I’m writing a paper on the Constitution, and I’m talking about a couple Supreme Court cases in it. If, for example, I have this about Plessy v Ferguson:
(which is awkwardly worded, I know, it’s still a draft), how do I cite it, both first and subsequent uses?
You should find out if your instuctor prefers a different format, but the way a lawyer or law student would cite it in a legal document is like this:
If you’re citing to a particular page rather than the case as a whole in your first cite, include that page in the cite. For example, if you’re citing to page 581 in the first cite of Pirate v. Ninja, your cite would be: Pirate v. Ninja, 500 U.S. 525, 581 (2000). After the first cite, use the short form.
What style guide are you using to format the rest of your citations? You should follow the instructions therein.
The Chicago Manual of Style (my favorite) gives the proper citation as:
[Party] v. [Party], [Volume of Supreme Court Reporter] [Reporter name] [Page where decision begins] ([year of decision]).
Example: Momma v. Poppa, 100 U.S. 300 (2009).
If you’re citing a specific page, you need to put the page of the opinion following a comma after the page where the opinion starts (e.g. 163 U.S. 537, 620).
CMS does not say what to do with subsequent citations, but since the CMS form is the same as the legal standard, I imagine using the legal standard for short forms is appropriate.
In this case, a directly subsequent cite can just be “Id. at [page number].” Or just “Id.” if it is the same page. If it is not directly subsequent, it can be “163 U.S. at [page number],” among other variations.
ETA: Oops, CMS does have the rule for subsequent citations, and it is as I gave it except it adds that "In nonlegal works, a subsequent citation may consist of the case name and, if needed, a page number (e.g. United States v. Christmas, 146).
Went to check my blue book - and can’t find it! Which I guess should say something about my attitude towards legal (and other) citation. 
The standard legal citation form is the the volume and page where the case appears, and the page where the specific material you cite appears, and the year. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, ___ (1896). Underline or italicize the name.
Well, I might be a little slow on the draw, but at least I looked up the damn case cite!
Teach a man to fish…
You want to find the citation style that is used by your instructor for the paper. In college, that is usually the MLA style manual. Buy one, it will last you throughout your college career. Citation of cases in federal courts uses the Harvard Blue Book. State courts sometimes follow the Blue Book, but some have their own style manuals.
If the MLA refers you to The Bluebook then you’re golden, since the CMS does the same.
Harvard always gets all the credit. The Bluebook is compiled by the editors of the Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Penn Law Reviews.
Interesting the style of citations, in England and Wales its X v Y [2009] Reporter Name Page and Court. In Pakistan, the citation always preceeds the case name. Any idea where the different styles come from?
I don’t know, but here’s my WAG:
Many of the case reporters in England/Wales are not published in consecutive volumes, but instead are yearbooks, publishing all the cases from a given year. Thus, one would give the year where the volume goes in U.S. citations.
Actually, find out if you teach requires ANY particular form of citation.
IMO, requirements for rigid citation form - whether in class or court - is bullshit. Only requirement ought to be that you provide enough info that a reasonably interested person could locate the material. Only reason to adhere to some particular style is to aid electronic searches. But again, just MO.
Style and substance are not as separable as you state. A good citation not only helps people find the source, it quickly tells the reader the level of authority, the jurisdiction of the decision, which party is which, how recent the decision is, etc.
An example: Suppose I cite something as 34 Md. 382 (1982). Now, you could find that case just fine if you were so inclined. But if you didn’t know I was operating under some kind of citation system, you wouldn’t know the level of the authority, you wouldn’t know whether that was the date filed, decided, or reported, and many other things.
There’s something to be said for not dwelling on spacing, or italicization of certain commas, but I don’t think you can reject rigid citation style in general as bullshit.
There’s actually something useful in the citations of Texas cases that to my knowledge only we use, the subsequent writ history. At the end of a cite of a case out of one of the fourteen courts of appeals, there will be a notation saying whether a petition for review in the Texas Supreme Court or Court of Criminal appeals was filed, and if so what happened there. For example, Loredo v. State, 59 S.W. 3d 289 (Tex. App. - Corpus Christi 2001, no pet.) means no petition was filed. In a civil case, the writ history can tell you if the case is mandatory or persuasive precedent - “petition denied” means that the Court simply declined to hear the case without comment on the merits, but “petition refused” means that the Court rules that the case is in all respects correct, basically elevating it to the status of a Texas Supreme Court case.
Well, in court cases I think identifying the court is neceassary to indicate whether it is precedential. (Obviously Court wasn’t necessary in Plessy because it was U.S.) And of course the default date ought to be the date decided.
But the spacing and italicization minutiae are 95% of what makes up most citation manuals, and are exactly the type of stuff I call bullshit. Or whether the title should come first or the author’s name. So long as you use a consistent format and provide the necessary info, that’s all that is needed IMO.
Course if you are heading into the 7th Circuit and are gonna have one of those bastards Easterbrook or Posner on your panel, you’d be well advised to dot your "i"s, if only to close THAT particular avenue for them being dicks.
For your edification and entertainment, I offer this. I especially appreciate sections XIX-XXI. Primarily Easterbrook’s doing.
But what do I know? I’m just 1500 or so federal court briefs into my career and still waiting to have one decided based on citation style. 
Wow. That guy has spent a lot of time sitting around thinking about typeface. 
That you know of.
Thanks for the answers. It is not a legal paper - I’m actually just using a couple cases I looked at in a philosophy class to help demonstrate how a long-prior political philosopher’s influence can be seen on the Constitution; that’s only maybe 15% of the paper.
Also, there is apparently a little booklet of guidelines which will tell me what the school wants me to do (it’s a senior thesis that’ll go before a committee), but no one I know has it and my adviser isn’t sure where I can find it, so I need to go pester various people about it tomorrow.
I’m neither law nor pre-law, and considering that I haven’t a clue how to find actual hard copies of case rulings from any level court*, I’ve always been a bit baffled by the in-text citations full of numbers in the opinions I’ve read.
*I mean, beyond the obvious of ‘march myself down to the public library and ask’ strategy.
Under the California style manual, the citation is Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) 163 U.S. 537. Given that California’s reporters are published in consecutive volumes, not in yearbooks, I’m not sure that your theory holds water. I’d posit (i.e., it’s a WAG) that the change in formatting simply was done to do something different, such there there would be a reason that people needed to buy the Bluebook. But, as I said, that’s a WAG.
I know exactly what you mean. When I first started law school, I would skip over the citations because I couldn’t make sense of them. And then one day in Legal Writing, the instructor “decoded” the citations, and it was like all of a sudden becoming a member of a secret society and learning the secret handshake.
Hell, enough of those brief were sufficiently crappy that the courts didn’t need to look to my citation form to find a reason to decide against me! 
Walking to the train last evening I realized the genesis of my resistance to strict citation format had its genesis in hisgh school. I remember writing papers on an electric typewriter, with teachers requiring footnotes instead of endnotes. A student today cannot quite appreciate the joy of trying to calculate how much space would be needed at the bottom of the page for footnotes, with only a bottle of liquid paper to help. At one point I decided fuck it, I was writing papers for English or History, where the content should be at least as important as any particular format. And I certainly wansn’t in a typing class. End notes should be sufficient for any reasonable being. So I just went with endnotes, figured I’d suck up any points I lost due to formatting, and have never looked back. 
Not sure if it is still in those “guidelines” or elsewhere in their voluminous procedures, but they used to even specify appropriate attire for oral arguments. ISTR for men it specified “dark business suit buttoned up the front” or somesuch. As opposed to what, one of those funky rear-buttoned suits that are all the rage?
Caused me to intentionally ensure that I did not button my suit during oral argument. Stopped removing my earring many years ago as well. Quite the rebel, huh?