Legal Citations

A citation is a reference to legal authorities and precedents such as statutes, cases, regulations and law review articles. Citations are used in arguments to courts, legal textbooks, law review articles and the like to establish or fortify the propositions argued.

Citations to legal materials follow a standard format which makes it possible for anyone using a law library to find cited cases, statutes, regulations, and law review articles.

Most legal citations consist of three basic parts:

A Research Guide on Finding Cases

Court opinions, or cases, are published in reporters.  Reporters collect cases in chronological order.  Often sets of reporters are limited to opinions from a single jurisdiction or a single court.  Federal reporters contain opinions from federal courts while state and regional reporters offer opinions from a state or states in a particular geographic region.  Regardless, all reporters are arranged chronologically.