Universal Citation Resolution
[The American Bar Association House of Delegates adopted the following resolution relating to uniform case citation in 1996]
RESOLVED,
That the American Bar Association recommends that:
- All jurisdictions adopt a system for official citation to case
reports that is equally effective for printed case reports and for case
reports electronically published on computer disks or network services,
that system consisting of the following key elements:
The court should include the distinctive sequential decision number described in paragraph C in each decision at the time it is made available to the public.
The court should number the paragraphs in the decision.
The court should require all case authorities to be cited by stating the year, a designator of the court, the sequential number of the decision, and where reference is to specific material within the decision, the paragraph number at which that material appears.
Until electronic publications of case reports become generally available to and commonly relied upon by courts and lawyers in the jurisdiction, the court should strongly encourage parallel citations, in addition to the primary citation described in paragraph C, to commonly used printed case reports. When a cited authority is not available in those printed case reports, the court should require counsel to provide printed copies to opposing counsel and to the court. The parallel citation should only be to the first page of the report and parallel pinpoint citations should not be required.
The standard form of citation, shown for a decision in a federal court of appeals, should be:
Smith v. Jones, 1996 5Cir 15, ¶ 18, 22 F.3d 955.
1996 is the year of the decision; 5Cir refers to the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit; 15 indicates that this citation is to the 15th decision released by the court in the year; 18 is the paragraph number where the material referred to is located, and the remainder is the parallel citation to the volume and page in the printed case report where the decision may also be found.
