Citing United States Supreme Court Cases
How Law Students Should Follow Legal Bluebook Citation Style
Apr 29, 2009
When citing an opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court, you should follow the general rules for federal court citation. The main difference is the name of the reporter always provides the court and jurisdiction, so you can omit specific mentions of them from the citation.
Parts of a Legal Citation to a U.S. Supreme Court Case
The parts of a citation to the official reporter include:
- The name of the case (underlined or italicized);
- The volume of the reporter in which the case appears;
- The reporter name, abbreviated according to the Bluebook (U.S.);
- The page where the case appears in the reporter; and
- The year when the court decided the case.
Take a look at the following citation. The rest of this article reviews the parts of this citation in detail.
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
Case Names in Supreme Court Bluebook Citations
When a party is a person, use only the last name of the person. When there are multiple plaintiffs or multiple defendants in a case, use the name of the first one.
Here, “Roe v. Wade” is the name of the case.
In court documents, the case name should always be underlined or italicized.
When a party is a company, an organization, or other type of entity, use its complete name, but abbreviate words in the name according to Rule 10 and as provided in table T.6.
For example, if your parties are National First Southern Engineering Coalition (plaintiff) and Azalea Limited Company (defendant), the case name is: Nat’l First S. Eng’g Coal. v. Azalea Ltd.
Drop the word “company” from the defendant’s name due to Rule 10.2.1.(h), which allows only one corporate designation per party name.
Including the Volume and Name of the Case Reporter in a Bluebook Supreme Court Citation
Where possible, when you cite a U.S. Supreme Court case, you should cite to the official Supreme Court reporter, United States Reports. The reporter’s abbreviation is simply “U.S.”
The volume number of the reporter should precede its name. In the example above, the volume is 410.
Page Numbers in Supreme Court Case Citations Under Bluebook Rules
After the reporter name, you should insert the number of the first page on which the case appears. If you are citing a particular page in the opinion, called a pinpoint cite, you should insert that page number in the citation.
For example: Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 116 (1973).
Adding the Supreme Court's Decision Date in Bluebook Legal Citations
The “1973” in the parentheses in the citation tells you the year of the court's decision.
Unofficial Citations to Supreme Court Cases Under the Bluebook Rules
If the government has not yet printed the United States Reports reporter that includes the case you want to cite, you will need to cite to an unofficial reporter: either the Supreme Court Reporter or the United States Supreme Court Reports—Lawyer’s Edition.
The only difference in the citations is the reporter name. Structurally, the rest of the citations stays the same.
The Supreme Court Reporter is abbreviated to “S. Ct.” You should always add a space between the S. and the Ct.
“L. Ed. 2d” is the proper abbreviation for the United States Supreme Court Reports—Lawyer's EditionThe number at the end may vary depending on the series of the reporter. Note that no period follows the number, and the parts of the reporter name are spaced.
If you follow these rules, you will be well on your way to mastering case citation using the legal BluebookFor more information on case citations according to the Bluebook, see these articles discussing how to cite a published federal court case and how to cite a published state court case.
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