Two page guide to basic bluebooking for case law in legal documents. Includes examples and relevant rules for federal and New York case law. Also includes examples of short forms.
Three page guide to basic bluebooking for the most commonly used secondary sources in law journal footnotes. Includes examples and relevant rules for books (single and multi-volume), law review articles, ALR, Am Jur, CJS, Black's, and Internet resources.
Two page guide to basic bluebooking for statutes in law journal footnotes. Includes examples and relevant rules for federal and New York statutes, and McKinney's practice commentaries.
One page chart of major differences between in-text citation (for court documents) and citation in footnotes (for law review articles). Includes comparison of text with citations in a legal document to the same text with citations in a law review articles. his handout will help you prepare for the law review write-on competition.
Includes a chart of the changes from the 20th Ed.
"The central function of a legal citation is to allow the reader to efficiently locate the cited source." The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation 1 (Columbia Law Review Ass'n et al. eds., 21st ed. 2020).
Citations in legal writing serve two purposes:
Avoid accidental plagiarism by citing a source for any idea that is not original.
There are many copies of the Bluebook on reserve. Ask for one at the Circulation Desk. You can subscribe to the Bluebook online here.
The white pages in the Bluebook address academic citation. This is citation for law reviews, journals, and other academic legal publications. These are the rules you will use for an academic paper or law review article.
The Bluepages section of the Bluebook addresses non-academic citation . It is citation for practitioners and law clerks. Here you will find guidance and examples of citation formats that you will use when writing your memoranda, briefs, and other court documents. This is the format for legal documents .
Page 7 has a helpful table that sets out the differences between the typeface used in non-academic and academic citation.
Quick Reference Guide to Law Review Footnotes. These rules are for academic legal citation. You will use them for writing your upper level papers and law review notes and comments.
Guide to the Bluepages rules and the academic (white pages) rules and tables.
Includes introduction to basic legal citation for practitioners and rules B1-B21. Also includes Blue Tables (BT) 1-2.
Quick Reference Guide to Court Documents and Legal Memoranda.
West's Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.)
Lawyer's Edition (L. Ed.)
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 442 (1966).
Envtl. Def. Fund v. EPA, 465 F.2d 528, 529 (D.C. Cir. 1972).
Duren v. Bennett, 275 F. Supp. 2d 374, 377 (E.D.N.Y. 2003).
Includes details on which court decisions are cited in each of the West regional reporters, federal reporters, and N.Y. state reporters.
New York Reports (N.Y., N.Y.2d, N.Y.3d)
New York Supplement (N.Y.S., N.Y.S.2d, N.Y.S.3d)
North Eastern Reporter (N.E., N.E.2d, N.E.3d)
People v. Rosario, 173 N.E.2d 881, 885 (N.Y. 1961).
Appellate Division Reports (A.D., A.D.2d, A.D.3d)
People v. Ray, 527 N.Y.S.2d 864, 865 (App. Div. 2d Dep't 1988).
Miscellaneous Reports (Misc., Misc. 2d, Misc. 3d)
People v. Arthur, 673 N.Y.S.2d 486, 487 (Sup. Ct. 1997).
*The trial level courts in New York include the Supreme Court, Court of Claims, Family Court, Surrogate's Court, County Courts, City Courts, Civil Court of the City of New York, Criminal Court of the City of New York, District Courts of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and Town and Village Justice Courts. Opinions of the Appellate Term, an intermediate appellate court in the 1st and 2nd Departments, are also published in Miscellaneous Reports.
To summarize: for New York, cite the New York Supplement for all courts except the highest court, the New York Court of Appeals. Cite the North Eastern Reporter for the New York Court of Appeals.
Single page chart of most commonly cited case reporters for New York State.United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.A.)
United States Code Service (U.S.C.S.)
18 U.S.C. § 231 (2016).
18 U.S.C.A. § 231 (West 2015).
18 U.S.C.S. § 231 (LexisNexis 2009).
McKinney's Consolidated Laws of New York) (McKinney)
Consolidated Laws Service (C.L.S.)
N.Y. P ENAL L AW § 120.10 (McKinney 2009).
N.Y. P ENAL L AW § 120.10 (Consol. 2009).
N.Y. P ENAL L AW § 120.10
N.Y. P ENAL L AW § 120.10
Bluebook rule 12.3.2 requires the publication date of the print or an authenticated electronic edition in the parenthetical for all state statutes. The date for any form of the U.S.C. is optional as of the 21st ed.
If the code is published by West (Thomson Reuters), look in the Thomson Reuters store and very often there will be a TOC with the dates of publication.
L INDA C. F ENTIMAN , B LAMING M OTHERS : A MERICAN L AW AND THE R ISK TO C HILDREN'S H EALTH 55 (2017).
3 M ICHAEL B. M USHLIN , R IGHTS OF P RISONERS § 2.2 (5th ed. 2017).
(rule 16.4, tables T10, T13)
B ENNETT L. G ERSHMAN , Constitutionalizing Ethics, 38 P ACE L. R EV. 40, 42 (2017).
17 A M . J UR. 2d Animals § 27 (2018).
R ESTATEMENT (S ECOND ) OF T ORTS § 46 (A M . L AW I NST . 1965).
R ESTATEMENT (S ECOND ) OF T ORTS § new section.
T ORTS § new section.
Marjorie A. Shields, Annotation, Snowboarder's Liability for Injuries to or Death of Another Person, 15 A.L.R.6th 161 (2006).
Adam Liptak , Wartime Internment of Japanese Looms Over Tr avel Ban Case, N.Y. T IMES , Apr. 17, 2018, at A12.
Adam Liptak, Travel Ban Case Is Shadowed by One of Supreme Court's Darkest Moments, N.Y. T IMES (Apr. 16, 2018),
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/us/politics/travel-ban-japanese-internment-trump-supreme-court.html.
Liptak, supra, at new page.
