What are the required components of a full case citation?
Rule 10.1 breaks a case citation into the case name, the reporter information (volume, reporter abbreviation, first page), a pincite to the specific page you are relying on, a parenthetical containing the court and the year, and any subsequent history. You assemble them in that order, every time.
Two components trip students up. The pincite goes after the first page, separated by a comma, with no 'at': 347 U.S. 483, 495. The 'at' appears only in short forms and in star pagination for electronic sources. Second, Rule 10.4(a) tells you to omit the court abbreviation when the reporter alone identifies the court. U.S. Reports means the Supreme Court, so you write (1954), not (U.S. 1954). F.3d does not identify which circuit, so you must write (9th Cir. 2019).
Give the year the case was decided, not the year it was argued or published (Rule 10.5). For state cases in regional reporters, the court parenthetical carries the state abbreviation from Table T1 and, if the court is not the state's highest court, the court abbreviation from T7.
What do correct citations look like in each court?
Work from the templates below. Italicize the case name in a practitioner document; see the section on law review footnotes for the one place that changes.
- U.S. Supreme Court: Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966). No court abbreviation, no parallel cite to S. Ct. or L. Ed.
- Older Supreme Court case with a nominative reporter: Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803).
- Federal court of appeals: United States v. Carroll Towing Co., 159 F.2d 169, 173 (2d Cir. 1947).
- Federal district court: use F. Supp., F. Supp. 2d, or F. Supp. 3d with the district abbreviation from T1 — e.g., 400 F. Supp. 3d 100, 105 (S.D.N.Y. 2019).
- State high court in a regional reporter: Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., 162 N.E. 99, 100 (N.Y. 1928); Tarasoff v. Regents of the Univ. of Cal., 551 P.2d 334, 340 (Cal. 1976).
- State intermediate appellate court: add the court from T7 inside the parenthetical, e.g., (Cal. Ct. App. 2015) or (N.Y. App. Div. 2018).
- Unreported case on Westlaw (Rule 18.3.1): Smith v. Jones, No. 19-cv-04521, 2020 WL 1234567, at *4 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 12, 2020). Note the full date and the star pagination.
How do you abbreviate the case name?
Rule 10.2 has two levels, and the distinction matters. Rule 10.2.1 applies to case names appearing in the text of a sentence; Rule 10.2.2 applies to case names inside a citation and lets you abbreviate much more aggressively using Table T6 (common words) and Table T10 (geographic terms).
The core Rule 10.2.1 moves: keep only the first-listed party on each side; delete 'et al.', 'd/b/a', and similar surplus; keep procedural phrases like 'In re' and 'Ex parte' but delete 'on the relation of' constructions down to 'ex rel.'; never abbreviate 'United States' as a party; and drop 'Inc.', 'Ltd.', or 'L.L.C.' when the name already contains a word such as 'Co.', 'Corp.', 'Ass'n', or 'R.R.' that signals a business.
Then apply 10.2.2 inside the citation. 'Regents of the University of California' becomes 'Regents of the Univ. of Cal.' 'National Labor Relations Board' becomes 'NLRB' under the widely recognized initialism provision. 'Commissioner of Internal Revenue' becomes 'Comm'r'. If the geographic term is the entire party name, do not abbreviate it — you write 'Texas v. Johnson', not 'Tex. v. Johnson'.
When do you use id., short forms, and supra?
Once you have given a full citation, Rule 10.9 and Rule 4.1 let you shorten. Use 'Id.' when you are citing the immediately preceding authority and that authority is the only one cited in the prior footnote or sentence: 'Id. at 497.' If the page is identical, 'Id.' alone. Capitalize it at the start of a sentence or footnote; italicize the word and the period.
When another authority intervenes, use the case short form: the shortened case name, the volume, the reporter, 'at', and the page — Brown, 347 U.S. at 495. Drop the first page entirely. Rule 10.9 permits omitting the case name if the reader can tell which case you mean from the same or preceding footnote, but in a brief you should almost always keep it.
Do not use 'supra' for cases. Rule 4.2 excludes cases, statutes, and most primary authority from supra; supra is for books, articles, and legislative materials. 'Hereinafter' and 'infra' likewise are not case short-form tools. Also drop 'ibid.', 'op. cit.', and 'passim' — those are not Bluebook signals.
How do parentheticals and subsequent history work?
Order matters. After the date parenthetical, Rule 10.6 puts weight-of-authority parentheticals first — (en banc), (per curiam), (plurality opinion), (Kagan, J., concurring), (Scalia, J., dissenting) — then explanatory parentheticals, which begin with a present participle and no capital letter or period: (holding that a warrantless search of a cell phone incident to arrest is unreasonable). Quoted-material parentheticals use a full quotation instead of a participle.
Subsequent history comes last (Rule 10.7). Set it off with a comma and an italicized explanatory phrase: aff'd, rev'd, vacated, rev'd on other grounds. Cite 'cert. denied' only if the denial is less than two years old or is otherwise particularly relevant; Rule 10.7 tells you to omit it routinely. Prior history is included only when significant to the point you are making.
Rule 10.7.2 covers the 'sub nom.' situation: when the case name changes on appeal, add 'sub nom.' and the new name before the appellate citation.
What changes between a brief and a law review footnote?
This is the single most common source of confusion, and it is a real formatting difference, not a stylistic preference. In practitioner documents governed by the Bluepages (memos, briefs, and almost all 1L legal writing assignments), you italicize case names everywhere, including in full citations, and you never use large and small capitals.
In academic footnotes governed by the white pages, the case name in a full citation appears in ordinary roman type; only short-form case names and case names appearing in textual sentences are italicized. Institutional authors and book titles appear in large and small caps. If you are on a journal, follow the white pages. If you are writing for Legal Research and Writing, follow the Bluepages unless your professor says otherwise.
The third layer is local rules. Bluepages B10.1.3 defers to court rules on parallel citations, and many state courts require them — a California brief may need Tarasoff cited as 17 Cal. 3d 425, 551 P.2d 334 (1976), and some states require a public-domain or medium-neutral citation under Rule 10.3.3. Check the court's local rules and the state's citation manual before you file anything.
What mistakes cost the most points?
Graders concentrate on a short list of errors. Missing pincites top it: cite the exact page for every proposition, not just the case's first page. Next is including a court abbreviation when the reporter already supplies it — (U.S. 2009) is wrong for Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009). Third is failing to abbreviate under T6 and T10 inside citations.
Watch spacing under Rule 6.1(a): close up single capitals and ordinals, so it is F.3d, S.E.2d, and N.Y.2d, but keep a space in F. Supp. 2d and Cal. App. 4th because 'Supp.' and 'App.' are multi-letter units. Also confirm that your signal matches your use (Rule 1.2): no signal when the source directly states the proposition, 'see' when it supports it by a small inferential step, 'cf.' for analogous support.
Finally, never copy a citation straight out of Westlaw or Lexis. Those databases produce parallel cites, unabbreviated party names, and full docket lines that Rule 10 does not want. Pull the pieces and rebuild the citation yourself.