Bluebook Citation Format: How to Cite in Bluebook Style

Bluebook citation format builds every citation from the same parts: who decided or wrote the authority, where it is printed, the exact page you are relying on, and a parenthetical that dates it. For a case that comes out as Case Name, Volume Reporter First Page, Pinpoint (Court Year). The current authority is The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 22nd edition, published in May 2025 by the editors of the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal. This guide gives you the format for each major source type, worked examples you can pattern-match against, the signal and short-form rules that surround them, and the 22nd edition changes that make older library guides unreliable.

The official Bluebook rule

The Bluebook has three parts, and knowing which part you are in decides how your citations look.

The Bluepages at the front are for practitioners: briefs, memos, motions, anything filed with a court or handed to a supervising attorney. The Whitepages (Rules 1 through 23) are the full academic system used in law review footnotes. A series of tables closes the book: T1 lists every U.S. jurisdiction with its courts and reporters, T6 lists the words you abbreviate in case names, and T13 abbreviates periodical titles.

The two systems cite the same authorities with the same elements. What changes is typeface:

The 22nd edition renamed the "large and small capitals" typeface to "small capitals" throughout, per the University of Washington law library's edition guide, but the look on the page is the same. Most students meet the Whitepages typefaces for the first time on a journal write-on assignment and italicize case names in full citations out of habit. In a law review footnote, the full citation's case name is roman; only the short form is italicized.

One more structural rule before the formats. In a brief, citations sit in the text as citation sentences (after the proposition, starting with a capital and ending with a period) or citation clauses (set off by commas mid-sentence, for authority supporting only part of the sentence). In academic writing, every citation moves to a footnote. Nothing about the citation's internal format changes when it moves.

Worked examples

Each example below gives the reference as it appears in a court document. Where the law review version differs, the difference is the typeface table above.

1. A U.S. Supreme Court case

Rule 10 governs cases. The Supreme Court's official reporter, United States Reports ("U.S."), identifies the court by itself, so the parenthetical carries only the year:

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).

The 495 is the pinpoint (or "pin cite"): the page carrying the material you rely on. Judges and editors treat a missing pincite as a defect, and Rule 3.2 expects one whenever you rely on specific material. For a case too recent to have a U.S. Reports citation, cite the Supreme Court Reporter ("S. Ct.") instead; the full hierarchy is in our guide to citing a Supreme Court case in Bluebook format.

2. A federal court of appeals or district court case

Lower federal courts publish in West's reporters, which do not identify the court, so the parenthetical names it:

Smith v. City of Jackson, 351 F.3d 183, 187 (5th Cir. 2003).

A district court case uses the Federal Supplement and the district abbreviation from Table T1, for example (S.D.N.Y. 2019) or (D. Mass. 2021). The circuit ordinal is never superscripted: 5th Cir., with the "th" on the line.

3. A state case

State cases follow the same pattern with the state's reporter and court abbreviation from T1. Where the regional reporter does not identify the state, the parenthetical does:

Picard v. Barry Pontiac-Buick, Inc., 654 A.2d 690, 694 (R.I. 1995).

"A.2d" is the Atlantic Reporter, Second Series, which covers several states, so "(R.I. 1995)" tells the reader this is the Rhode Island Supreme Court. When the deciding court is the state's highest court, the state abbreviation alone suffices; an intermediate court gets its own abbreviation, such as (Cal. Ct. App. 2010).

4. A federal statute

Rule 12 covers statutes. Cite the title number, the code, the section, and the year of the code edition:

42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2018).

The year is the edition of the United States Code you consulted, and it is a required element. Session laws, popular names, supplements, and the state-code variations are in our full guide to citing a federal statute in Bluebook format.

5. A constitution

Rule 11 is mercifully short. Cite the document, the subdivision, and no date for a constitution currently in force:

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.

>

U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3.

Law review footnotes set "U.S. Const." in small capitals. State constitutions follow the same pattern: N.Y. Const. art. IV, § 1.

6. A regulation

Rule 14 sends federal regulations to the Code of Federal Regulations, cited like a statute, with the year of the C.F.R. edition:

40 C.F.R. § 1502.9 (2024).

A rule too new for the C.F.R. is cited to the Federal Register with its full date and, where possible, a parenthetical noting where it will be codified.

7. A book

Rule 15 orders a book citation as author, title, pinpoint, then edition and year in the parenthetical. This example comes from the University of Akron's Bluebook guide:

Matthew J. Wilson, Hiroshi Fukurai & Takashi Maruta, Japan and Civil Jury Trials: The Convergence of Forces 45 (2015).

A law review footnote sets both the authors and the title in small capitals. With three or more authors you may list them all, as above, or give the first author followed by et al. A later edition adds it to the parenthetical: (3d ed. 2019).

8. A law review article

Rule 16 gives articles a distinctive shape: author, italicized title, volume, abbreviated journal (from Table T13), first page, pinpoint, year:

Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193, 195 (1890).

In a footnote the periodical name, Harv. L. Rev., is set in small capitals; the article title stays italic in both systems.

9. A website

Rule 18 was substantially rewritten in the 22nd edition. The base pattern is author, italicized page title, site name, full date and timestamp (or "last visited" where the page is undated), and the URL:

About the Court, Sup. Ct. of the U.S., https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/about.aspx (last visited Sept. 6, 2026) [https://perma.cc/XXXX-XXXX].

The bracketed link at the end is the new part. Rule 18.2.1 now requires an archived copy of the source as it existed when you cited it, through a service such as Perma.cc, where the 21st edition merely encouraged one. The perma link above is a placeholder; you generate a real one when you archive the page.

10. An unreported case

A case with no reporter citation is cited by docket number and database identifier, with the full date in the parenthetical:

Doe v. Roe, No. 20-1234, 2020 WL 1234567, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 2, 2020).

The names and numbers here are illustrative. Note the starred page: database pagination gets an asterisk, and the pincite follows "at".

Signals

Rule 1.2 defines the italicized signals that tell the reader how an authority relates to your proposition. No signal means the authority directly states the proposition. See means it clearly supports the proposition without stating it. See also adds further support, cf. offers support by analogy, but see signals contradiction, e.g. marks one example among many, and see generally points to useful background.

The 22nd edition made two changes worth knowing. First, it split the old compare ... with signal and added contrast as its own signal, for authorities that differ from the proposition in an instructive way. Second, explanatory parentheticals, the short participial phrases explaining what the cited authority holds, are now required after see also, cf., and see generally. The 21st edition only recommended them. A cf. with no parenthetical was already a cite-checker's flag; it is now a rule violation.

See also Smith v. City of Jackson, 351 F.3d 183, 187 (5th Cir. 2003) (applying the same framework to disparate-impact claims).

Short forms: id. and supra

After a full citation, later references shrink. Id. repeats the immediately preceding authority, with "at" for a new pincite; supra points back to an earlier full citation of a secondary source, and cases get a shortened name with volume and pinpoint (Brown, 347 U.S. at 489). The traps here are real: id. breaks whenever another citation intervenes, and supra is barred for cases and statutes in most contexts. We cover all of it, with the "five-footnote rule" law reviews apply, in the guide to Bluebook short form citations.

What changed in the 22nd edition

The 22nd edition, released in May 2025, is the largest revision in years. If your library guide, outline, or citation habit dates from the 21st (2020) or 20th (2015) edition, these are the differences that will actually reach your document:

The AI rule deserves a sentence more. Under Rule 18.3, output from a generative AI tool is cited by naming the specific model and keeping a permanent record, because the same prompt will not reproduce the same answer tomorrow. A URL to a chat session is insufficient on its own.

The formats for the core sources, cases, statutes, constitutions, books, and articles, carried over unchanged, so a 21st edition case citation is still correct. What went stale is the internet rule and the signal discipline around parentheticals.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Abbreviating case names in a textual sentence. When the case name is part of your sentence ("In Brown v. Board of Education, the Court held..."), abbreviate only widely known acronyms and the eight words in Bluepages B10.1.1: &, Ass'n, Bros., Co., Corp., Inc., Ltd., No. The full Table T6 abbreviations apply only inside citations.
• Superscript ordinals. Word processors auto-format "5th" into a superscript. The Bluebook forbids it everywhere: 5th Cir., 2d ed., 9th ed. Turn the autocorrect setting off before it costs you a cite-check.
• Wrong spacing in reporter abbreviations. Adjacent single capitals close up (U.S., A.2d, F.3d); abbreviations with a longer word take spaces (F. Supp. 2d, So. 2d, Cal. Rptr. 3d). Rule 6.1(a) governs, and this is the single most common mechanical error in student briefs.
• Italicizing case names in law review full citations. In a footnote's full citation the case name is roman. The italics come back in short forms and in textual references. Write-on graders look for exactly this.
• Missing court parenthetical on a state case. "654 A.2d 690" alone strands the reader in a regional reporter that spans multiple states. If the reporter does not identify the court, the parenthetical must.
• Citing the syllabus or a headnote. Only the opinion itself is the law. Pin cite the page of the opinion, never the editorial material West or the reporter's office adds in front of it.
• Sending a reader to a dead URL. Under the 22nd edition this is now a rule failure as well as a courtesy failure. Archive the page when you cite it, while it still says what you quoted.

Quick-reference table