Try Wonders for free
This guide covers how to cite sources in Bluebook format — the predominant legal citation style in American law schools, courts and journals.
The Official Source
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is compiled by the editors of The Columbia Law Review, The Harvard Law Review, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review and The Yale Law Journal — the attribution on legalbluebook.com's own copyright line. That line, "Content ©2005, 2007, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2025," dates the 22nd edition to 2025 and the 21st to 2020. Print and online access are sold at legalbluebook.com.
The Bluebook is paywalled and legalbluebook.com blocks automated requests, so this page does not quote its rules. Where a rule is stated below, it is quoted from Georgetown Law Library's Bluebook Guide, which reproduces it and is named at the point of use. Every authority used as an example is real: cases were checked in CourtListener today, pinpoint pages against the Library of Congress's official United States Reports scans, the law review article in Crossref, and the statutes against Cornell LII and California's legislative site.
Quick Overview
Georgetown's guide describes the book as consisting of "four main sections": the Bluepages, which give "condensed versions of the full rules" for practitioners; then "the full rules on citation and style"; then the tables of abbreviations and jurisdiction-specific sources; then an index. Case citation is governed by Rule 10, with Rule B10 as its Bluepages counterpart.
Cases
Cases are the foundation of legal citation. The format varies with the court.
U.S. Supreme Court
The reporter identifies the court, so no court abbreviation is needed:
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).
Page 495 is where the Court writes that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" — checked against the official United States Reports scan, not taken on trust.
Federal Court of Appeals
Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202 (2d Cir. 2015).
Federal District Court
Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc., 954 F. Supp. 2d 282 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).
State Court
In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal. 4th 757 (2008).
Case Citation Elements
- Case name
- Volume number
- Reporter abbreviation
- First page
- Pinpoint page, where you are citing a specific passage
- Court and year in parentheses (the court is omitted where the reporter makes it obvious)
Georgetown's guide directs readers to Tables 1, 6, 7 and 10 for the abbreviations a case citation needs; T6 in particular covers "Abbreviations for case names."
Statutes
Federal Statutes (U.S. Code)
42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Multiple sections:
18 U.S.C. §§ 1961–1968.
State Statutes
Cal. Penal Code § 187 (West 2024).
Give the publisher of an unofficial code in parentheses, and cite the official code where one exists.
Constitutions
U.S. Constitution
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
State Constitutions
Cal. Const. art. I, § 7.
Secondary Sources
Law Review Articles
Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890).
Books
The pinpoint page sits between the title and the parenthetical. It is shown as a placeholder here rather than invented:
Richard A. Posner, Economic Analysis of Law [page] (8th ed. 2011).
Restatements
The Restatement (Second) of Contracts was published by the American Law Institute in 1981. Because the section number and its content are what a reader would check, cite the section you actually relied on:
Restatement (Second) of Contracts § [number] (Am. L. Inst. 1981).
Short Forms
After the first full citation, use short forms.
Cases
Full: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954). Short: Brown, 347 U.S. at 495.
Statutes
Full: 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Short: § 1983.
Id.
Use "Id." when citing the same source as the immediately preceding citation.
¹ Brown, 347 U.S. at 495. ² Id. at 496.
Signals
Signals tell the reader how your authority relates to your proposition. The common ones:
- No signal — the source directly states the proposition
- See — the source supports but does not directly state it
- See also — additional support
- Cf. — the source supports by analogy
- Compare … with … — a comparison of authorities
- See generally — background
- But see — the source contradicts the proposition
The Bluebook prescribes both their meaning and the order in which multiple signals appear. Georgetown's guide maps "Introductory signals, order of signals, and order of authorities within signals" to Rules 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 — but it gives page numbers for the 20th edition it was written against, so check the rules in whichever edition you are using rather than relying on a remembered number.
Key Bluebook Conventions
- Typeface — per Georgetown's guide: "In court documents (briefs, motions) and legal memoranda, a full case name is usually italicized or underlined. In academic legal writing (i.e., a law review article), full case names are generally not underlined or italicized."
- Abbreviations — use the Bluebook's tables. T6 gives case-name abbreviations; T1 gives preferred federal and state sources and their abbreviations.
- Pinpoint citations — cite the page that actually contains the passage, and check it: 347 U.S. at 495.
- Parallel citations — some state courts require citations to both the official and the regional reporter.
- String citations — order authorities within a signal by jurisdiction and court hierarchy.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Wrong reporter — match the reporter to the court: U.S., F.3d, F. Supp. 3d.
- Missing pinpoints — give the specific page you are relying on.
- Reproducing a pinpoint you have not opened — a page number copied from a brief or generated by a tool is not a citation you can stand behind.
- Incorrect abbreviations — check the tables; "California" becomes "Cal.", not "CA."
- Forgetting court information — include the court abbreviation unless the reporter makes it obvious.
- Id. misuse — use "Id." only for the immediately preceding source.
Who Uses Bluebook?
The Bluebook is required or preferred for U.S. law school papers, law review and journal articles, federal court filings, most state court filings, legal memoranda and briefs. Some jurisdictions have their own citation rules that supplement or modify it, so check local rules before filing.
Bluebook vs. ALWD
| Element | Bluebook | ALWD |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Bluepages plus full rules and tables | 40 integrated guidelines |
| Primary use | Law reviews, courts | Law schools, practice |
| Output | — | Identical (per ALWD, to the 21st ed.) |
| Explanation | Compact | Expanded, with cross-references in Appendix 8 |
Sources for This Page
- legalbluebook.com (Internet Archive snapshot, 23 May 2026) — the 22nd edition, its 2025 copyright date and the four compiling journals.
- Georgetown Law Library. "Bluebook Guide." https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/bluebook — its "About the Bluebook" page (/bluebook/about) for the four-section structure, the abbreviation tables and the signal rules, and its "Citing Cases" page (/bluebook/citing-cases) for Rule 10/B10 and the typeface rule quoted above. Georgetown's guide is written against the 20th edition, so its page numbers do not carry over; the rules quoted here are the ones it states in prose.
- Open Library catalogue record for the 2025 Bluebook (ISBN 979-8-2185-7457-4) and for Posner's eighth edition (2011).
- CourtListener for Brown, both Authors Guild decisions and In re Marriage Cases; the Library of Congress United States Reports scan for 347 U.S. 495; Crossref (DOI 10.2307/1321160) for Warren & Brandeis; Cornell LII for 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 18 U.S.C. § 1961; leginfo.legislature.ca.gov for Cal. Penal Code § 187.
