How to Cite Case Law

The APA Style Guide defers to the Bluebook, the legal field citation guide for citing laws and other legal documentation. While there are slight differences of citation within and between Federal and State Courts, this general formula for creating accurate legal citations will allow your reader to track down your references.

APA also suggests starting with the court that decided the case and following relevant examples from that court.

References and In-Text Citations:

General elements of a legal citation (quoted directly from the APA 7th edition):

• "The title or name of the case, usually one party versus another (e.g., Brown v. Board of Education);
• Citation, usually to a volume and page of one of the various sets of books where published cases can be found called reporters, which typically contain decisions of course in particular political divisions, which are called jurisdictions (e.g., Federal Reporter, Second Series);
• Precise jurisdiction of the court writing the decision (e.g., Supreme Court, New York Court of Appeals), in parentheses;
• Date of the decision, in parentheses (in the same set of parentheses as the jurisdiction if both are present); and
• URL from which you retrieved the case information (optional; this is not strictly required for legal citations but may aid readers in retrieval)."

Example of citations of Supreme Court case (also from APA 7th edition): 

• Reference: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483
• Parenthetical Citation: (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954)
• Narrative Citation: Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

for additional examples and support: