Case citation
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- Various case citations redirect here. If you are looking for the actual text of an opinion, it is usually linked in the external links at the bottom of the article on that case.
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Case citation is the system used in common law countries such as the United States, England and Wales, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia and India to uniquely identify the location of past court cases in special series of books called reporters or law reports. Whilst case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, they generally contain the same key information.
Where cases are published in bound volumes the citation will contain:
- the title of the reports;
- the volume number;
- page number; and
- year of decision.
In some report series, for example in England and Australia, the volumes are not numbered independently of the year: thus the year and volume number (usually no greater than 4) are required to identify which book of the series has the case reported within its covers. In citations of this type it is usual for square brackets '[year]' to be applied to the year (which may not be the year that the case was decided: for example, a case decided in December 2001 may have been reported in 2002).
The Internet brought with it the opportunity for courts to publish their decisions on web sites. Decisions of courts from all over the world can now be found through the website WorldLII [1] and its member institutes.
Most decisions of courts are not published in printed law reports. The expense of typesetting and publishing them has limited the printed law reports to the significant cases. Internet publishing of court decisions resulted in a flood of information. The result was that a medium-neutral citation system had to be adopted. This usually contains the following information:
- year of decision
- the abbreviated title of the court; and
- the decision number (not the court file number)
Rather than utilising page numbers for pin-point references, which would depend upon particular printers and browsers, pin-point quotes refer to paragraph numbers.
[edit] United States
The standard case citation format in the United States is:
- Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
where:
- Roe v. Wade is the name of the case, (the first name Roe is the name of the plaintiff, who is the party who filed the suit for an original case, or the appellant, the party appealing in a case being appealed from a lower court; and Wade is the name of the defendant, the party responding to the suit, or the appellee, the party responding to the appeal.)
- 410 is the volume number of the "reporter" in which the Court's written opinion in the Roe v. Wade is published ,
- U.S. is the abbreviation of the reporter, here "U.S." stands for United States Reports,
- 113 is the page number (in volume 410 of United States Reports) where the opinion begins, and
- 1973 is the year in which the court rendered its decision.
These numbers are used to find a particular case, both when looking up a case in a reporter and when accessing it electronically on the Internet or through LexisNexis or Westlaw.
This format also allows different cases with the same parties to be easily differentiated. For example, looking for the U.S. Supreme Court case of Miller v. California would yield four cases, some involving different people named Miller, and each involving different issues.
[edit] United States Supreme Court
Cases from the Supreme Court of the United States are officially printed in the United States Reports. A citation to the United States Reports looks like this:
- Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1952)
- Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)
Many court decisions are published by more than one reporter. A citation to two or more reporters for a given court decision is called a "parallel citation." For U.S. Supreme Court decisions, there are several unofficial reporters, including the Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) and the Lawyer's Edition (L. Ed.), which are printed by private companies and provide further annotations to the opinions of the Court. Although a citation to the latter two is not required, some attorneys and legal writers prefer to cite all three case reporters at once:
- Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965)
The "2d" after the L. Ed. signifies the second series of the Lawyers' Edition. United States case reporters are sequentially numbered, but the volume number is never higher than 999. When volume 1,000 is reached (the threshold in earlier years was lower), the volume number is reset to 1 and a "2d" is appended after the reporter's abbreviation (American lawyers have a tradition of using "2d" and "3d" rather than "2nd" and "3rd"). Some case reporters are in their third series, and a few are approaching their fourth.
Some very old Supreme Court cases have odd-looking citations, such as Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803). The "(1 Cranch)" refers to the fact that, before there was a reporter series known as the United States Reports compiled by the Supreme Court's Reporter of Decisions, cases were gathered, bound together, and sold by private individuals who had contracted with the Court for the right to do so. In this case, the case was first reported in an edition by William Cranch, who was responsible for publishing Supreme Court reports from 1801 to 1815. Such reports, named for the individual who gathered them and hence call "nominative reports," existed from 1790 to 1874.
When a case has been decided, but not yet published in the case reporter, the citation may note the volume but leave blank the page of the case reporter until it is determined. For example, Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. ___ (2006).
See the Supreme Court of the United States Reporter of Decisions for other edition names.
In the caption of a Supreme Court case, the first name listed is the name of the appealing party, followed by the party responding to the appeal. In most cases, the appealing party was the losing party in the prior court. This is the same practice used in cases in the federal courts of appeal.
[edit] Lower federal courts
United States court of appeals cases are published in the Federal Reporter (F., F.2d, or F.3d). United States district court cases and cases from some specialized courts are published in the Federal Supplement (F. Supp. or F. Supp. 2d). Both are published by Thomson West; they are technically unofficial reporters, but have become widely accepted as the de facto "official" reporters of the lower federal courts because of the absence of a true official reporter. (Of the federal appeals and district courts, only one, the D.C. Circuit, has an official reporter, and even that one is rarely used today.)
When lower federal court opinions are cited, the citation includes the name of the court. This is placed in the parentheses immediately before the year. Some examples:
- Geary v. Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish School, 7 F.3d 324 (3d Cir. 1993) - a case in the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
- Glassroth v. Moore, 229 F. Supp. 2d 1290 (M.D. Ala. 2002) - a case in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama
[edit] State courts
State court decisions are published in several places. Many states have their own state reporter, which publishes decisions of that state's highest court. These reporters have the same abbreviation as that state.
- Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339 (1928) - a case in the New York Court of Appeals
In addition to the official reporters, Thomson West publishes several series of "regional reporters" which cover several states each. These are the North Eastern Reporter, Atlantic Reporter, South Eastern Reporter, Southern Reporter, South Western Reporter, North Western Reporter, and Pacific Reporter. California, Illinois, and New York also each have their own line of West reporters, because of the large volume of cases generated in those states. Some smaller states (like South Dakota) have stopped publishing their own official reporters, and instead have certified the appropriate West regional reporter as their "official" reporter.
Here are some examples of how to cite West reporters:
- Jackson v. Commonwealth, 583 S.E.2d 780 (Va. Ct. App. 2003) - a case in the Virginia Court of Appeals (an intermediate appellate court) published in the South Eastern Reporter
- Foxworth v. Maddox, 137 So. 161 (Fla. 1931) - a case in the Florida Supreme Court published in the Southern Reporter
- People v. Brown, 282 N.Y.S.2d 497 (1967) - a case in the New York Court of Appeals (New York's highest court) published in the New York Supplement. The case also appears in West's regional reporter: People v. Brown, 229 N.E.2d 192 (N.Y. 1967).
Abbreviations for lower courts vary by state, as each state has its own system of trial courts and intermediate appellate courts.
When a case appears in both an official reporter and a regional reporter, either citation can be used. Many lawyers prefer to include both citations. Some state courts require that parallel citations (in this case, citing to both the official reporter and an unofficial regional reporter) be used when citing cases from any court in that state's system.
Some states, notably California and New York, have their own citation systems that differ significantly from the various federal and national standards. Citations in California style put the year between the names of the parties and the reference to the case reporter. Citations in New York style wrap the year in brackets instead of parentheses. Both New York and California wrap an entire citation in parentheses when it is used as a stand-alone sentence. New York puts the terminating period outside the parentheses, but California puts it inside. New York wraps just the reporter and page references in parentheses when the citation is used as a clause.
Either way, both state styles differ from the national/Bluebook style of simply dropping in the citation as a separate sentence without further adornment. Both systems use less punctuation and spacing in their reporter abbreviations.
For example, assuming that it is being placed as a stand-alone sentence, the Brown case above would be cited (using the official reporter) to a New York court as:
- (People v. Brown, 20 NY2d 238 [1967]).
And, again, as a stand-alone sentence, the famous Greenman product liability case would be cited to a California court as:
- (Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57.) [2]
Like the United States Supreme Court, some very old state case citations include an abbreviation of the name of either the private publisher or a state-appointed officer who collected the cases. For example, the citation in Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175 (1804), is an abbreviation for volume 3 of Caines' Reports, page 175, named for George Caines, who had been appointed to report New York cases. Most states gave up this practice in the mid- to late-1800s, but Delaware persisted until 1920.
[edit] Unpublished decisions
A growing number of court decisions are not published in case reporters. For example, only 7% of the opinions of the California intermediate courts (the Courts of Appeal) are published each year. This is mainly because the editors of reports choose only significant decisions for publication, due to the cost of publishing and the importance of avoiding information overload. It is also argued that this is in part because in many states, especially California, the legislature has failed to expand the judiciary to keep up with population growth (for various political and fiscal reasons). To deal with their crushing caseloads, many judges prefer to write shorter-than-normal opinions that dispose of minor issues in the case in a sentence or two. They avoid publishing such abbreviated opinions, however, so as not to risk creating bad precedents.
Attorneys have several options in citing "unpublished" decisions:
- For recently-decided cases which will eventually be published, the docket number from the court can be used as a citation.
- Cases which are intentionally left officially unpublished are nonetheless often "published" on computer services, such as LexisNexis and Westlaw. These services have their own citation formats based on serial numbers (issued sequentially from 1 as documents are added to the database each year). A Westlaw citation looks like this: Fuqua Homes, Inc. v. Beattie, No. 03-3587, 2004 WL 2495842 (8th Cir. November 8, 2004).
Some court systems—such as the California state court system and the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—forbid attorneys to cite unpublished cases as precedent. Since 2004, federal judges have been debating whether the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (FRAP) should be amended so that unpublished cases in all circuits can be cited as precedent. In 2006, the Supreme Court, over the objection of several hundred judges and lawyers, adopted a new Rule 32.1 of FRAP requiring that federal courts allow citation of unpublished cases effective January 1, 2007. The rule will take effect unless the United States Congress passes legislation to the contrary.[1]
[edit] Vendor-neutral citations
With the rise of the web, many courts placed new cases on websites. Some were published while others never lost their "unpublished" status. The major legal citation systems required cites to the officially published page numbers, in which publishers such as West Publishing claimed a copyright interest. (In view of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, that the mere alphabetical listing of telephone subscribers was an inadequate amount of effort to be valid to obtain copyright, the claim of copyright on page numbering of court decisions is probably not valid.)
A vendor-neutral citation movement led to provisions being made for citations to web-based cases and other legal materials. A few courts modified their rules to specifically take into account cases "published" on the web.
[edit] Pinpoint citations
In practice, most lawyers go one step farther, once they have developed the correct citation for a case using the rules discussed above. Most court opinions contain holdings on multiple issues, so lawyers need to cite to the page that contains the specific holding they wish to invoke in their own case. Such citations are known as pinpoint citations, or "pin cites" for short.
For example, in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the word "person" as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn. That particular holding appears on page 158 of the volume in which the Roe decision was published. A full pin cite to Roe for that holding would be as follows:
- Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 158 (1973).
And a parallel cite to all three U.S. Supreme Court reporters, combined with pin cites for all three, would produce:
- Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 158, 93 S. Ct. 705, 729, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147, 180 (1973).
But in its opinions, the Court usually provides a direct pin cite only to the official reporter:
- Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 158, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973).
Even then, such citations are still quite lengthy, and obviously look quite mysterious and intimidating to laypersons when they try to read court opinions. Since the 1980s, there has been an ongoing debate among American judges as to whether they should relegate such lengthy citations to footnotes to improve the readability of their opinions. Most judges do relegate some citations to footnotes (though Justice Stephen Breyer's refusal to use footnotes in his opinions is well-known).
[edit] Types of citations
There are two types of citations: proprietary and public domain citations. There are many citation guides; the most commonly acknowledged is called the Bluebook, published by students at several eminent law schools, led by Harvard Law School. The ALWD Citation Manual is a recent (as of 2004) publication that is quickly winning supporters. Public domain citations are those which usually refer to the official reporters and not some kind of publication service such as Westlaw or LexisNexis or some particular legal journal or specialization specific reporter.
States with their own unique style for court documents and case opinions also publish their own style guides which include information on their citation rules.
[edit] References
- ^ McDonald, Molly, "Door slowly opens for unpublished opinions", ABA Journal eReport, April 21, 2006.
[edit] External links
- American Association of Law Libraries Legal Citation Guide
- Introduction to Basic Legal Citation by Peter Martin
- FindLaw for Legal Professionals
Law By State
[edit] England and Wales
The standard case citation format in England and Wales is:
Style of cause | (year of decision), | [year of report] | volume | report | (series) | page | jurisdiction/court |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Donoghue v Stevenson, | [1932] | A.C. | 562 | (H.L.). | |||
R v Dudley and Stephens, | (1884) | 14 | Q.B.D. | 273. |
In England and Wales as with most other Commonwealth countries, the abbreviation "R" for rex (king) or regina (queen), is used for cases in which the state is a party (typically criminal cases or judicial review cases). Square brackets "[ ]" are used when the year is essential to locating the report (e.g. the official law reports either - as with Donoghue v Stevenson, above - do not have volume numbers or, if there are multiple volumes in a single year, they are numbered 1, 2, etc.). Round brackets "( )" are used when the year is not essential but is useful for information purposes, e.g. in reports which have a cumulative volume number such as R v Dudley and Stevens, above.
[edit] Law Reports
The term "reporter", meaning a law report or a series of them, is not widely used in England and Wales.
Before 1865, English courts used a large number of privately-printed reports, and cases were cited based on which report they appeared in. (This system was also used in the United States and other common law jurisdictions during that period).
In 1865, many English cases were reprinted in a set of volumes called English Reports, abbreviated E.R. Between 1865 and 1875, decisions were published in a single series of law reports simply known as the "Law Reports" (L.R).
Since 1875 the official law reports have been split into a number of different series, the current series are the Appeal Cases (A.C.), Chancery (Ch.), Family (Fam.) and Queen's Bench (Q.B.) (or King's Bench—K.B.—depending on the monarch of the time). These 4 series are cited in preference to all others in court. There are 2 main unofficial law reports which report all areas of law, the Weekly Law Reports (W.L.R.) and the All England Reports (All E.R.). In addition there are a number of unofficial specialist law reports which focus on a particular area, e.g. the Entertainment and Media Law Reports (E.M.L.R.) or the Criminal Appeal Reports (Cr. App. R.). See the table below for a list of the most common current and past law reports.
Abbreviation | Law Report | years |
---|---|---|
A. & E. | Admiralty and Ecclesiastical (L.R.) | 1865 - |
A.C. | Appeal Cases (L.R.) | 1890 - |
All E.R. | All England Law Reports | 1936 - |
B.C.L.C. | Butterworths Company Law Cases | 1983 - |
B.H.R.C. | Butterworths Human Rights Cases | 1996 - |
B.M.L.R. | Butterworths Medico-Legal Reports | ???? - |
C.C.R. | Criminal Cases Reserved (L.R.) | 1865 - 1875 |
Ch. | Chancery (L.R.) | 1891 - |
Ch. App. | Chancery Appeal(L.R.) | 1865 - 1874 |
Ch. D. | Chancery Division (L.R.) | 1875 - 1890 |
Con. L.R. | Construction Law Reports | 1985 - |
C.P. | Common Pleas (L.R.) | 1865 - 1876 |
Cr. App. Rep. | Criminal Appeal Reports | 1987 - |
E.C.H.R. | European Court of Human Rights Cases | 1960 - |
E.G.L.R. | Estates Gazette Law Reports | 1975 - |
Eq. | Equity Cases (L.R.) | 1865 - 1875 |
Ex. D. | Exchequer Division (L.R.) | 1875 - 1890 |
F.C.R. | Family Court Reports | 1987 - |
G.C.C.R. | Goode Consumer Credit Reports | 1882 - |
H.L. | House of Lords (L.R.) | 1866 - 1875 |
I.R.L.R. | Industrial Relations Law Reports | 1972 - |
I.P. & T. | Butterworths Intellectual Property and Technology Cases | 1999 - |
J.P. | Justice of the Peace Law Reports | 2003 - |
I.T.L.R. | International Tax Law Reports | 1998 - |
K.B. | King's Bench | 1901 - 1951 |
L.G.R. | Butterworths Local Government Reports | 1997 - |
L.R.C. | Law Reports of the Commonwealth | 1995 - |
O.P.L.R. | Occupational Pensions Law Reports | 1992 - |
P. & D. | Probate and Family | 1850 - |
P.C. | Prive Council (L.R.) | 1865 - 1874 |
P.L.R. | Estates Gazette Planning Law Reports | 1988 - |
Q.B. | Queen's Bench (L.R.) | 1952 - |
Q.B.D. | Queen's Bench Division (L.R.) | 1875 - 1890 |
R.P.C. | Reports of Patent Cases | 1939 - |
S.T.C. | Simon's Tax Cases | 1973 - |
T.C. | Official Tax Case Reports | 1883 - |
W.L.R. | Weekly Law Reports | 1953 - |
[edit] Simple Examples
The case usually known by the short form Furniss v. Dawson has the official citation [1984] A.C. 474, meaning that its report begins on page 474 of the 1984 volume of the official "Appeal Cases" reports, published by The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting. The same case can also be cited as [1984] 2 W.L.R. 226, meaning that a report of it can also be found beginning at page 226 of the second volume from 1984 of the Weekly Law Reports.
[edit] The Internet
There is now a free-access database of UK case law, BAILII, which is part of the WorldLII system referred to above. However it only contains relatively recent decisions (most decisions are in cases decided after 1996). It remains to be seen whether the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting will release the copyright on the older case decisions so that they can be published on BAILII. As a result most online research is still done on the subscription commercial sites Justis and Lexis. Even on these sites, cases are organised, and cited, by the volume and page numbers of the paper law reports from which they are derived.
[edit] External links
[edit] Canada
There are a number of citation standards in Canada. Many legal publishing companies and school have their own practice for citation. Since the late 1990s, however, there has been a convergence among much of legal community to a single standard which has been formulated in the "The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation", known as the "McGill Guide" after the McGill Law Journal who first published it. The following format reflects this standard.
The standard case citation in Canada looks like this:
- Hunter v. Southam, [1984] 2 S.C.R. 145.
The format can be broken into its component parts:
Style of cause | (year of decision), | [year of reporter] | volume | reporter | (series) | page | jurisdiction/court |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., | [1985] | 1 | S.C.R. | 295. | |||
R. v. Oakes, | [1986] | 1 | S.C.R. | 103. | |||
Re Canada Trust Co. and O.H.R.C. | (1990), | 69 | D.L.R. | (4th) | 321 | (Ont. C.A.). |
The Style of Cause is italicized as in all other countries and the party names are separated by "v." (english) or "c." (french). Prior to 1984 the appellant party would always be named first. However, since then case names do not switch order when the case is appealed.
Undisclosed parties to a case are represented by initials (eg. R. v. R.D.S.). Criminal cases are prosecuted by the Crown which is always represented by "R.". Constitutional references are always entitled "Reference Re" followed by the subject title.
Usually either the year of the decision or the year of the reporter is cited, but not usually both. Only if they are different years can they both be cited at the same time. If they are the same, one should always use the reporter year.
Where available cases should be cited with their neutral citation immediately after the style of cause and preceding the print citation. For example,
- Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General), 2005 SCC 35, [2005] 1 S.C.R. 791.
This format was introduced in 2006. Prior to this format, the opposite order of parallel citation was used.
[edit] Reporters
Abbreviation | Reporter | years |
---|---|---|
A.R. | Alberta Reports | 1976 - |
B.C.L.R. | British Columbia Law Reports | 1977 - |
D.L.R. (4th) | Dominion Law Reports | 1984 - |
F.C. | Federal Court Reports | 1971 - |
N.B.R. (2d) | New Brunswick Reports | 1969 - |
N.S.R. (2d) | Nova Scotia Reports | 1969 - |
O.R. (3d) | Ontario Reports | 1986 - |
S.C.R. | Supreme Court Reports | 1970 - |
[edit] Neutral Citation
In 1999 the Canadian Judicial Council adopted a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case a law report.
The standard format look like this:
Year of decision | Court identifier | Ordinal number |
---|---|---|
2000 | SCC | 1 |
There is a unique court identifier code for most courts. There are a few courts in Quebec and Ontario that have yet to adopt the system. A list of the court identifiers include:
Court Identifier | Court | from year |
---|---|---|
SCC | Supreme Court of Canada | 2000 |
FCT | Federal Court of Canada - Trial Division | 2001 |
FCA | Federal Court of Canada - Appeal Division | 2001 |
TCC | Tax Court of Canada | 2003 |
[edit] References
- Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 5th edition (McGill Law Journal) ISBN 0-459-24042-0, ISBN 0-459-24068-4 (this is not available online)
- Canadian Citation Committee Neutral Citation Standard for Case Law
[edit] Australia
The standard case citation format in Australia is:
Style of cause | (year of decision) | [year of reporter] | volume | reporter | (series) | page |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mabo & Ors v State of Queensland [No. 2] | (1992) | 175 | CLR | 1. |
[edit] Reports
Abbreviation | Reporter | Years |
---|---|---|
AAR | Administrative Appeals Reports | - |
ALJR | Australian Law Journal Reports | - |
ALR | Australian Law Reports | 1983 - |
CLR | Commonwealth Law Reports | 1903 - |
FLC | Family Law Cases | |
FLR | Federal Law Reports | - |
NSWLR | New South Wales Law Reports | - |
Qld R | Queensland Reports | - |
VR | Victorian Reports | - |
[edit] Neutral Citation
Australian courts and tribunals have now adopted a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case in a law report. Most cases are now published on AustLII using neutral citations.
The standard format looks like this:
Year of decision | Court identifier | Ordinal number |
---|---|---|
[2005] | HCA | 1 |
There is a unique court identifier code for most courts. The court and tribunal identifiers include:
Court Identifier | Court |
---|---|
HCA | High Court of Australia |
FCA | Federal Court of Australia |
FCAFC | Federal Court of Australia - Full Court (Appeals bench) |
FamCA | Family Court of Australia |
FMCA | Federal Magistrates' Court of Australia |
FMCAfam | Federal Magistrates' Court of Australia, family law decisions |
AAT | Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia |
[edit] References
[edit] New Zealand
The standard case citation format in New Zealand is:
Style of cause | (year of decision) | [year of reporter] | volume | reporter | page |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Taylor v New Zealand Poultry Board | [1984] | 1 | NZLR | 394 | |
R v Howse | (2005) | 21 | CRNZ | 823 |
[edit] Reporters
Abbreviation | Reporter | Years |
---|---|---|
NZLR | New Zealand Law Reports | 1881 - |
CRNZ | Criminal Reports of New Zealand | 1983 - |
NZAR | New Zealand Administrative Reports | 1976- |
NZFLR | New Zealand Family Law Reports | 1981- |
DCR | District Court Reports | 1981- |
Additionally, a number of other report series exist for specialist areas such as Family, Employment and Tax Law.
[edit] Neutral Citation
New Zealand courts and tribunals have begun to adopt a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case in a law report. Most cases are now published on AustLII using neutral citations, although such formats are only used for Court of Appeal and Supreme Court judgments. Outside of AustLII, only the Supreme Court uses such citations in relation to its own judgments.
The standard format looks like this:
Year of decision | Court identifier | Ordinal number |
---|---|---|
[2005] | NZSC | 1 |
There is a unique court identifier code only for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. These identifiers are:
Court Identifier | Court |
---|---|
NZSC | Supreme Court of New Zealand |
NZCA | New Zealand Court of Appeal |
[edit] India
India's vast federated judicial system admits to a large number of reporters, each with their own style of citation. There are over 200 law reports in India – subject-wise and state(province)-wise; authorized and unauthorized.
[edit] Supreme Court of India
There is no official reporter for Supreme Court decisions. However, some reporters have been authorised to publish the Court's decisions. The All India Reporter is an old and respected reporter that, in addition to the Supreme Court, also reports decisions of the various State High Courts. Other popular reporters include Supreme Court Cases, the Indian Law Reports, the Supreme Court Almanac and Judgements Today.
For instance, the case of Sebastian Hongray v. Union of India can be cited thus:
AIR 1984 SC 571 - where 'AIR' is the All India Reporter, '1984' is the year of judgement (AIR does not use a volume-based classification), 'SC' is the Supreme Court of India and '571' is the page number;
(1984) 1 SCC 339 - which corresponds to the Year (of publication), Volume (of the reporter), Supreme Court Cases (name of the reporter)and Page Number (within the volume);
1984 Cri LJ 289 (SC) - which corresponds to Year (of publication), Criminal Law Journal (name of reporter) and Page Number (within the 1984 volumes). The forum is indicated in simple paranthesis.
A citation of the 'Supreme Court Almanac' looks like this - [[Additional Secretary, Government of India v. Alka Subhash Gadia]] (1990) 2 Scale 1352; and, 'Judgements Today' like this - Premium Granites v. State of Tamil Nadu JT (1994) 1 SC 374.
The 'Supreme Court Cases (SCC)' published supplementary reports for a few years in the early 1990s. Those citations looked like this - Federation of Mining Associations v. State of Rajasthan1992 Supp (2) SCC 239, which points to page 239 of the Second Supplementary Volume of the SCC reports in the year 1992.
The SCC also have a separate series of subject-based reporting of the decisions of the Supreme Court. For instance - Rathinam Nagbhushan Patnaik v. Union of India 1994 SCC (Cri) 740, which refers to the SCC Criminal Reports, and Delhi Transport Corporation v. Mazdoor Congress 1991 SCC (L&S) 1213, which refers to the SCC Labour & Services Reports.
[edit] High Courts
All India Reporter is the most popular nation-wide reporter for decisions of the High Courts. An AIR High Court citation looks like this - Surjya Kumar Das v. Maya Dutta AIR 1982 Cal 222, where 'Cal' refers to the High Court of Calcutta (the capital of the State of West Bengal). This is a uniform style for AIR High Court reports. Only the shortened indicator of the forum changes for different High Courts.