Court citation

When talking about what are usually U. S. legal matters, there is a standard system of court citation in use to uniquely identify past court cases. The same type of system is also used for the Supreme Court of Canada.

Method of specifying court case names

Sometimes someone will mention the name of a court case and you might notice some funny numbers after it, like this:

• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
• Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1952)
• Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
• Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965)
• Her Majesty The Queen in Right of Canada v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., [1985] 1 S.C.R. 295

These numbers are used to find a particular case if, for example, you wanted to look up a case (in the particular book it was printed in) at a law library, or do a search for the case over the Internet.

There is an important reason for having the citation number. There are many instances in which there is more than one case with the identical name. For example, if you wanted to look up the U.S. Supreme Court case of Miller v. California, you would find there are 4 cases (one [389 U.S. 968] decided in 1967, one [392 U.S. 616] in 1968, one [413 U.S. 15] in 1973 and one [418 U.S. 915] in 1974), some involving different people named Miller, and all involving different issues. By having the citation number, you can look up exactly which case you were interested in.

These examples (except for Big M Drug Mart, which is from the Supreme Court of Canada) are all from the U.S. Supreme Court. The example from the Supreme Court of Canada will be explained below (or supra, as lawyers would say).

U.S. Supreme Court

Let's examine Miranda v. Arizona 384 U.S. 436 (1966) and show what all the elements are. Some of this may be obvious but I'll explain all of it.

• The name of the case is shown Miranda v. Arizona
• followed by a number, a name, another number and a number in parenthesis. "384 U.S. 436 (1966)"
• The first number (384) represents the volume number of the book the court case is published in.
• The name in the middle ("U.S.") indicates the reporter where the case is found. Here, "U.S." stands for United States Reports, the official reporter of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.
• The second number (436) represents the first page in volume 384 where the opinion appears.
• The (1966) indicates the year the case was decided. Usually, the parentheses will also contain an abbreviation that indicates which court decided the case. However, in citations of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, only the year is required.

Therefore you'd find the decision, published in 1966, in volume 384 of United States Reports, beginning on page 436.

In the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, there are two other references. The first, "S.Ct.", refers to a private company's reprinting of Supreme Court decisions called the "Supreme Court Reporter". The other, "L.Ed.2d", refers to the second series of the "Lawyer's Edition," another privately printed set of volumes of court decisions. That case can be found in Volume 381, Page 479 of United States Reports, in Volume 85, page 1678 of the private Supreme Court Reporter, and also Series 2, Volume 14, Page 510 of the Lawyer's Edition.

So, as another example, for Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) if we went to a law library, we would find the case (which was decided in 1973) in volume 410 of United States Reports, starting on page 113.

U.S. State Court decisions

Here is a second example, this time for a state court decision:

• Jackson v. Commonwealth, 583 S.E.2d 780 (Va. App. 2003).

In this instance, the elements are:

• Jackson v. Commonwealth — the case name.
• 583 — the volume number of the reporter of decisions.
• S.E.2d — the specific reporter where the decision is published. This case can be found in the second series of the South Eastern Reporter, a regional reporter covering several southeastern states published by West Publishing Corporation as part of its National Reporter System.
• 780 — the first page in Volume 583 where the opinion appears.
• (Va. App. 2003) — indicates the court that decided the case, and the year. Va. App. indicates that the case was decided by the Court of Appeals of Virginia, the state's intermediate appellate court.

Canada's Supreme Court

In the Canadian Supreme Court case of Her Majesty The Queen in Right of Canada v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., [1985] 1 S.C.R. 295 (Technically this is incorrect; the practice in Canada is to use the letter "R" to represent all cases where the Sovereign, i.e. the Royal Queen (or King when the next English Monarch is crowned) is a plaintiff or defendant in a case, therefore, this case would be listed in the reporter as R v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., [1985] 1 S.C.R. 295)

• the case, named Her Majesty The Queen in Right of Canada v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd.
• would be found in the 1985 edition
• Volume 1 of
• the Supreme Court Reporter, the official reporter for the Supreme Court of Canada
• at page 295.

Types of Citations

There are two types of citations: proprietary and public domain citations. There are many citation guides; the most commonly acknowledged is called the Bluebook, published by students at several eminent law schools, led by Harvard Law School. Public domain citations are those which usually refer to the official reporters and not some kind of publication service such as Westlaw or LexisNexis or some particular legal journal or specialization specific reporter.

See also: Landmark case

See also

• German legal citation