This guide highlights some of the legal resources available to the BC Community. Law School students may want to go directly to the Law Library's website.
The most frequently used style manual for citing to Legal Documents is the The Bluebook : a uniform system of citation. APA, MLA and Chicago Manual of Style all refer to the Bluebook for citing to certain documents such as cases.
Below are links to online guides and information on accessing The Bluebook.
This website, produced at Cornell Law School, provides a "how to cite" section which is very useful.See sections 14.281 through 14.304 for citing to legal documents.
Manual is also available in print - O'Neill Library Reference (Z253 .U69)
The Bluebook is used by most legal practitioners for proper citations to legal materials. The front cover and first page have examples of citations to cases and law review articles.
A legal citation is a reference to a legal document such as a case, statute, law review article, etc.
Most legal citations consist of the name of the document (case, statute, law review article), an abbreviation for the legal series, and the date.
The abbreviation for the legal series usually appears as a number followed by the abbreviated name of the series and ends in another number.
For example: Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007) is a citation to a Supreme Court case which can be found in volume 551 of the United States Reports (U.S.) beginning on page 393.
