2.1 Components of a Standard Cite
Description
This article is from the Legal Research FAQ, by Mark Eckenwiler with numerous contributions by others.
2.1 Components of a Standard Cite
The basic structure of a reference to a published decision is
_Party1 v. Party2_, [volume] [reporter] [start page] [(court, year)]
A good example is _Hamaya v. McElroy_, 797 F. Supp. 186 (E.D.N.Y.
1992). From this listing, you see that the last names of the primary
parties are Hamaya and McElroy. The case can be found in volume 797
of the Federal Supplement (described below) beginning on page 186.
The opinion was rendered in 1992 by a District Court in the Eastern
District of New York (which covers Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island,
and Long Island).
A citation may sometimes omit the parenthetical information
identifying the court of decision when that information can be
gleaned from the name of the reporter. For instance, the famous
Supreme Court flag-burning decision is cited as _Texas v. Johnson_,
491 U.S. 397 (1989). Since the **United States reporter (U.S.)
only includes Supreme Court decisions, it is not necessary to
specify the court again in the parenthetical.
Sometimes a case will appear in more than one reporter; in
that event, information on the reporters is listed sequentially,
e.g., _Schmuck v. United States_, 489 U.S. 705, 109 S. Ct. 1443
(1989). This case appears in volume 489 of U.S. (starting at page
705) and in volume 109 of the **Supreme Court reporter (S. Ct.),
starting at 1443.
When reference is made to specific passage within a case, the
cite will include a "jump cite" or "pin[point] cite", so called
because it pinpoints the particular internal page to which the
reader can "jump" directly in lieu of reading the entire case. For
example, the cite _Texas v. Johnson_, 491 U.S. 397, 399 (1989),
directs your attention to page 399.
All of the sample cites above are in "long form": that is,
they give the names of both parties and provide a full citation.
When a source cites to a case repeatedly, however, it will often
use the long form only for the first reference; thereafter, it
will use the aptly named "short form," which has the general
structure
<unique name,> [volume] [reporter] at [page]
where <unique name,> is optional. The following are all typical
short form cites to the cases listed above:
_Johnson_, 491 U.S. at 402.
491 U.S. at 401.
_Hamaya_, 797 F. Supp. at 190-91.
Note that because "Texas" is even less useful as an identifier
than "Johnson", one would generally find the latter in a short
form cite even though it is not the first name in the case title.
The same is generally true for frequent litigants like the
Commissioner of Internal Revenue, the Secretary of HHS, and (of
course) "United States".
A case cite also often includes additional information
about which judge wrote the decision, whether the case was ever
affirmed or reversed on appeal (or cert. was denied in the Supreme
Court), and so on.
A note on the order of names in the caption: In District Court
and Circuit Court opinions, the first name listed is *always* that of
the plaintiff. This means that in a Circuit decision captioned
_Party1 v. Party2_, you cannot tell from the caption alone which party
appealed to the Circuit Court. In contrast, the title of U.S. Supreme
Court decisions always tells you which party ("the petitioner")
brought the appeal: it's the first name listed, regardless of whether
that party was originally a plaintiff or a defendant in the trial
court. (As a result, you can tell who won a case based solely on
whether the Supreme Court reversed or affirmed the lower court: an
affirmance means that the petitioner (listed first) lost, and vice
versa for reversal.)
As you have probably gathered by this point, a case citation
often carries a large amount of information. As a result, certain
standards have arisen for citing cases "correctly". The most
comprehensive -- some would say "fascist" -- and widely used standard
is that laid out in _The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation_
(15th ed. 1991), developed collectively by members of the law reviews
at a few prestigious eastern law schools. A competing (and far less
obsessive) standard created at the University of Chicago is _The
Maroonbook_. (This FAQ adheres in large part to Bluebook style,
primarily because of the author's training. Your life is too short
to devote to memorizing such things; if you need to cite a case,
focus instead on putting down enough information that *your* audience
could locate the case.)
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