LEGAL 450 : Legal Research and Writing

Legal citations enable a reader to easily locate the cases, statutes, regulations or other material cited in legal documents.

Case citations often appear as a number, an abbreviation of the publication in which the document is found followed by another number, e.g. 410 U.S. 113 is the citation to Roe v. Wade. This case can be found in volume 410 at page 113 in the United States Reports. You may further pinpoint a citation by the page number or paragraph number. Note that sometimes a case might have more than one citation ("parallel citation"). If you are pinpointing, be sure that the page number you use corresponds to the particular citation (usually indicated in Westlaw by the number of asterisks).

United States federal law is codified in the United States Code. The Code is arranged as 54 titles of various subject matters of federal jurisdiction (e.g. Title 12: Banks and banking; Title 17: Copyrights; Title 47: Telecommunications). The titles are then split up into chapters, which are further divided into sections (e.g. Title 17: Copyrights -- Chapter 1: Subject matter and scope of copyright -- Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works). Federal laws might be cited as follows: TITLE U.S.C. § SECTION. For example, 47 U.S.C. § 21 refers to Telecommunications (Title 47), Submarine cables; willful injury to; punishment (section 21).

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