Part of doing legal research is citing your authorities properly and tracking down items with unfamiliar citations. This research guide lists citation manuals and dictionaries of legal abbreviations to help you with these tasks.
When filing legal documents with a court, court rules of citation apply. Consult court rules for required citation format, usually found in the jurisdiction's Rules of Procedure. When submitting written work to non-law journals, consult the journal to determine preferred citation format.
The Bluebook is the main citation manual for law in the U.S. This guide lists Bluebook alternatives, but you should assume that Bluebook format is preferred by academic law journals and law school writing programs.
Compiled by the Law Review editors of Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale, this guide is the most widely used citation manual for law. It prescribes citation formats for most U.S. law sources. It is not comprehensive for foreign law. For guidance citing sources not addressed, see the Guide to Foreign and Legal Citation.
The library does not have institutional access to the Bluebook online. You may purchase individual subscriptions from this page.
Provides more comprehensive list of abbreviations for legal publications than the Bluebook and better guidance for online sources like press releases, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
From the Association of Legal Writing Directors, this alternative to the Bluebook follows Bluebook-prescribed format but provides more examples and requires more bibliographic information for some sources.
Created as a practical alternative to the Bluebook, the Maroonbook sets general guidelines and encourages the use of common sense when devising non-prescribed citation formats.
Covers citation format but also style guidance for punctuation, capitalization and grammar. 3d edition available at same call number.
Authored by the American Association of Law Libraries, this legal citation guide suggests a vendor-neutral format to facilitate the citation of online legal sources.
Free citation manual similar to the Bluebook system of legal citation.Covers citation formats for international arbitration including International Court Decisions, supporting documentary materials and arbitral proceedings.
Citation formats for materials of non-U.S. jurisdictions is available free online.From the NYU Journal of International Law & Politics, this guide provides citation formats for non-U.S. and International legal materials.
The American Bar Association Section of Taxation and the Virginia Tax Review authored this manual for citing tax-related documents. Tax materials are not comprehensively addressed by the Bluebook.
The style manual used by the Reporter of Decisions of the U.S. Reports. It is not prescriptive to brief-writers, but the style suggestions are worth noting.
Editors from the New York University School of Law's Journal of International Law and Politics have prepared this citation manual focusing on foreign jurisdictions and international law.
Add a jurisdiction on the second line to search for citation manuals for a specific jurisdiction.Four volumes currently available of planned 6-volume reference work focused on foreign and international legal materials.
Harvard referencing is an in-text, author-date style. You will see references to Harvard citation format on HOLLIS records. There is no official guide to the format.
Useful for researchers presenting statistical information.The Bluebook has a rule for citing Internet resources, but the following guides are more detailed and may provide extra guidance.
See Quick Answers for citing Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.Abbreviations used in legal citation are often inscrutable, e.g., 54 F.R.D. 85 or 32 L. Ed. 2d 95. Before you can track down a publication, you need to figure out its complete title. The following abbreviation lists are usage oriented and include variants of citations as well as standard forms.
In addition to those listed here, Harvard Law School Library has many other jurisdiction-specific legal abbreviation lists. To locate them, use this HOLLIS search and add your jurisdiction.
The most used list of legal abbreviations. Use it to find the full name of the reporter, code, or other legal source for which you only have the abbreviation.
Provides the full name of legal publications from many countries by their abbreviations. For historical research, there is an appendix covering pre-1607.