Case citation

• Court that issued the decision
• Report title
• Volume number
• Page, section, or paragraph number
• Publication year

• Year of decision
• Abbreviated title of the court
• Decision number

Pronunciation of case titles

Commonwealth pronunciation

• Civil cases are pronounced with and. For example, Smith v Jones would be pronounced "Smith Jones".
• Criminal cases are pronounced with against. For example, R v Smith would be pronounced "the Crown Smith". The Latin words Rex, Regina, and versus are all rendered into English.
• In Australia and the United Kingdom, versus and vee are arguably incorrect.

  American pronunciation

• Versus is most commonly used, leading some newspapers to use the common abbreviation vs. in place of the legal abbreviation v.
• Vee is also heard but is not as common.
• Against is a matter of personal style. For example, Warren E. Burger and John Paul Stevens preferred to announce cases at the Supreme Court with against.
• And is used by some law professors, but other law professors regard it as an affectation.

Australia

Reports

Neutral citation

Canada

The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation

Reports

Neutral citation

Court identifiers

Denmark

Published decisions

Unpublished decisions

Neutral citations and the ECLI

Reporters

Germany

Federal Constitutional Court of Germany

Federal Court of Justice of Germany

Other federal courts

Other courts

European Case Law Identifier

India

Supreme Court of India

• AIR 1984 SC 571 – "AIR" refers to the All India Reporter, "1984" is the year of judgement, "SC" refers to the Supreme Court of India, and "571" is the first page number of the report within the volume;
• 1 SCC 339 – "1984" is the year of publication, "1" is the volume number of the reporter, "SCC" stands for Supreme Court Cases, and "339" is the first page number of the report within the volume; and
• 1984 Cri LJ 289 – "1984" is the year of publication, "Cri LJ" is an abbreviation for the Criminal Law Journal, and "289" is the first page number of the report within the volume. The "SC" in parentheses indicates that the case was heard by the Supreme Court.

• Additional Secretary, Government of India v. Alka Subhash Gadia 2 Scale 1352

• Premium Granites v. State of Tamil Nadu JT 1 SC 374

• Federation of Mining Associations v. State of Rajasthan 1992 Supp SCC 239, which points to page 239 of the Second Supplementary Volume of the SCC reports in the year 1992. From 1996 the Supplementary Volumes were numbered in sequence after the regular volumes.

• Rathinam Nagbhushan Patnaik v. Union of India 1994 SCC 740, which refers to the SCC Criminal Reports
• Delhi Transport Corporation v. Mazdoor Congress 1991 SCC 1213, which refers to the SCC Labour & Services Reports

  High Courts

New Zealand

Reporters

Neutral citation

Norway

• Rt. identifies the report series.
• * All supreme court judgments are published in Retstidende, abbreviated Rt.
• * Many judgments and decisions from lower courts are published in Rettens gang.
• 1952 is the year of reporter
• s. is the Norwegian abbreviation for page. This is optional.
• 989 is the first page number of the decision in the reporter.
• Finally, one can add the popular name of the decision. It is unusual to refer to name of the plaintiff and defendant, but often there is an unofficial name. Telefonsjikanedommen refers to a 1952 case where the Supreme Court ruled that telephone harassment was not illegal under the current criminal code.

  Philippines

Supreme Court

''Philippine Reports''

• People v. Flores is the name of the case
• 442 is the volume number of the Philippine Reports where the case may be found
• Phil. is the standard abbreviation of Philippine Reports
• 561 is the page number in the Philippine Reports that contains the beginning of the decision. If this number is followed by a comma then another page number, the latter number indicates the particular page where the annotated text can be found
• is the year the case was decided.

''Supreme Court Reports Annotated''

• Fortich v. Corona is the name of the case
• G.R. No. 131457 is the case docket number originally assigned by the Supreme Court at the time the action was filed with the Court
• 24 April 1998 is the exact date the decision of this case was promulgated
• 289 is the volume number of the Supreme Court Reports Annotated where the case may be found
• SCRA is the standard abbreviation of Supreme Court Reports Annotated
• 624 is the page number in the Supreme Court Reports Annotated that contains the beginning of the decision. If this number is followed by a comma then another page number, the latter number indicates the particular page where the annotated text can be found

Lower court decisions

Switzerland

United Kingdom

Neutral citation

How to cite a case

• Rottman v MPC UKHL 20, 2 AC 692.

• Rottman v MPC UKHL 20, 2 AC 692 .

• Donoghue v Stevenson AC 562, 573.
• See

  England and Wales

Law Reports

Scotland

United States

• Roe v. Wade is the abbreviated name of the case. Generally, the first name is the surname of the plaintiff, who is the party who filed the suit for an original case, or the appellant, the party appealing in a case being appealed from a lower court, or the petitioner when litigating in the high court of a jurisdiction; and the second name is the surname of the defendant, the party responding to the suit, or the appellee, the party responding to the appeal, or the respondent, when defending in the high court of the jurisdiction. Litigants are generally referred to by their last name, and a case is generally referred to by the first named litigant on each side of the case. In this example, Roe refers to "Jane Roe," a pseudonym commonly used when it is appropriate to keep the identity of a litigant out of the public spotlight, and Wade refers to Henry Wade, the Dallas County District Attorney at the time.
• 410 is the volume number of the "reporter" that reported the Court's written opinion in the case titled Roe v. Wade.
• U.S. is the abbreviation of the reporter, or printed book of court opinions. Here, "U.S." stands for United States Reports.
• 113 is the page number where the opinion begins.
• 1973 is the year when the court rendered its decision.
• The abbreviated name of the court is included inside the parenthesis before the year if the name of the court is not obvious from the reporter. This rule comes into play because certain reporters, such as members of the West National Reporter System, publish opinions originating from multiple courts. In this example, the name of the court is obvious and is thus omitted as a matter of convention.

Supreme Court of the United States

• Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483.
• Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436.

• Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510

Lower federal courts

• Geary v. Visitation of Blessed Virgin Mary School, 7 F.3d 324 – a 1993 case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Glassroth v. Moore, 229 F. Supp. 2d 1290 – a 2002 case in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama

State courts

• Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 248 N.Y. 339, a case in the New York Court of Appeals, reported in New York Reports. Note that the New York Court of Appeals is the highest court in New York. Because the New York Reports only report opinions of the New York Court of Appeals, there is no need to repeat the court designation before the year.
• Green v. Chicago Tribune Company, 286 Ill. App. 3d 1 – a case in the Illinois Appellate Court, reported in Illinois Appellate Court Reports. Note that, in contrast to New York, the Illinois Appellate Court is only the intermediate court of appeals in Illinois; decisions of the Illinois Supreme Court are reported in Illinois Reports, abbreviated "Ill.". Because the Illinois Appellate Court Reports are dedicated solely to reporting decisions of the Illinois Appellate Court, there is no need to repeat the court designation before the year.
• Harte v. Hand, 438 N.J. Super. 545. Note that although all published opinions of the New Jersey Superior Court are published in the New Jersey Superior Court Reports, the organization of the Superior Court into three divisions means the citation must specify which division issued the opinion. This is especially salient as the Appellate Division hears appeals from the Law and Chancery Divisions, as occurred with the example case.

• Jackson v. Commonwealth, 583 S.E.2d 780 – a case in the Virginia Court of Appeals published in the South Eastern Reporters 2nd series
• Foxworth v. Maddox, 137 So. 161 – a case in the Florida Supreme Court published in the Southern Reporter
• People v. Brown, 282 N.Y.S.2d 497 – a case in the New York Court of Appeals published in West's New York Supplements 2nd series. The case also appears in West's regional reporter: People v. Brown, 229 N.E.2d 192. Note, in both forms, that "N.Y." is placed in the parenthetical, because both West's New York Supplement and the North Eastern Reporter report the opinions of more courts than only the New York Court of Appeals. A citation to the officially published reports, People v. Brown, 20 N.Y.2d 238, however, does not require the court name in the parenthetical, because the official New York Reports only report opinions of the New York Court of Appeals.

• .

• Unpublished decisions

• For cases that have not been published or put in an electronic database, or very recently decided cases that have not yet been published or put in an electronic database, a citation to the case's docket number before the court that decided it is required.
• *Groucho Marx Prods. v. Playboy Enters., No. 77 Civ. 1782 – a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; the docket number and specific date allow a researcher to track down the printed copy maintained by the court if needed.
• Even though only some decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeal are considered "published", Thomson West has recently started making available all decisions officially considered "unpublished" in a separate publication called Federal Appendix.
• Cases 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 the year of the case, an abbreviation indicating the computer service, and an identification number; citations to online databases also usually include the case's docket number and the specific date when it was decided. Examples include:
• *Fuqua Homes, Inc. v. Beattie, No. 03-3587, 2004 WL 2495842 – a case found on the Westlaw electronic database, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; the citation includes the case's original docket number, and a citation to the electronic database that indicates the date of decision, the database and a unique serial number in that database.
• *Chavez v. Metro. Dist. Comm'n, No. 3:02CV458, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11266 – a case decided by the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut; the citation includes the case's original docket number, the date of decision, the database, and a unique serial number in that database.

Vendor-neutral citations

• Equal. Found. of Greater Cincinnati, Inc. v. City of Cincinnati, 1997 FED App. 0318P – a 1997 case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; the citation to the numbering system adopted by the court eliminates the need to cite to a specific vendor's product, in this case Thomson West's Federal Reporter.

  Pinpoint citations

• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 158.

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

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

Types of citations

Law by state (US)