How to cite a court case comes down to six parts: the case name, the volume number, the reporter abbreviation, the starting page, the deciding body, and the year. How you order those parts changes across APA, MLA, and Bluebook, the specialized system used in American legal writing. EssayReply built this guide around one running example, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), so you can compare all three formats side by side and avoid the mistakes students make most often with federal and state rulings.
Citation Format at a Glance
Before choosing a format, learn what each part is called. Every style uses the same six building blocks. Only the order, punctuation, and abbreviations change. Federal and state courts publish in different reporter series, so the reporter abbreviation is your best clue to which one decided the case.
| Part | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Case name | The parties involved, written as Plaintiff v. Defendant | Brown v. Board of Education |
| Volume number | The book number in the reporter series | 347 |
| Reporter | The abbreviated name of the publication that printed the ruling | U.S. |
| Page | The page where the ruling begins | 483 |
| Deciding body | The court that issued the decision, skipped when the reporter already makes it clear (like U.S. for the nation’s highest court) | Supreme Court |
| Year | The year of the decision | 1954 |
APA, MLA, or Bluebook: Which Format Does Your Assignment Need?
Check the assignment sheet before you pick a format, since most instructors already specify one. A syllabus that lists APA as the required style usually means every source in the paper uses APA, including case citations. Political science, education, and social science courses default to APA in most cases. English and humanities courses that don’t name a legal style expect MLA instead, matching the rest of the Works Cited list. Law school assignments, legal writing courses, and any brief intended for a legally trained reader require the Bluebook format specifically. Its compact style suits that specialized audience rather than a general one. One frequent point of confusion involves statutes: citing a statute or constitutional provision follows a different rule set than citing a court ruling. Our how to cite a law guide covers that companion format so the two rule sets don’t get blended together.
How to Cite a Court Case in APA
APA Style treats a ruling as a case reference. In the reference list, italicize the case name, then list the volume, reporter, and page, followed by the deciding body and year in parentheses. Only the year appears in the shorter in-line form.
Reference list: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
In-text: (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954)
For a lower ruling, add the deciding body’s name before the year, for example Doe v. State, 123 F. Supp. 45 (S.D.N.Y. 1990). Our APA citation generator builds the reference list entry automatically once you have the case name, reporter, and date.
How to Cite a Court Case in MLA
MLA is less standardized for official sources than APA, but the same six parts still apply. In the Works Cited entry, list the case name first, followed by the volume, reporter, and page, then the deciding body and year, separated by commas instead of parentheses.
Works Cited: Brown v. Board of Education. 347 U.S. 483. Supreme Court of the United States, 1954.
In-text: (Brown v. Board of Education)
Use the case name alone for the shorter form, since rulings rarely have a page number a reader can flip to the way a book does. The MLA citation generator formats the whole Works Cited entry for you.
Citing a Case in Bluebook (Legal) Format
The Bluebook governs official legal writing, including briefs, law review articles, and judicial opinions, rather than academic essays. If your assignment specifically asks for Bluebook-style formatting, use this instead of APA or MLA. Bluebook citations look more compact than APA or MLA because specialist readers already know how to parse them.
Bluebook: Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
The case name is generally not italicized in the body of an official document under Bluebook rules, though many word processors still italicize it by convention in student essays. The reporter you cite depends on the level of the deciding body:
- The nation’s highest court’s rulings: U.S. (United States Reports)
- Federal appeals rulings: F., F.2d, or F.3d (Federal Reporter)
- Federal trial-level rulings: F. Supp. or F. Supp. 2d (Federal Supplement)
- State-level rulings: a regional reporter, such as A.2d (Atlantic), N.E.2d (Northeastern), or P.3d (Pacific)
Bluebook also abbreviates common words in case names. For example, “Board” becomes “Bd.” and “Education” becomes “Educ.” The Georgetown Law Library’s Bluebook guide keeps a full abbreviation table if your professor references a rule number you haven’t covered yet.
Citation Examples Side by Side
Seeing the same ruling formatted three ways makes the differences easier to remember.
| Style | Citation |
|---|---|
| APA | Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). |
| MLA | Same as the Works Cited example above. |
| Bluebook | Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954). |
If you only read the opinion online rather than in a printed reporter, check with your instructor first. Some course guidelines want a source URL added after the entry, though the Purdue OWL’s court case citation guide treats the reporter citation itself as the complete, retrievable source, with no URL required for cases published in an official reporter. When a court’s own website is the only place a very recent ruling appears, cite it the way you would any authoritative .gov source. That’s common for decisions not yet compiled into an official case volume. Our government website citation guide covers the exact URL and retrieval-date rules for that situation.
Common Citation Mistakes to Avoid
Wrong: Brown vs Board of Education, 347 US 483.
Right: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Sloppy citations are one of the fastest ways to lose easy points on a paper. Three mistakes show up in almost every draft: writing out “versus” instead of the abbreviation “v.”, dropping the periods from the reporter abbreviation, and leaving off the year. Double check your volume and page too. Two rulings with similar names but different reporters are easy to mix up, so search the case name plus “citation” if you are not fully sure of the numbers.
A related mix-up happens when writers cite a state supreme court ruling using the abbreviation meant for an unrelated federal appeals case. Several state high courts share similar case names with federal ones. Confirm which body actually decided the ruling before you finalize the citation, not after you submit the draft. If your bibliography also includes printed textbooks or treatises alongside case law, our how to cite a book guide keeps the formatting consistent across every source type.
If you need to reference more than a single ruling in the same paper, our guides on how to cite a website and how to cite an article cover the same three styles for other published source types.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I italicize the case name in a citation?
In APA and MLA, yes, italicize the entire case name. Under Bluebook rules, it is generally not italicized within the body of an official document, only in citations and footnotes, though many instructors accept italics in student essays either way.
Do I need to name the deciding body every time?
No. When the reporter itself makes it clear, such as U.S. for the nation’s highest bench, you can leave that part out. Add it only when the reporter alone would not tell the reader which body ruled, such as a specific federal district or circuit.
How do I quote a specific passage from an opinion?
Add a pinpoint reference, a second page number after the main page, separated by a comma, for example 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954) if the quote is on page 495. See our guide on how to introduce quotations for how to lead into the quoted text.
Can I shorten the citation after the first mention?
Yes. After the full form appears once, later in-text mentions can use a shortened case name, such as just “Brown,” as long as it is clear which ruling you mean.
For every other source type published in your paper, browse the rest of our citation guides, or check the full essay format guide if you’re formatting the whole paper and not just one source.
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Terry is a Chicago-based writer and editor who creates practical, student-friendly guides on essay writing, research, and citation styles (APA, MLA, and Chicago). He’s spent 15+ years editing educational content and building clear examples that help readers apply rules without guessing. When he’s not revising drafts, he’s usually turning messy notes into clean outlines and hunting down the one detail everyone skips.