Legal Studies

The legal citation for a statutory law can be to the the Public Law / Statute version or to the codified version of the law.

The legal citation for a statutory law can be to the the Public Law / Statute version or to the codified version of the law. A Public law citation has the abbreviation P.L. (or Pub. L.), the Congress number, and the law number.

The legal citation for a case identifies the name of the court reporter in which the opinion is published and where the case can be found.

Parallel Citations

Opinions may be published in more than one reporter. These are called "parallel citations." All of these are citations to the same case: REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA v. BAKKE

Bibliographic citation

To identify a case in a research paper, use the name of the case and a legal citation taken from a print reporter. 

A citation to the Federal Register uses the volume number, the abbreviation "F.R." or "Fed. Reg.", the page number where the text begins, and the full date in parentheses.

70 F.R. 20477 (April 20, 2005)
70 [voume number] F.R. [Federal Register] 20,477 [page number] (April 20, 2005) [date]

A citation to the Code of Federal Regulations uses the title number, the abbreviation "C.F.R.", the part and/or section number, and the year of the latest revision of the title, in parentheses.

40 C.F.R. 180.434 (2005)
40 [title number] C.F.R. [Code of Federal Regulations] 180.434 [part 180, section 434] (2005) [revision date]