Legal citation is the practice of crediting and referencing other documents or sources of authority in legal writing. The most common sources of authority to which legal writers will cite are court decisions (cases), statutes, regulations, government documents, treaties, and scholarly writing. A proper legal citation will typically give a reader information about how authoritative a source is, how strongly it supports the proposition for which it is offered, how old it is, and possibly other information. Here is an example citation to a U.S. court case:
Ehrlichman v. Sirica, 419 U.S. 1310, 1312 (Burger, Circuit Justice 1974)
This refers to a court case in which party Ehrlichman brought suit against party Sirica. It is reported in volume 419 of the U.S. reporter. The case report starts on page 1310, and the material that directly supports the proposition for which this authority is offered is on page 1312. (References to relevant material within the source, as 1312 is here, are called pin cites.) Justice Burger wrote the opinion in 1974 in his capacity as a Circuit Justice rather than as a Supreme Court Justice. This citation gives the reader helpful information about the cited authority. The case was decided by a Supreme Court Justice; the Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S., but this need not be the final word on the subject because the author was writing as a circuit justice. That also means that this source is binding authority only in the circuit in which Justice Burger served as circuit justice, so it need not have any impact at all in other circuits. The authority supports the proposition directly because it is not qualified with a signal. If it had offered only weak support for the proposition, the author should have preceded the cite with a qualifying signal like "e.g." or "cf." Finally, the authority is from 1974, so either the clear and enduring wisdom of this source has been venerated by the test of time or this clearly dated relic of another era is obviously ripe for revision, depending upon the needs of the writer.
Citation by country
Each country usually has at least one de facto citation standard that has been adopted by most of the country's institutions.
- Australian legal citation usually follows the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (commonly known as AGLC)
- Canadian legal citation usually follows the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (commonly called the McGill Guide)
- U.S. legal citation follows either the Bluebook standard or the competing ALWD Citation Manual
- Dutch legal citation follows the Leidraad voor juridische auteurs [1] (commonly known as Leidraad)
- Citation of United Kingdom legislation is covered in Statutory Instrument Practice
