The Bluebook is considered as the
official referencing style in the American legal profession. The system comes
in very handy when citing resources among law scholars and practitioners.
Currently in its 21st edition, the Bluebook can be described as a
little bit challenging and unwieldy for first-timers.
Even with the bottlenecks, the
Bluebook remains one of the most crucial materials that all students in law
school must be acquainted to. Well, here’s a brief guide to the bluebook legal
citation format that every student in law school must be accustomed to:
Short form
citations
You may only use short form
citations after citing a particular authority in full once. Even though the
elements of a short-form citation in the Bluebook system will be flexible, it
will depend on the nature of authority being cited. However, the acceptable
short-forms will be considered in all entries.
You may use the abbreviation id. as a short form. In this case, id is used to reveal that the short-form
citation in question is of the same authority as the former.
Citing
court cases
You must include the following
elements when citing a court case in the Bluebook legal citation guide:
ü
Case
name
ü
The
source where the case was found
ü
The
court that decided the case
ü
The
time (year) when the decision of the case was made
You may include other parenthetical pieces of
information after you are done with the citation. Such information may include:
Ø
A
brief explanation of why the case is relevant to the topic under investigation
Ø
A
quotation from the case
o
You
may follow this information with the subsequent history of the case by
incorporating elements like the later affirmations attributed to the case
Nevertheless, you will be required
to make a general summary when citing the case name.
There are a few exceptions when
dealing with multiple defendants or plaintiffs. In this case, the Bluebook
system only mandates you to list the first party in each category. The names of
the other individuals attached to the case will be shortened to the surname
only. You MUST never include the first
or middle names, et al., “aka”, or initials.
Generally, the Bluebook system
gives you the permission to abbreviate the court case being cited to the
highest degree possible without altering with the necessary information. For
instance, the Bluebook recommends that procedural phrases should be abbreviated
as “in re”, or “Ex parte”.
Similarly, you may use certain
commonly understood abbreviations when dealing with commonly known parties like
“Univ.” to represent “University”; “F.R.D” for Federal Rules Deciosionsis and “W.D.Pa” for United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Remember, most of the sources and
courts will have their official abbreviation that must be used for the citation
purposes. Such citations are conspicuous and readily available for those who
desire to use them.
Note:
The page number used in case
citations in the Bluebook system will be the page where the litigation starts
in the source. However, the bluebook system provides room for referencing a
particular page alongsi0de the general case. In this case, you will have to
separate the page from the general with a comma. For instance, if you are
referencing a case that starts from page 45, but you specifically desire to
point a sentence that is eleven pages in, then the page number o-f your
citation will be “45,56.”
Generally,
court cases should take the fashion:
Case Name, Page number from the source
(Court year) (any additional information).
Example:
United States ex rel. Mayo Gerald v. Agents
of Satan, 54 F.R.D. 281 (W.D. Pa. 1975) (“plaintiff failed to include with his
complaint the required form of instructions for the U.S Marshal for directions as to service of
process”).
Similarly, the Bluebook system
grants you the allowance to shorten the case name by adopting the first party
alone, or even using the abbreviated form of the title of the first party.
However, this may not be very useful if the first party is a geographical unit,
governmental institution, or other creation of such caliber as there are very
many cases that tag the U.S government. Therefore, citing “United States”
doesn’t narrow down the case into a useful reference. In such cases, it would
be advisable tocite the second party’s name.
When citing a particular point of
the case, it is advisable to use the page number alone, while eliminating the
page number where the case starts.
Generally:
Case
Name in short form, Source at page number
Ex rel.
Mayo, 45 F.R.D at 271.
Citing
constitutions
The following abbreviations will
come in very handy when citing sections of a constitution:
Section
of the constitution |
Abbreviation
|
Article
|
art. |
Section
|
§ |
Amendment
|
amend. |
Preamble
|
pmbl. |
Paragraph
|
para
|
Part
|
pt. |
The Bluebook system requires you to
use an abbreviated title when citing a constitution of a government entity then
specifies the part of the document where you are referring to. However, you
need to set the title of the constitution in small caps, with each subdivision
being separated using a comma in the order of decreasing size as shown below:
Title
of the Constitution subdivision, subdivision.
Tenn. Const. art. XX, §5.
The following format should apply
when citing a repelled or amended constitution:
U.S.
Const. amend. XVII (repealed 1935).
Here, the parenthesis is used to
denote the date of the fact.
Note: there are no short forms for
constitutional citations in the Bluebook system.
Citing
statutes, codes and laws
Citation involving federal
statutes, codes, and laws must include:
ü
Title
of the act or statute
ü
The
source where the statute was found
ü
Year
of enactment (for sessional laws) or year of publication for codes
ü
Sections
or chapters being referred to
The following format should be adopted when dealing
with federal statutes and codes:
Title
of the Act, Source § number (year).
Example:
The Guano Islands Act, 47 U.S.C.
ch. 11 §§1412-15 (2014).
Ga. Code Ann. § 37-9-14 (2013).