Skip to Main Content

BUSI 3312: Business Law

Tips for finding full text of cases, Shepardizing, etc.

How to Cite a Court Case

The APA style manual 7th edition includes Chapter 11:  Legal References, pages 355-368.  While it contains some examples of legal citations, it points researchers to the most recent edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation for more information.  NOTE:  Use traditional APA style rules when citing legal books or articles from legal periodicals such as law reviews and law journals.

Westfield State University has an excellent online guide to Citing Legal Materials, specifically:

Sample Basic Citations - Court Cases

Page 358 of the APA 7th edition explains that "[u]nlike other reference types, the title or name of a case is written in standard type in the reference list entry and in italic type in the in-text citation."

Reference List Citation Contains:

  • Name of the case
  • Published source (name of case reporter)
  • Parenthetical indicating the court and year of decision

U.S. Supreme Court:

AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011).

Federal Court Of Appeals:

Fowler v. Benson, 924 F.3d 247 (6th Cir. 2019).

Whitaker v. MacFadden Publications, Inc., 105 F.2d 44 (D.C. Cir. 1939).

Federal District Courts:

Dickey v. Alabama State Board of Education, 273 F. Supp. 613 (M.D. Ala. 1967).

Marty v. Anheuser-Bush Companies LLC, 43 F. Supp. 3d 1333 (S.D. Fla. 2014).

State High Courts:

Channel 4, KGBT v. Briggs, 759 S.W.2d 939 (Tex. 1988).

Steele v. Spokesman-Review, 61 P.3d 606 (Idaho 2002).

Other State Courts:

Polydorous v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 79 Cal. Rptr. 2d 207 (Cal. Ct. App. 1997).

WPTA-TV v. State, 86 N.E.3d 442 (Ind. Ct. App. 2017).

Citation