How to Cite a Government Document in MLA 9th Edition

To cite a government document in MLA 9, list the government as the author in layers: the national government first, then the agency, then any subdivision, with a comma between each level. The title of the document follows, then the publisher, the date, and the URL if you read it online.

Format:

Government, Agency, Subdivision. Title of Document. Publisher, Date, URL.

Filled in with the MLA Style Center's own congressional example:

United States, Congress, House, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat. Government Printing Office, 2006.

That layered author is the piece that makes government documents feel harder than they are. The rest of this guide works through the full range: congressional documents, public laws, the United States Code, Supreme Court cases, executive orders, the Constitution, agency reports, and government webpages, each with a checkable example and its in-text form.

The official MLA rule

The MLA Handbook (9th edition, 2021) treats a government body as a corporate author. Sections 5.17 through 5.22 govern corporate and government authors, and the handbook's guidance on standardizing names (section 2.1.3) is what produces the layered form: start with the name of the national government, follow it with the agency, and add any subdivision that the document itself identifies, largest unit first. "United States, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation" reads from country to bureau the way a mailing address reads from country to street.

Two decisions shape every entry before you type a word.

Is the government body the author, the publisher, or both? When the agency wrote the document and a different body published it, both appear: the agency chain in the author slot, the publisher in its own slot. The congressional example above works this way, with the House committee as author and the Government Printing Office as publisher. When one organization both wrote and published the document, MLA 9 (section 5.19) says to list it once, as publisher, and begin the entry with the title. The MLA Style Center's example:

Australia's Welfare, 2017. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2017.

Which document type do you have? An agency report, a congressional document, a law, a court case, and an executive order each carry different supplemental details, and MLA gives a distinct pattern for each. The worked examples below cover them one at a time.

One more rule worth fixing early because it runs against instinct: the layering applies to the author slot only. When a government agency sits in the publisher slot, the MLA Style Center says to list the publisher's name as you see it in the source, without separating out the parent government. "Australian Institute of Health and Welfare" stands alone as publisher; it does not become "Australia, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare."

Worked examples

Every example below comes from the MLA Style Center or applies its published patterns. Verify page numbers and dates against the copy you actually read.

1. A congressional document in print

The base entry lists the government-entity author, the title, the publisher, and the date:

United States, Congress, House, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat. Government Printing Office, 2006.

MLA lets you close the entry with optional supplemental details that help a reader retrieve the document: the number of the Congress, the session, and the document type and number, as printed on the document itself.

United States, Congress, House, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Al-Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamist Extremist Threat. Government Printing Office, 2006. 109th Congress, 2nd session, House Report 615.

In-text, the full author chain is accurate and unwieldy. MLA keys the citation to the first element of the entry, and permits a shortened, recognizable form as long as it begins with the word the entry is alphabetized by: (United States, Congress, House 7), or an abbreviated chain such as (US Cong. House Perm. Select Comm. on Intelligence 7). Whichever form you pick, use it consistently.

2. A public law

Laws and acts are capitalized like titles and set in roman type, without italics or quotation marks: the Civil Rights Act, Public Law 111-122. A law read online sits inside a container, and the MLA Style Center's example nests two of them, the United States Statutes at Large and the Government Publishing Office site that hosts it:

United States, Congress. Public Law 111-122. United States Statutes at Large, vol. 123, 2009, pp. 3480-82. U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-123/pdf/STATUTE-123.pdf.

3. The United States Code

Cite the version you consulted, which for most writers is the official online code:

United States, Congress, House. United States Code. Office of the Law Revision Counsel, 14 Jan. 2017, uscode.house.gov.

The works cited entry points at the code as a whole. To direct your reader to a specific provision, MLA says to name the title and section in your prose: "under title 17, section 304, the copyright term runs..." That sentence does the locating work that a page number does for a book.

4. A Supreme Court case

Case names are italicized in your text and in the works cited list, with the abbreviation v. between the parties. The MLA Style Center's example cites the version hosted by Cornell's Legal Information Institute:

United States, Supreme Court. Brown v. Board of Education. 17 May 1954. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483.

After the first mention, MLA shortens a case name to the first nongovernmental party: Brown. Note where MLA parts ways with legal-citation habits you may have seen elsewhere: Bluebook formats govern law reviews and court filings, and MLA papers use MLA's template. If your course requires Bluebook, that is a different system with its own rules for federal statutes and Supreme Court cases.

5. An executive order

The MLA Style Center's current example attributes the order to the Executive Office of the President, with the president's name in square brackets, and containers it in the Federal Register:

United States, Executive Office of the President [Donald Trump]. Executive Order 14255: Establishing the United States Investment Accelerator. 31 Mar. 2025. Federal Register, vol. 90, no. 63, 3 Apr. 2025, pp. 14701-702, www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ FR-2025-04-03/pdf/2025-05908.pdf.

The in-text form the Style Center pairs with it is compact: (United States, Executive Order 14255). Two dates appear in the entry because the order was signed on one day and published in the Federal Register on another; keep both.

6. The US Constitution

Cite the copy you actually read. The National Archives transcription is the version most students use, and the MLA Style Center's entry for it begins with the title because the page names no author:

The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription. National Archives, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 28 Feb. 2017, www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution- transcript.

In your prose, spell out amendment numbers: the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment. The parenthetical cites the entry's first element: (Constitution of the United States).

7. An agency report the agency also published

The title-first rule from section 5.19 applies whenever author and publisher are the same body, which covers a large share of agency reports and statistical yearbooks:

Australia's Welfare, 2017. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2017.

The in-text citation for a title-first entry is a shortened form of the title, italicized because the title is italicized in the entry: (Australia's Welfare 24). Agency reports with a separate publisher, individual named authors, database sources, or no date each get a fuller treatment in our companion guide to report formats; the government-specific patterns are what this post covers.

8. A government webpage

A page on an agency site that is not a standalone report takes the same elements, with the website as the container. The pattern, using clearly generic placeholders:

Government, Agency. "Title of Page." Title of Website, Date, URL.

Give the page title in quotation marks because the page is contained by the site. When the page shows no publication date anywhere, leave the date element out and close the entry with an access date: Accessed 27 Aug. 2026. MLA 9 reserves access dates for undated or changeable sources, and agency webpages are frequently both. Do not write "n.d." in the date slot; that is APA's convention, and the same document cited in APA follows different rules throughout, which our guide to citing a government document in APA 7 walks through.

Special cases

State and local government documents

The layering logic scales down. Start with the largest governmental unit the document names and work inward: "Minnesota, Department of Health" or "Chicago, Office of Inspector General" are complete authors. Stop at the level the document itself identifies; a city report signed only by the city gets the city alone.

The author is a division of an agency

When the document credits a division or committee rather than the parent organization, the MLA Style Center says to list the division as the author and the parent organization as the publisher. A standards document written by a library association's subcommittee, for example, carries the subcommittee in the author slot and the association as publisher. For government documents this usually resolves itself through the layered author chain, which already names the subdivision.

No author or agency at all

Some government pages and pamphlets name no originating body. Begin the entry with the title, exactly as the Constitution example above does, and alphabetize the entry by the title's first principal word, skipping A, An, and The.

Several documents by the same government author

When two entries share an identical author chain, MLA 9 permits three hyphens (or a 3-em dash) followed by a period in place of the repeated name in the second entry, with the entries alphabetized by title. The chains must match exactly; "United States, Congress, House" and "United States, Congress, Senate" are different authors and both appear in full. The Style Center has flagged that dashes cause problems for screen readers and that future editions will drop the recommendation, so writing the name out in full every time is a defensible choice now if your instructor accepts it. In-text, add a short title to say which document you mean: (United States, Congress, House, Al-Qaeda 7).

Print, database, or agency site

Cite the version you consulted. The same congressional hearing exists as a printed document, a GovInfo PDF, and sometimes a library database record, and the entries differ: the online versions add a container (the site or database name, italicized) and a URL or permalink after the publication details. The handbook's position on legal and government works is to document what you actually used rather than a canonical version you never opened.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• "U.S. Government" as the author. No catalog lists a document under that name. Name the chain the document itself prints: country, agency, subdivision. If you cannot identify any body, start at the title.
• The agency appears twice. Writers put the agency in the author slot and repeat it as publisher. Section 5.19 removes the duplication: title first, agency once, as publisher.
• Italicized law names. Acts and statutes stay in roman type. Italics on a government document belong to standalone titles (reports, the code, the Federal Register) and to case names. If you find yourself typing Civil Rights Act, pull the italics off.
• The publisher gets layered like an author. "United States, Government Publishing Office" as a publisher is over-formatted. The layering rule applies to authors; publishers are copied as the source presents them.
• An APA habit in the date slot. "n.d." belongs to APA. MLA omits the missing date and adds an access date at the end of the entry instead.
• Citing the summary as the full document. Agencies often publish an overview page and a full PDF as separate documents with separate URLs. Cite the one you read; your reader should land on the text your page numbers came from.
• Alphabetizing under "The". A title-first entry for The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription files under C. Initial articles are skipped in alphabetizing even though they stay in the entry.

Quick-reference table