Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, but generally contain the same key information.
A legal citation is a "reference to a legal precedent or authority, such as a case, statute, or treatise, that either substantiates or contradicts a given position." Where cases are published on paper, the citation usually contains the following information: Court that issued the decision Report title Volume number Page, section, or paragraph number Publication year
In some report series, for example in England, Australia and some in Canada, 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 such citations, it is usual in these jurisdictions to apply square brackets "" to the publication 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 websites and most published court decisions now appear in that way. They can be found through many national and other websites, such as WorldLII and AfricanLII, that are operated by members of the Free Access to Law Movement.
The resulting flood of non-paginated information has led to numbering of paragraphs and the adoption of neutral citation systems to identify decisions independently of medium or publisher. These usually contain the following information: Year of decision Abbreviated title of the court Decision number (not the court file number) Rather than utilizing page numbers for pinpoint references, which would depend upon particular printers and browsers, pinpoint quotations refer to paragraph numbers.
Pronunciation of case titles In common law countries with an adversarial system of justice, the names of the opposing parties are separated in the case title by the abbreviation v (usually written as v in Commonwealth countries and usually as v. in the U.S.) of the Latin word versus, which means against. When case titles are read out loud, the v can be pronounced, depending on the context, as and, against, versus, or vee.
Commonwealth pronunciation Most Commonwealth countries follow English legal style:
Civil cases are pronounced with and. For example, Smith v Jones would be pronounced "Smith Jones".School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) Library, Understanding UK Case Law , Research Guide (London: SOAS Library, August 2012), pp. 5–6. 'The small letter "v" is an abbreviation of versus. However, the term "and" is used to pronounce it, rather than "v" or "versus", e.g. the case "Smith v Jones" would be pronounced "Smith and Jones." . . . A [criminal] case can be pronounced in a number of ways, e.g. "R. v Smith" would be pronounced either "the Crown against Smith", or it can be referred to as simply "Smith." ' Criminal cases are pronounced with against. For example, R v Smith would be pronounced "the Crown Smith". The Latin words Rex, Regina, and versus are all rendered into English. In Australia and the United Kingdom, versus and vee are arguably incorrect. In Scotland, both civil and criminal cases are pronounced using "against" in the place of "v".
American pronunciation In the United States, there is no consensus on the pronunciation of the abbreviation v. This has led to much confusion about the pronunciation and spelling of court cases:
Versus is most commonly used, leading some newspapers to use the common abbreviation vs. in place of the legal abbreviation v. Against is a matter of personal style. For example, Warren E. Burger and John Paul Stevens preferred to announce cases at the Supreme Court with against. And is used by some law professors, but other law professors regard it as an affectation. Pronouncing the letter vee () is used almost exclusively for Roe v. Wade, probably due to its widespread invocation in American culture. This pronunciation—which is discouraged within the legal profession—is otherwise rare among the general public, even when referring to other well-known cases like Brown v. Board of Education.
During oral arguments in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the participants demonstrated the lack of consensus on the pronunciation of "v.", using different pronunciations. Solicitor General Ken Starr even managed to use all three of the most common American pronunciations interchangeably:
Australia Legal citation in Australia generally mirrors the methods of citation used in England. A widely used guide to Australian legal citation is the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, commonly known as AGLC, published jointly by the Melbourne University Law Review and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.
The standard case citation format in Australia is:
Style of cause (year of decision) [year of report] volume report (series) page Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1.
As in Canada, there has been divergence among citation styles. There exist commercial citation guides published by Butterworths and other legal publishing companies, academic citation styles and court citation styles. Each court in Australia may cite the same case slightly differently. There is presently a movement in convergence to the comprehensive academic citation style of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation published jointly by the Melbourne University Law Review and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.
Reports
Abbreviation Report YearsAARAdministrative Appeals Reports –ALJRAustralian Law Journal Reports –ALR Australian Law Reports1983 –CLRCommonwealth Law Reports1903 –FLCFamily Law Cases –FLRFederal Law Reports –NSWLRNew South Wales Law Reports –Qd RQueensland Reports –SASRSouth Australian State Reports –VRVictorian Reports –WARWestern Australian Reports 1899–
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.Austlii.edu.au
The standard format looks like this: Year of decisionCourt identifierOrdinal numberHCA1 So the above-mentioned Mabo case would then be cited like this: Mabo v Queensland (No 2) HCA 23.
There is a unique court identifier code for most courts. The court and tribunal identifiers include: Court IdentifierCourtHCAHigh Court of AustraliaFCAFederal Court of AustraliaFCAFCFederal Court of Australia – Full Court (appeals bench)FamCAFamily Court of AustraliaFCCAFederal Circuit Court of Australia (formerly Federal Magistrates Court of Australia)FMCAFederal Magistrates Court of AustraliaFMCAfamFederal Magistrates Court of Australia, family law decisionsAATAdministrative Appeals Tribunal (federal)NSWSCSupreme Court of New South WalesNSWCANew South Wales Court of AppealNSWCCANew South Wales Court of Criminal AppealNSWDCDistrict Court of New South WalesWASCSupreme Court of Western AustraliaVSCSupreme Court of VictoriaVCCCounty Court of VictoriaVMCMagistrates' Court of VictoriaACTSCSupreme Court of the Australian Capital TerritoryACTMCMagistrates Court of the Australian Capital Territory
References Australian Guide to Legal Citation
Canada
Citation standards in Canada There are a number of citation standards in Canada. Many legal publishing companies and schools have their own standard for citation. Some courts have produced their own citation guides. For example, the courts in Saskatchewan have produced a bilingual citation guide that is to be used in all three Saskatchewan courts: Citation Guide for the Courts of Saskatchewan.Courts of Saskatchewan, Citation Guide for the Courts, Court Resources. Since the late 1990s, however, much of the legal community has converged to a single standard—formulated in The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation / Manuel canadien de la référence juridique,Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation / Manuel canadien de la référence juridique, 9th ed. (Carswell, 2018-06-29), . commonly known as the "McGill Guide" after the McGill Law Journal, which first published it.
More recently, in June 2024, CanLII announced a new, open access legal citation guide: the Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide ("COAL"), which is available at no charge on the CanLII system."The Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide is now accessible on CanLII", CanLII Blog, July 7, 2024.Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide, 2024 CanLIID 830. The COAL follows a similar system for citing cases.
The following format reflects these standards:
Hunter v Southam, 2 SCR 145.
Broken into its component parts, the format is: Style of cause (year of decision), [year of report] volume report (series) page jurisdiction/court. R v Big M Drug Mart Ltd, 1 SCR 295. R v Oakes, 1 SCR 103. Re Canada Trust Co and OHRC (1990),69DLR(4th)321(Ont CA).
The Style of Cause is italicized as in all other countries and the party names are separated by v (English; ) or (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 (e.g., R v RDS). Criminal cases are prosecuted by the Crown, which is always represented by R for Regina (queen) or Rex (king). Reference questions (advisory opinions) are always entitled Reference re followed by the subject title.
If the year of decision is the same as the year of the report and the date is a part of the reporter's citation, then the date need not be listed after the style of cause. If the date of the decision is different from the year of the report, then both should be shown.
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, 1 SCR 791.
This format was adopted as the standard in 2006, in the sixth edition of the McGill Guide. Prior to this format, the opposite order of parallel citation was used.
The seventh edition of the McGill Guide, published 2010-08-20, removes most full stop/period (".") characters from the citations, e.g., a citation to the Supreme Court Reports that previously would have been 1 S.C.R. 791, is now 1 SCR 791. Most full stops are also removed from styles of cause. The seventh edition also further highlights the significance of neutral citations (i.e., tribunal-assigned citations that are publisher-independent).
Reports
Abbreviation Report YearsAdmin LRAdministrative Law Reports1983–1991Admin LR (2d)Administrative Law Reports (second series)1992–1998Admin LR (3d)Administrative Law Reports (third series)1999–ANWTYTRAlberta, Northwest Territories & Yukon Tax Reporter1973–ACWSAll Canada Weekly Summaries1970–1979ACWS (2d)All Canada Weekly Summaries (second series)1980–1986ARAlberta Reports1976–CCLT (2d)Canadian Cases on the Law of TortsDLRDominion Law ReportsDLR (2d)Dominion Law Reports (second series)DLR (3d)Dominion Law Reports (third series) –1984DLR (4th)Dominion Law Reports (fourth series)1984–FCRFederal Court Reports1971–NBR (2d)New Brunswick Reports1969–NRNational ReporterNSR (2d)Nova Scotia Reports1969–OR (3d)Ontario Reports1986–SCRSupreme Court Reports1970–WWRWestern Weekly Reports1911–1950, 1971–WWR(NS)Western Weekly Reports (New Series)1950–1971
Neutral citation