ECON 394LI Law and Economics

Each case in progress is identified by a number of elements:

• The party names (e.g. Smith v. Jones, or State v. Accused for a criminal case)
• The docket number (aka case number)
• The court level (abbreviations for federal courts can be found here, and for state courts here)
• The year the case was filed (or the date of document filing)

For example, the citation of an appellate brief of a pending criminal case in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts would be:

Brief of Appellee, Commonwealth v. Douglas Steeves, Jr., No. SJC-12981 (Mass. December 2021).

A citation for an appellate brief for a federal Supreme Court case would look like this:

Brief of Respondent, United States v. Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, No. 20-443 (U.S. December 17, 2020).

For cases that have been decided, the first date given will be the date of the decision.

Legal citations enable a reader to easily locate the cases, statutes, regulations or other material cited in legal documents. They often appear as a number, an abbreviation of the publication or code in which the document is found followed by another number, e.g.:

For cases:

• The citation 558 U.S. 310 is the citation to the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC. This case can be found in volume 558 at page 310 in the United States Reports. The full citation would be Citizen United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).
• The citation for the Google Books copyright case is from the Second Circuit is Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 804 F.3d 202 (2nd Cir. 2015).
• A Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision would look like this: Commonwealth v. McLeod, 394 Mass. 727 (1985); a state appeals court decision would look like this: Barry v. Stop and Shop Companies Inc., 24 Mass.App.Ct. 224 (1987).

For statutes:

• Federal: The citation 17 U.S.C. § 501 means Title 17 of the United States Code, section 501 (Infringement of copyright).
• Massachusetts: The citation Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 266, § 16 means Chapter 266 of the Massachusetts General Laws, section 16 (breaking and entering at night).

For bills:

• Federal: Laken Riley Act, S. 5, 119th Cong. (2025).
• Massachusetts: 2005 HD 438.

For regulations:

• Federal: 21 C.F.R. § 500.51 refers to Title 21 (Food and Drugs) Code of Federal Regulations Section 500.51 (Labeling of animal drugs; misbranding).
• Massachusetts: 121 CMR 1.00 refers to Title 121 of the Code of Massachusetts Regulations (Office for Refugees and Immigrants), chapter 2.00 (Fair hearings).

For proposed regulations:

• Federal: Artificial Intelligence in Campaign Ads, 2024 Fed. Reg. 21979 (Sept. 26, 2024).
• Massachusetts: Proposed amendment to 104 CMR 33.00 (Feb. 2, 2024).

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