What is the basic format?
A full Supreme Court citation has five parts under Rule 10.1: the case name, the volume number, the reporter abbreviation, the first page of the opinion, a pinpoint page, and a parenthetical containing the year of decision. Everything is separated by commas except the volume-reporter-page string.
Two model citations: Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444 (1966), and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, 675 (2015). Note what is absent. There is no "(U.S. 2015)" and no "(Sup. Ct. 2015)." Rule 10.4(a) tells you to omit the court identifier whenever the reporter itself makes the court obvious, and the U.S. Reports are published only for the Supreme Court of the United States.
Include a pinpoint page any time you are referring to a specific proposition, quotation, holding, or piece of reasoning — which is almost always. "347 U.S. 483, 495" means the opinion starts at 483 and the material you are relying on is on page 495. If the first page and the pincite are the same, repeat the number: 347 U.S. 483, 483. For a span, use 495-96. For scattered pages, 495, 498.
Which reporter do you cite, and do you need parallel citations?
Cite the United States Reports ("U.S.") and nothing else. Table T1.1 lists U.S. as the required reporter for the Supreme Court, and Rule 10.3.1 instructs you not to add parallel citations to the Supreme Court Reporter ("S. Ct.") or Lawyers' Edition ("L. Ed.", "L. Ed. 2d") when the U.S. cite is available. Writing "347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954)" is a common habit picked up from practice documents, and it is wrong under the Bluebook default.
This is one place where local practice genuinely varies. Some state courts, some federal district judges, and some employers have local rules or house styles that require parallel cites; Bluepages Rule B17 and Table BT2 direct you to follow local court rules over the Bluebook when they conflict. In a memo or brief for a real court, check that court's local rules. In a law school assignment, follow the Bluebook unless your professor says otherwise — and many legal writing professors do impose their own conventions, so ask.
For very old cases, Rule 10.3.2 requires the nominative reporter in parentheses because early volumes were cited by the reporter's name: Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803). The nominative reporters run through volume 90 (Black), so anything from 1 U.S. through 90 U.S. gets this treatment; from 91 U.S. forward you use the volume number alone.
How do you format the case name?
Use only the first-listed party on each side and drop "et al.," "Jr.," "Inc." when it follows another business designation, and procedural phrases like "on the relation of" (Rule 10.2.1). Never abbreviate "United States" to "U.S." in a case name.
Abbreviation depends on where the name appears. In a textual sentence — "The Court held in Board of Education v. Pico that..." — you may abbreviate only widely known acronyms and the eight words listed in Rule 10.2.1(c): &, Ass'n, Bros., Co., Corp., Inc., Ltd., and No. In a citation sentence or clause, Rule 10.2.2 turns on the full Table T6 abbreviation list, so the same case becomes Bd. of Educ. v. Pico. This textual-versus-citation distinction is the single most-missed case-name rule.
Typeface also depends on the document. In briefs and memoranda (Bluepages B2), italicize or underline the full case name every time. In law review footnotes, the case name in a full citation is set in ordinary roman type, but it is italicized in short forms and whenever the case name appears in the text of a footnote. If you are writing for a journal, follow the whitepages; if you are writing for a court or a class assignment, follow the Bluepages.
How do you cite a case too new for the U.S. Reports?
The U.S. Reports lag several years behind. Until the official volume exists, Table T1.1 sets a fallback order: cite the Supreme Court Reporter, then Lawyers' Edition, then United States Law Week. A Supreme Court Reporter citation looks the same structurally: Name v. Name, 143 S. Ct. 1000, 1005 (2023). Again, no court identifier — S. Ct. is unambiguous.
In the weeks right after a decision, before even S. Ct. pagination exists, use the slip opinion form in Rule 10.8.1(b): Name v. Name, No. 22-451, slip op. at 12 (U.S. June 30, 2023). Here you do include "U.S." and the full date, because the docket number alone does not identify the court. Some writers use the transitional form 601 U.S. ___, ___ (2024) (slip op. at 12); check whether your professor or journal accepts it.
Cite Westlaw or Lexis only when the case is unavailable in any reporter (Rule 18.3), which for the Supreme Court is essentially never for more than a few days. When you pull the case from a database, use the star pagination to find the real reporter page and cite that.
How do short forms and id. work?
After a full citation, use the Rule 10.9 short form: the case name (or one distinctive party name), the volume, the reporter, "at," and the pincite. So Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954) becomes Brown, 347 U.S. at 493. Italicize the party name in the short form even in law review footnotes. Do not use "supra" for cases — Rule 10.9 and Rule 4.2 reserve supra for secondary sources, legislative materials, and a few other categories.
Use the short form only if the full citation appeared in the same footnote or in one of the preceding five footnotes (the "five-footnote rule" in Rule 10.9(a)(i)); otherwise, cite in full again. In briefs, the practical test in Bluepages B10.2 is whether the reader will readily recall the full cite.
Use "Id." when the immediately preceding citation contains one and only one authority. "Id. at 497" changes the page; bare "Id." means the identical page. Capitalize Id. at the start of a citation sentence, lowercase it inside a citation clause. If the previous footnote cited two cases, id. is off-limits — go to the case short form.
How do you cite separate opinions and add parentheticals?
When you rely on anything other than the majority opinion, say so in a parenthetical after the year (Rule 10.6.1): Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 U.S. 582, 627 (2016) (Ginsburg, J., concurring). Use the proper forms: (Scalia, J., dissenting); (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment); (Kagan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part). Note the comma placement and that the Chief Justice is "C.J."
Two other flags matter for Supreme Court work. Mark an opinion that did not command five votes as (plurality opinion), and mark an unsigned opinion as (per curiam) — per curiam goes right after the year, in the same parenthetical position. Explanatory parentheticals summarizing the holding come after these, and typically begin with a present participle: (holding that ...).
Rule 10.7 requires significant subsequent history — aff'd, rev'd, vacated — appended after the year with a comma and italicized signal. For the Supreme Court this most often appears when you cite a lower court decision the Court later reviewed. Include a denial of certiorari only if the denial is less than two years old or is otherwise particularly relevant.
What mistakes get flagged most?
These are the errors that cost points on legal writing assignments and journal write-on competitions.
- Adding "U.S." to the date parenthetical — write (1954), not (U.S. 1954).
- Stacking parallel cites to S. Ct. and L. Ed. 2d when the U.S. cite exists.
- Omitting the pincite, or giving only the first page when quoting.
- Abbreviating a case name in a textual sentence using Table T6 instead of the eight permitted words.
- Italicizing the case name in a full citation in a law review footnote (it should be roman there, but italic in briefs).
- Using "supra" for a case instead of the Rule 10.9 short form.
- Using "Id." after a footnote that cited more than one authority.
- Citing a Westlaw number for a case that is already in the U.S. Reports.