How to Cite a Statute or Act

Legislation is the source type where the general citation styles are least confident. APA's manual refers writers to The Bluebook. MLA tells writers outside the United States to consult the Bluebook's foreign-jurisdiction tables and adapt. The University of Queensland's APA guide notes plainly that APA's approach does not cover Australian material and uses the Australian Guide to Legal Citation instead. So the first question is not "what is the format" but "whose format does my department want".

What does not vary is the underlying discipline: get the Act's exact short title, year, jurisdiction and identifier from the official legislation site, and record which version you read.

Five real Acts appear below. Each was checked on the official site for its jurisdiction on 22 September 2026.

What to Collect

• The exact short title, including the year, as the official site prints it
• The chapter, public law, statute or act number
• The jurisdiction
• The section or part you relied on
• The version: as enacted, or the consolidation and the date it is current to
• The URL on the official legislation site, and the date you consulted it

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

APA defers to The Bluebook for United States material. The format below and its worked example are the ones the Purdue OWL publishes on its APA legal references page:

In-text: (Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, 1990) — or, as is more usual and more readable, name the Act in your sentence.

The same page notes that some federal statutes carry public law numbers you may use in place of the U.S.C. information, and that state statutes need the Bluebook's state-specific abbreviations, because some states number by chapter or article rather than section. For California, the codified reference to the worked example is Cal. Civ. Code §§ 1798.100–1798.199.100.

For Australian legislation the University of Queensland's APA guide uses AGLC form inside APA:

In-text: (Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) s. 6)

MLA (9th Edition)

MLA's own advice, in "Documenting Legal Works in MLA Style", is that nonspecialists may cite legal sources "in one of two ways: strict adherence to the MLA format template or a hybrid method incorporating the standard legal citation into the works-cited-list entry". The same article says that when you cite laws, acts and political documents you "capitalize their names like titles and set them in roman font" — not italics. The advice about other countries is in a separate MLA Style Center post, "How do I cite legal materials from jurisdictions outside the United States?", which says the MLA advises consulting The Bluebook — its table "T2 Foreign Jurisdictions" — and then adapting that citation to MLA style.

MLA's published example of a public law:

Applying the same pattern to the Act verified for this page:

In-text: (United States, Congress)

For a state law, MLA's guidance is to cite the set of laws as a whole and give the chapter and section in your text, or to cite the web page for the individual section, with the legislature as author and the publishing body in the publisher slot.

Chicago (18th Edition)

The Chicago Manual of Style is subscription-only. Murdoch University Library's Chicago 18th edition guide publishes this form for legislation, with the jurisdiction in round brackets:

Murdoch's own worked example, quoted as published:

That date is the in-force date of the compilation the entry links to — compilation C2019C00077 of 25 January 2019 on the Federal Register of Legislation. The date slot is not decorative, so do not leave it out. Applying the same shape to the Act verified for this page, whose current compilation on the Federal Register is C2026C00227 of 4 June 2026:

Murdoch's guidance is to source that commencement or in-force date from the Act itself, so that the reader knows which version you used.

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

The University of Sheffield's Harvard guide, which states that it follows Cite Them Right, gives UK Acts a reference with no separate author or date: the Act's name carries both.

In-text: "The Equality Act 2010 introduced…" — the guide notes that the date is not repeated in brackets because it is already in the Act's name.

The University of York's Harvard guide shows the same shape, citing the Act as enacted: Arbitration Act 2025, c.4. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/4/enacted [Accessed 18 March 2025]. Note that York links the "as enacted" text and uses square brackets for the access date; Harvard is a family of variants, so follow the guide your department names.

IEEE

The IEEE Reference Guide has a short section of legal citations. For US laws it gives forms including:

Following that pattern for the Act verified here:

In-text: [1]

Other Jurisdictions

Canada. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, S.C. 1999, c. 33, is on the Justice Laws website, which states the date the consolidation is current to — 21 July 2026 when this page was checked. Canadian legal writing follows the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (the McGill Guide); for non-law work, give the short title, the statute citation and the consolidation date.

United Kingdom. Law students use OSCOLA, which has its own rules for primary legislation and a table of legislation rather than a bibliography. See the OSCOLA guide.

Australia. Law students use AGLC. The University of Queensland's guide, which follows AGLC for Australian material, italicises the short title with its year and puts the jurisdiction in round brackets: Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). See the AGLC guide.

United States. Law students use the Bluebook or the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation. See the Bluebook guide and the ALWD guide.

Missing Elements

No chapter number visible. UK Acts always have one; it is at the head of the Act on legislation.gov.uk. Canadian and Australian Acts use different identifiers — S.C. year and chapter, or an Act number and year.

The Act has been renamed or repealed. Cite the title it had when you used it, and say in the text that it has since been repealed, with the repealing Act.

Only a consolidated version is available. Cite it and record the currency date. It is the version that matters for anything you say about the law today.

A bill, not an Act. Say so. A bill that has not received assent is not law, and it is cited by its bill number and session.

Common Mistakes

• Dropping the year from the short title, which is part of the name
• Citing a commentary, a news report or a government press release as though it were the Act
• Citing "as enacted" text when your argument depends on the law as it now stands, or the reverse
• Using the year of the amendment as the year of the Act
• Mixing styles: an OSCOLA footnote inside an APA reference list, or an AGLC italicised title inside a Harvard entry
• Citing a US federal statute by public law number when your reader needs the codified U.S.C. section, or the reverse — give both when you can
• Assuming that a jurisdiction abbreviation is obvious. (Cth) means the Commonwealth of Australia, not "Commonwealth" in general

Sources for These Formats

• Purdue OWL, "APA Legal References" (APA 7th), owl.purdue.edu
• University of Queensland Library, "APA 7th referencing style: Government legislation", which follows the Australian Guide to Legal Citation for Australian material
• MLA Style Center, "Documenting Legal Works in MLA Style"; "How do I cite a state law?"; "How do I cite legal materials from jurisdictions outside the United States?"
• Murdoch University Library, "Chicago 18th: Legal materials"
• University of Sheffield Library, "Harvard referencing" (based on Cite Them Right), "Government Publication – Act of Parliament"; University of York Library, "Harvard", Act of Parliament entry
• IEEE Reference Guide, section H, "Legal Citations"
• Official texts: legislation.gov.uk (Equality Act 2010), govinfo.gov (Pub. L. 101-336, 104 Stat. 327), leginfo.legislature.ca.gov (Cal. Civ. Code tit. 1.81.5), laws-lois.justice.gc.ca (S.C. 1999, c. 33), legislation.gov.au (Privacy Act 1988)

Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, OSCOLA, AGLC, Bluebook.