How do you cite law cases in a research paper?

[Diamonds02]

In APA style. Or, do you know any online resources explaining this? I can’t really find any.

[Northern_Piper]

Check out the Harvard Blue Book: A Uniform System of Legal Citation, 18th ed.. It’s got an introductory section on legal citation aimed at first-year students, who don’t have extensive knowledge of legal citation. You might find it helpful.

The Bluepages, new to the Eighteenth Edition, is a how-to guide for basic legal citation. Unlike the remainder of The Bluebook, which is designed in a style and at a level of complexity commensurate with the needs of the law journal publication process, the Bluepages provides easy-to-comprehend guidance for the everyday citation needs of first-year law students, summer associates, law clerks, practicing lawyers, and other legal professionals.

[Gfactor]

http://www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/research/apastyle.pdf (pdf page 7)
http://www.lib.wsc.ma.edu/legalapa.htm

[Acsenray]

The Bluebook is used for legal documents and law-related publications (I use it every day). I don’t know how appropriate its conventions are for non-legal works.

[Gfactor]

@acsenray

The Bluebook is used for legal documents and law-related publications (I use it every day). I don’t know how appropriate its conventions are for non-legal works.

The links say that APA format for legal citations is based on the Bluebook.

I don’t have a copy of the APA stylesheet here, but we had a thread a few weeks ago(?) that presented an interesting question:

In legal writing, a case is a case. APA format requires the writer to indicate a print source that is viewed online. What happens if you find a case on findlaw? Do you attribute it there?

An easy solution for anyone with access to a law library would be to simply check the cite against the printed version of the case. But if it’s in some obscure reporter, or if you don’t have a law library nearby, what then?