Constitutions

The Rule

Bluebook Rule 11 covers how federal and state constitutions should be cited in legal documents.

To cite to the federal constitution or a state's constitution, list the following three elements in order:

1. The state (or country) abbreviation;
2. The abbreviation for "Constitution"; and
3. The section or subdivision you are citing.

Consider, for example, the following federal constitutional provision

U.S. Const. art. 1, § 8

The elements are as follows:

Element	Result
State or country abbreviation	U.S.
Constitution abbreviation	Const.
Section or subdivision	art. 1, § 8

Books

Note: Books includes virtually all printed matter except periodicals (below) case reporters, statutes, and encyclopedias. It also includes reports and white papers that appear online.

The Rule

Bluebook Rule 15 covers how books, treatises and pamphlets should be cited in legal documents.

How to Cite Books

To cite to books, treatises or pamphlets, list the following six elements in order:

1. The volume number (if the title has more than one volume);
2. The authors' name full as it appears on the title page;
3. The title of the book (this must be underlined or italicized);
4. The page number, section number or paragraph number;
5. The edition number if the book is past its first edition; and
6. The year of publication as noted on the back of the title page.

Consider, for example, the following federal constitutional provision

9C Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2552 (3d ed. 2008)

The elements are as follows:

Element	Result
Volume number	9C
Author's name	Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller,
Title	Federal Practice and Procedure
Section number	§ 2552
Edition number (in parenthesis)	(3d ed.
Date of publication (in parentheses)	2008)

Note: Not all books will contain all the elements listed above. In those instances, list only the applicable elements in the proper order.

Note: According to B1 (Bluepages, p. 3), publication names can be underlined OR set in italics. Underlining is the more common convention. This Guide will use underlining for all appropriate case, publication and title citation examples. Please check with your Legal Research & Writing or U.S. Legal Discourse instructor to determine whether underlining or italics is the proper citation format.

Periodicals

Note: Periodicals includes law reviews, newspapers, magazines and journals. Due to the distinct nature of how law journals and law reviews should be cited, this Guide will illustrate them separately from the illustrations for newspapers and magazines.

The Rule

Bluebook Rule 16 covers how law reviews, newspapers, magazines and journals should be cited in legal documents.

How to Cite Periodicals: Law Reviews and Law Journals

To cite to law reviews or law journals, list the following six elements in order:

1. The authors' name full as it appears in the article;
2. The title of the article or headline (this must be underlined or italicized );
3. Volume number of the law review;
4. The abbreviated name of the law review;
5. The page number of the article's first page; and
6. The law review's year of publication.

Consider, for example, the following federal constitutional provision

Dan L. Burk & Julie E. Cohen, Fair Use Infrastructure for Rights Management Systems, 15 Harv. J.L. & Tech. 41 (2001)

The elements are as follows:

Element	Result
Authors' names	Dan L. Burk & Julie E. Cohen,
Title	Fair Use Infrastructure ...
Volume of law review	15
Abbreviation for law review	Harv. J.L. & Tech. (for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology)
First page	73
Date of publication (in parentheses)	(2001)

How to Cite Periodicals: Newspapers and Magazines

To cite to newspapers or magazines, list the following six elements in order:

1. The author's name full as it appears in the article;
2. The title of the article or headline (this must be underlined or italicized);
3. The full or abbreviated name of the newspaper or magazine;
4. The date of the article (for magazines, use the issue's cover date);
5. The word "at"; and
6. The first page of the article.

Consider, for example, the following newspaper article

The elements are as follows:

Element	Result
Author's name	David S. Cloud & Greg Jaffe,
Title	For Bush, The Path to War ...
Publication abbreviation	Wall St. J. (for the Wall Street Journal)
Date of the article	Sept. 3, 2002
"At" & page number	at A1

Internet Resources

It is rare that you will have to cite to an Internet resource during your first year of law school. Given the importance of online sources, we provide a simplified example on how to cite an online source.

The Rules

Bluebook Rule 18 covers freely available sources on the Internet as well as subscription databases such as Westlaw and Lexis.

Follow rule 18.2.2 when citing material that is only available online or when the printed source is so obscure that it is unavailable. Include the following elements:

1. Author's name
2. Title (both the item title and the institutional title)
3. Date of publication (in parentheses)
4. URL

Consider, for example, the following web page

Emily Bazelon, In Defense of the New Judicial Activists, Slate (Aug. 9, 2010), http://www.slate.com/id/2263347/.

The elements are as follows:

Element	Result
Author's name	Emily Bazelon
Title	In Defense of the New Judicial Activists, Slate
Date of publication	Aug. 9, 2010
URL	http://www.slate.com/id/2263347/

If you are citing to a print source, but a parallel citation to an online source would improve access to your reader, follow Rule 18.2.3 by following the rule for the type of source you are citing and then add a comma, the phrase "available at" and then the URL. For example:

Steven F. Huefner, Daniel P. Tokaji, & Edward B. Foley, From Registration to Recount: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States (2007), available at http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/joyce/index.php. 

Citing to the Record

Unlike Internet resources, you will have many opportunities to cite to a deposition, interrogatory or a trial transcript in order to develop facts for the briefs you submit for the Legal Research & Writing or U.S. Legal Discourse classes. As a general rule of thumb, you must cite to the record for every factual assertion you make in your brief.

The Rule

Bluebook B7 covers how to cite to the record in legal documents; the abbreviations that are used in citing to the record are listed in Bluepages Table BT 1, which begins on page 28.

How to Cite to the Factual Record

Citing to the record is based primarily on knowing the abbreviations in BT 1, which begins on page 28. For example, suppose you are asserting as a fact that a witness, Mr. Dames, saw a blue car speeding through the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and New Jersey Avenue in northwest Washington, D.C. The source of this fact is Mr. Dames' deposition testimony .

Your citation for this fact would approximate the following example:

According to Mr. Dames, he was waiting to cross New Jersey Avenue outside the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library at approximately 6:15 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2009, when he saw a blue car traveling at approximately 70 miles per hour through the intersection of New Jersey Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue. (Dames Dep. at 12.)

The key elements of this citation are

1. The name of the person who testified to the fact (or was the source of the written material from which the facts were taken);
2. The abbreviation for the source material (provided in BT 1); and
3. The page number where the fact can be found in the source material.

The elements are as follows:

Element	Result
Name of source	Dames
Abbreviation for source material	Dep.
Page number	at 12

Note: Citations to the record are always placed within parentheses.

International and Foreign Law

It is unlikely that you will cite to materials from an International Organization or another country in your first year of law school.

Rule 20 provides general information about citing materials from another country (foreign materials) and Table 2 has information and examples from particular countries. The nineteenth edition of the Bluebook has added many jurisdictions, including Iraq.

Rule 21 covers international materials such as Treaties and cases from multi-jurisdictional courts as well as materials from the UN, EU, and WTO.