Legal Citation Formats

Revision as of 14:57, 23 August 2010

If you are searching for a legal citation you must use the precise format shown below, including exact punctuation. For other types of references such as newspaper and magazine articles, see the article on Citing References.

Getting a Document by Legal Citation in LexisNexis

If you are looking for a specific law, legal decision, or law review article and have the citation in hand you can retrieve it immediately on the appropriate legal search form(s) or the Power Search form. If you are not sure which type of material your citation refers to, compare it to the examples below to choose the right search form.

U.S. Case Law

As a general rule, you can use citation formats found in the Uniform System of Case Citation (Blue Book). See specific examples below. You can search for U.S. case law citations on any of the following forms:

• Easy Search
• US Federal & State Cases
• Power Search (Pick "Federal & State Cases, Combined" from the drop down or use Browse Sources or Find Sources to pick a specific court.

Federal

• 100 F.2d 1
• 134 F.3d 817
• 19 F Supp. 2d 104
• 789 F. Supp. 320
• 139 L. Ed. 2d 25
• 118 S Ct. 62
• 514 U.S. 673
• 65 U.S.L.W. 3204

State

• 246 App Div 2d 682
• 19 Cal 4th 142
• 23 Fla. Law W. D 733
• 344 Ill. App. 266
• 344 Mich. 624
• 230 N.J. Super. 182
• 23 N.Y.S.2d 2
• 84 Ohio St. 3d 1457
• 2000 PA Super 2
• 150 Tex. 39

Regional

• 723 A.2d 852
• 250 Cal. Rptr. 21
• 100 N.E.2d 497
• 75 N.W.2d 19
• 100 P. 34
• 300 P.2d 19
• 727 So. 2d 913
• 150 S.W.2d 202

Canadian Quicklaw™ Citation Formats

You can search for Canadian legal material on the following forms:

• Canadian Cases
• Canadian Legislation
• Canadian Law Journals
• Power Search (Use Browse Sources or Find Sources to pick a specific court.

When typing in a citation, it is not necessary to enter brackets, punctuation, capitalization or spaces.

• [1997] O.J. no 4806
• 1997OJ no.4806
• 1997oj4806

• 39 D.L.R. (4th) 595
• 39DLR(4th)595
• 39dlr4th595

Note: exceptions to this rule include the FC citation, and some older Ontario Reports citations. FC can stand for the Federal Court reports or the Federal Court neutral citation. Some older Ontario Reports citations do not have a volume/edition number, and therefore can be confused with other citations. Be sure to always enter spaces, capitals and/or periods when using these citations. With older OR citations, simply capitalizing the OR will suffice as below.

• 19952f.c.544
• 1933OR565

U.S. Law Reviews & Journals

As a general rule, you can use citation formats and abbreviations found in the Uniform System of Case Citation (Blue Book). See specific examples below. You can also use the Law Review search forms to look for specific articles by author, title, and date.

• 74 Fordham L. Rev. 1475
• 54 Emory L.J. 1139
• 22 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 901
• 14 N.Y.L. Sch. J. Hum. Rts. 375
• 113 Harv. L. Rev. 1963
• 29 Cardozo L. Rev. 927

U.S. Code of Federal Regulations

Format your Code of Federal Regulations citation like the examples below:

• 40 CFR 129.4
• 20 CFR PART 404 APPENDIX I
• 17 CFR 230.429

Federal Register

Format your Federal Register citation like the examples below:

• 64 FR 71680
• 63 FR 33835
• 58 FR 51735

State Registers

State Administrative Codes

State Administrative Code formats vary from state to state. Find the state you are looking for in the table below to see the a sample citation:

State Citation Format

Statutes

The system recognizes the following statute citation formats:

• 5 uscs sec 5901
• 101 pl 509

Bibliography Help: MLA, APA, Turabian Style Hints

Although most style guides simply defer to the bluebook's style, here are some examples of ways you can incorporate Cases or Codes that you have found in LexisNexis Academic into your Bibliography page. For more help with style guides, visit our page on Citing References.

Cases

MLA
Case title, U.S. Reports citation, page numbers, docket number, name of the court, year of decision, Internet address, and date of accessing the site

Fullilove v. Klutznick. 448 U.S. 448. 448-554. No. 78-1007. US Supreme Court. 1980. Online. LexisNexis® Academic. (11 Feb. 2010).

APA
Case title, U.S. Reports citation, year of decision, and Internet address.

Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448 (1980) [Online] Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic.

Turabian
Case Name, Reports Citation (Year of Decision) LexisNexis main URL (accessed date for Turabian).

Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448 (1980). Accessed 13 February 2010; available from LexisNexis Academic http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic

Codes

MLA
Title number, statute book of the U.S. Code. section. year. publication medium, name of computer service, and date of access.

42 US Code. Sec. 405. 1998. Online. LexisNexis® Academic. 13 February 2010.

APA
Act or Section Name, Abbreviated Citation et seq. (Edition year of the Code) Retrieved date from LexisNexis Academic database. Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act, 20 U.S.C. §2301 et seq. (2006). Retrieved 13 February 2010 from LexisNexis Academic database.

Turabian
Act or Section Name. U.S. Code. Year. Vol(Which is really title number, but Turabian style forces you to use Volume), section number. Accessed date; available from LexisNexis Academic

Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act. U.S. code. 1998. Vol 20, sec. 2301. Accessed 24 March 2005; available from LexisNexis Academic