Bluebook legal citation is the standard format American lawyers, judges, and legal scholars use to identify sources in briefs, memos, and law review articles. The system, now in its 22nd edition, prescribes exact formats for cases, statutes, regulations, books, articles, and online material, along with rules for signals, short forms, quotations, and typeface. Which rules you follow depends on what you are writing.
Which Rules Apply to You: Bluepages or Whitepages
The Bluebook has two tracks. The Bluepages give streamlined guidance for practitioners and law clerks drafting court documents, motions, and legal memoranda.1The Bluebook Online. Introduction The Whitepages contain the full, more detailed rules aimed at academic writing like law review articles. When the Bluepages and local court rules are both silent, writers fall back on the Whitepages.
The most visible difference is typeface. In practitioner documents, writers use ordinary roman type, italics, and underlining. Academic citations add small capitals. A case name in a court filing is italicized or underlined; the same case name in a law review footnote appears in ordinary roman type for a full citation and italics for a short form. Book authors and periodical titles get small capitals in academic footnotes but ordinary roman type in court documents.
Local court rules override both tracks. Many jurisdictions have their own citation preferences, and those always take priority. Before formatting a filing, check the local rules of the specific court receiving the document.
Citing Cases
Rule 10 governs case citations, and the components follow a fixed sequence.2The Bluebook Online. 10 Cases A complete case citation contains:
- Party names, separated by “v.” Only surnames appear for individuals; given names and initials are dropped. Omit “The” at the start of a party name unless it is part of a corporate name. Drop “Inc.” or “Ltd.” when the name already contains “Company,” “Corporation,” or a similar term.3The Bluebook Online. 10.2 Case Names
- The volume number of the reporter.
- The reporter abbreviation, such as “U.S.” for United States Reports or “F.3d” for the Federal Reporter Third Series.
- The starting page of the opinion.
- The pinpoint page where the cited material actually appears.
- A parenthetical with the deciding court’s abbreviation and the year. When citing the U.S. Supreme Court from United States Reports, the court abbreviation is omitted because “U.S.” already identifies it.
The finished citation looks like this: Smith v. Jones, 550 U.S. 124, 130 (2007).
Parallel Citations
The Bluebook itself generally does not require parallel citations to multiple reporters. Many state courts do, typically requiring both the official state reporter and a regional reporter. Check the jurisdiction’s rules before deciding whether to include them.
Subsequent History and Weight of Authority
A full case citation should note what happened to the decision on appeal. Common phrases include “aff’d,” “rev’d,” “cert. denied,” and “overruled by,” all italicized and set off from the main citation by a comma. Where a case takes a different name on appeal, “sub nom.” precedes the new name. Denials of certiorari are omitted if the original decision is more than two years old, unless the denial itself matters to the argument. History on remand and denials of rehearing are also omitted unless relevant.
Weight-of-authority parentheticals come right after the court-and-year parenthetical. Examples include “(per curiam)” for unsigned opinions, “(en banc)” for full-court decisions, and designations like “(Scalia, J., dissenting)” or “(plurality opinion).” An explanatory parenthetical describing the holding follows these.
Citing Statutes
Rule 12 covers statutory citations.4The Bluebook Online. 12 Statutes A standard federal statute citation includes the title number of the United States Code, the abbreviation “U.S.C.,” and the section number preceded by the section symbol (§). Two section symbols (§§) indicate multiple sections. A parenthetical at the end gives the year of the code edition.
That year matters. Statutes get amended, and the version in effect at the time of the legal issue may differ from the current version. If the relevant language appears in a supplement rather than the main volume, the citation must note the supplement year.
Session Laws and Uncodified Statutes
Not every federal law has been incorporated into the U.S. Code. Recently enacted statutes and laws not yet codified are cited to the Statutes at Large, or, if not yet published there, to an unofficial source. These citations include the public law number (for example, Pub. L. No. 108-71), the volume and page of the Statutes at Large, and the year of enactment.
Citing Regulations and Agency Materials
Rule 14 covers federal regulations and agency actions. A citation to the Code of Federal Regulations includes the title number, the abbreviation “C.F.R.,” and the section number with the section symbol. Federal Register citations require the title of the provision, the volume and page number of the Federal Register, and the date of publication in parentheses. For proposed rules, an additional parenthetical indicates the document’s status and where the final rule would be codified.
Agency adjudications follow the case citation rules in Rule 10 with adjustments: use the full reported name of the first-listed private party, and omit procedural phrases. Cite to the official reporter listed in Table T1, adding a parallel citation to an unofficial looseleaf service until the official version is published.
Citing Books, Articles, and Online Sources
Books and Treatises
Rule 15 governs books, treatises, and other nonperiodic materials. The citation includes the author’s full name as it appears on the title page, the title of the work, the specific page or section, and a parenthetical with the publication year and edition if more than one exists. In academic writing, the author’s name and title use small capitals. In practitioner documents, both appear in ordinary roman type, with the title italicized or underlined.
Law Review Articles and Periodicals
Rule 16 covers journal articles. The format is: author’s name, article title, volume number, abbreviated journal name, first page of the article, pinpoint page if applicable, and the year in parentheses. Journal names are abbreviated using Tables T6, T10, and T13. Volume numbers always appear as Arabic numerals even when the original uses Roman numerals.
Internet and Electronic Sources
Rule 18 was substantially rewritten in the 22nd edition.5The Bluebook Online. Twenty-Second Edition Information When an online source shares the characteristics of a print source, cite it according to the print-source rule. A standalone internet source with no print equivalent requires the author’s name (if available), the page title, the main website title, the date, and the URL.
The 22nd edition now requires archiving internet sources, either through a service like Perma.cc or by keeping a PDF copy on file. Earlier editions merely encouraged the practice. If no archived link is available and the page has no publication date, add a “last visited” parenthetical after the URL. The 22nd edition also added guidance on citing AI-generated content, a category earlier editions did not address.5The Bluebook Online. Twenty-Second Edition Information
Formatting Quotations
Rule 5 sets out how to handle quoted material. Short quotations stay inline within quotation marks. Quotations of 50 or more words must be formatted as block quotations: single-spaced, indented on both sides, justified, and without quotation marks.6The Bluebook Online. B5.2 Block Quotations The citation following a block quotation begins at the left margin on the next line rather than being indented with the quote.
Square brackets signal any alteration to a quotation, including a changed or added letter, a substituted word, or a capitalization adjustment. An ellipsis (three spaced periods) marks the removal of a word or more from the middle of a quote.7The Bluebook Online. 5.3 Omissions The 22nd edition introduced the parenthetical “(citation modified)” for practitioner documents, which can be used when a quotation has been stripped of internal quotation marks, brackets, ellipses, citations, and footnote numbers with capitalization adjustments.5The Bluebook Online. Twenty-Second Edition Information It avoids littering a clean quote with bracketed changes.
Introductory Signals
Signals sit in front of a citation to tell the reader how the source relates to the proposition in the text. Rule 1.2 defines the standard signals, and the 22nd edition added a new one, “contrast,” for situations where the opposition between two authorities supports a point.
The most commonly used signals:
- No signal. The source directly states or supports the proposition. Use when quoting, paraphrasing, or pulling data.
- See. The source clearly but indirectly supports the proposition. The reader makes a small inferential step, and the connection is obvious.
- See also. Additional support, less direct or forceful. Often used for secondary authorities or decisions from other jurisdictions.
- Cf. The source supports an analogous proposition rather than the exact one stated. Almost always requires an explanatory parenthetical.
- Accord. Multiple sources support the proposition, but the text quotes or refers to only one. The quoted source comes first without a signal; the additional source follows “accord.”
The line between no signal and “see” is the one that gets misused most. Quoting or directly paraphrasing takes no signal. Drawing a conclusion the source supports but does not explicitly state takes “see.”
Short Form Citations
Once a source has been introduced with a full citation, later references use a short form. Which one depends on the type of authority and how recently it was cited.
Id.
“Id.” refers to the immediately preceding cited authority.8The Bluebook Online. 4.1 Id. If the pinpoint page changes, add the new page number after “Id.” It only works when no other source has been cited between the full citation and the “Id.” reference.
Supra, Hereinafter, and Case Short Forms
For secondary sources cited earlier but not immediately before, “supra” points the reader back to the original full citation. The format is the author’s last name, “supra,” and a reference to the original footnote or page number. “Supra” and “hereinafter” cannot be used for cases, statutes, constitutions, legislative materials (other than hearings), restatements, model codes, or regulations.9The Bluebook Online. 4.2 Supra and Hereinafter Those authorities have their own short forms.
Cases use a shortened version of the party name. Smith v. Jones becomes simply Smith in later citations, followed by the volume, reporter, and pinpoint page. Statutes are shortened by dropping the date parenthetical. “Hereinafter” is reserved for sources with titles so long or so similar to another source that the standard short form would confuse the reader; it creates a custom short name defined in brackets after the first full citation.
Order of Authorities in String Citations
When a single string cites multiple authorities after the same signal, sources appear in a set hierarchy: constitutions first, then statutes, treaties, cases, legislative materials, administrative materials, and finally secondary sources. Within each category, federal authorities precede state, and higher courts precede lower. Cross-references to the writer’s own material come last.
Abbreviations and Capitalization
Abbreviations keep citations compact. Table T6 lists standard abbreviations for words that commonly appear in case names and institutional authors, such as “Company” to “Co.,” “Association” to “Ass’n,” and “Department” to “Dep’t.”10The Bluebook Online. T6 Case Names and Institutional Authors in Citations Table T10 handles geographical terms: “California” becomes “Cal.,” “International” becomes “Int’l.” Table T13 covers periodical abbreviations.
Capitalization has its own conventions. “Court” is capitalized when naming any court in full, when referring to the U.S. Supreme Court, or when referring to the court receiving the document. Otherwise, “court” stays lowercase.
What the 22nd Edition Changed
The most consequential updates in the current edition sit in a few places already covered above. Rule 18 was rewritten to require archiving of internet sources rather than merely encouraging it, and the edition added guidance on citing AI-generated content.5The Bluebook Online. Twenty-Second Edition Information Rule 5 introduced the “(citation modified)” parenthetical for practitioner documents, letting writers clean up a quotation without a run of brackets and ellipses. Rule 1.2 added “contrast” to the list of signals. If you have been working from an earlier edition, those four changes are where your habits most need updating.