decipher

Deciphering Legal Citations

It's easy!

SecondAmendment.net is edited by a lawyer. Not surprisingly, some of the files you will be able to access contain citations that, at first, look very confusing. Using the guide below, deciphering these citations is a snap.

Court Opinions

Let's decipher: United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816 (1939)

"United States v. Miller" is the name of the case. It was a criminal case where the United States was bringing charges against a man named Miller.

"307 U.S. 174" denotes Volume 307 of the United States Reports (a U.S. Gov't publication which publishes opinions of the Supreme Court) and page 174 as the page on which the court's opinion begins.

"59 S.Ct. 816" denotes Volume 59 of the Supreme Court Reporter published privately by West Publishing Co. and page 816 as the page on which the court's opinion begins. Most law libraries prefer to purchase West's Supreme Court Reporter because bureaucrats at the U.S. Government Printing Office take forever to put out the United States Reports. West Publishing Company has been around for over 100 years and is so good at what it does that some states have stopped publishing their own appellate reports, leaving the task to private companies like West.

"(1939)" denotes the year that the opinion was issued by the court.

If the case is from a lower federal court its citation will also denote what appellate circuit or federal district the case is from. For example, (9th Cir. 1992) reflects the case is from the U.S. Court Of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1992. (D.Md. 1994) reflects the case is from the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in 1994.

"Jump Cites"

Let's say that an opinion is 20 pages long and you want to draw the reader's attention to a quote contained in the middle of the opinion. In that case, you would "jump" to that part of the opinion by using a "jump cite".

Let's use United States v. Miller as an example:

United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 178, 59 S.Ct. 816, 818 (1939)

The underlined numbers, "178" and "818", denote the pages at which the particular quote can be found. However, in normal text these number would not be underlined.

The next time you are at your local state or federal court house visit the law library. You will see stacks and stacks of books that look very much alike. These are CASE REPORTERS that contain the opinions of various courts whose cases are commonly cited as follows:

The United States Supreme Court

United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816 (1939)

United States Courts Of Appeal (the intermediate court between the federal district courts and the U.S. Supreme Court)

Fresno Rifle And Pistol Club v. Van De Camp, 965 F.2d 723 (9th Cir. 1992)

United States District Courts (the local federal court in each State)

United States v. Mandel, 415 F.Supp. 997 (D.Md. 1976)

State Appellate Courts (usually via "regional" reporters)

Kellogg v. City of Gary, 562 N.E.2d 685 (Ind. 1990)

As to this last case, the opinion in Kellogg may be found at volume 562 of The North Eastern Reporter (2d edition) at page 685.

The next time you are at your local courthouse, visit the law library and look these cases up. Once you know how to decipher a case citation, it's a snap.

Law Review Articles

Law reviews are published by law school students who, due to their superior grades or writing ability, are invited to join "the law review". It's a nice thing to have on your resume' to show prospective employers how brilliant you are. For law professors, law reviews are a place to publish their scholarly tomes to prove to the world how brilliant they are. (Remember the phrase "publish or perish"?) Since the drudgery of editing, re-writing, and checking the accuracy of footnotes is left to all of those bright young law students it's the obvious place for legal scholars to publish their work.

THE "LAW REVIEW" IS SERIOUS STUFF. Having an essay or article published in a law review published by top schools like Yale, Harvard, Duke, University Of Chicago, etc. can help a young professor get tenure. Being an editor of a prestigeous law review can land you a lucrative job at a big law firm or a prestigeous clerkship with a Supreme Court Justice.

Two or three times per school year a law review will publish an issue. Any where from 2 to 4 issues will constitute a "volume".

Deciphering law review citations is very similar to deciphering case citations. Take as an example the following:

Amar, The Bill of Rights as a Constitution, 100 YALE L.J. 1131 (1991)

"Amar" is the last name of the author.

"The Bill of Rights as a Constitution" is the title of the article.

"100 YALE L.J. 1131" denotes Volume 100 of the Yale Law Journal and page 1131 is the page on which the article begins.

Initials like "L.J." ,"L.R." or "L.Rev." denote Law Journal or Law Review.

Jump cites are used with law review articles just like they are used with case citations.

Miscellaneous

Some common abbreviations have the following meanings:

"Id."

Means same authority cited immediately above. For example, you might initially see United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 59 S.Ct. 816 (1939) and later see Id. at 178. This latter citation means Miller at page 178.

"supra"

Refers to something that has come before. This abbreviation is commonly used in footnotes. For example, let's say an essay has 30 footnotes, and footnote number 26 wants to refer you to footnote number 10 and the accompanying text. You would see: See note 10, supra and accompanying text.

"infra"

This abbreviation has the opposite meaning from "supra".

Good Luck!

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