “unofficial.”

(Sometimes a case will have only an unofficial citation, such as in the Federal Reporter; then the “unofficial” cite will be listed alone.) The text of the opinions will be the same in the official or unofficial sources, but the unofficial may contain additional editorial features which differ from the official.

In California, the State Supreme Court cases are published officially in the California Reports, series 1-4; the Court of Appeals cases are officially published in the California Appellate Reports, series 1-4.

Unofficial reports are published by West; Supreme Court and Appellate Court decisions are published together in the West’s California Reporter, series 1, 2 & 3. The Supreme Court decisions are also published in the Pacific Reporter, series 1, 2 & 3.

Codes

Citations to California Codes do not begin with numbers; instead, the title of the code name is followed by the section number, the publisher, and the date of the volume (not the date the individual code section was enacted). Parallel cites are not used for the code, since there is no official code for California. The version of the unofficial code used (Deering’s or West) is indicated in the date portion of the citation.

Citations to the United States Code follow the same general format as cases; however, the first number refers to the title of the United States Code rather than a volume number, and the second number refers to the section number of the code rather than the page number. Parallel cites are not used for the code, since the numbering is uniform for both official and unofficial codes. The unofficial codes are designated by their own abbreviations, U.S.C.A. (West) and U.S.C.S. (Lexis).

REFERENCE SOURCES

For more detailed instructions on how to cite legal materials, consult:

• The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 18th ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Law Review Association, 2005).
• Jessen, Edward W. California Style Manual: A Handbook of Legal Style for California Courts and Lawyers, 4th ed. (San Francisco: West Group, 2000).

The citations given herein follow The Bluebook. References to the titles of works within citations are almost always in abbreviated form, which are not always uniform from publication to publication. If you are unsure of an abbreviation, first check the work you are using to see if it has a table of abbreviations. If not, check the guides to abbreviations. Comprehensive works are:

• Prince, Mary Miles. Bieber’s Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations, 5th ed. (Buffalo, N.Y.: W. S. Hein, 2001).
• Universal Citation Guide, Committee on Citation Formats, American Association of Law Libraries. (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein, 2004).
• ALWD Citation Manual, 3rd ed. Association of Legal Writing Directors and Darby Dickerson (New York, NY: Aspen, 2006)
• Salvador Trinxet, The Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations

For British and European abbreviations, use the book from Donald Raistrick “Index to Legal Citations and Abbreviations”, 2nd ed. (Abindgon, Oxon: Professional Books, 1993).