Supreme Court Cases

• 1). State the name of the court case, using the abbreviation "v." in between the two parties' names. Include a comma after the name.
  
  
• 2). List the volume number of the case reporter followed by the case reporter abbreviation. Use the abbreviation "U.S." for the United States Reports, "S.Ct." for the United States Supreme Court Reporter or "L.Ed.," or "L.Ed.2d" for the United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer's Edition. Then, write the page number.
  
  
• 3). Write the year of the court decision in parenthesis after the page number. Place a period after the last parenthesis. For example, United States v. Jones, 694 U.S. 257 (2008).
  
  
• 4). Cite the supreme court case in the text of your paper by putting the case name and year, separated by a comma, in parenthesis at the end of the sentence. If you included the case name in the sentence, only list the year in parenthesis.
  
  

State and Lower Federal Court Cases

• 1). List the case name (name v. name), a comma and the volume number of the case reporter in which the court decision is listed.
  
  
• 2). Write the case reporter's abbreviation. For example, the Federal Reporter uses the abbreviations F., F.2d or F.3d. The Boston University School of Law website lists all state, regional and federal reporters.
  
  
• 3). Include in parentheses the court name and the year the decision was made. Use abbreviations when stating the court name. For example, "1st Cir." for "First Circuit Court" and "N.D. Tex." for Northern District of Texas. The Association of Legal Writing Directors website offers a complete list of all state and federal court abbreviations.
  
  
• 4). Use this example as a model: ABC Corporation v. Federal Communications Commission, 632 F. Supp. 897 (1st Cir. 2011).
  
  
• 5). Follow the same format for in-text citations of lower court cases that you used for supreme court cases.