What is the Bluebook?
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is the standard citation manual for U.S. legal writing — used by virtually every American law school, every major law review, and most U.S. courts. The current edition is the 21st (released June 2020). It defines formats for citing every kind of legal source you'll encounter in a 1L year and beyond: cases, statutes, regulations, law review articles, books, constitutional provisions, court rules, treaties, websites, and the various short forms (id., supra,infra) you use to refer back to a source cited earlier.
When to use full vs. short form
Use the full citation the first time you cite a source in any document. After that, you switch to a short form. The two most common short forms are:
- Id. — use this when the source is the same as the immediately preceding citation. Id. at 472 means the same source, page 472. Id. alone means the same source, same page. Don't use Id. if any other source has been cited in between.
- Supra — use this to refer back to a source cited earlier in the document but not immediately before. Format: Smith, supra note 5, at 472. The note number refers to the footnote where the source was first cited in full.
- Case short form — for repeated citations to a case, use [Case short name], [vol] [reporter] at [pinpoint]. Example: Hanna, 380 U.S. at 472. The short name is usually the first party (Hanna, not Plumer).
Common Bluebook mistakes
- Italicizing or not italicizing "v." — In Bluebook style, both party names AND the "v." are italicized in the full citation. The older ALWD style left "v." un-italicized; that's wrong under current Bluebook rules. Most law students get this wrong.
- Missing periods in reporter abbreviations. It'sF.3d, not F3d. U.S., not US.S. Ct. with a space and two periods, not SCt.
- Including court name for SCOTUS cases. When you cite to U.S. Reports, the court name is omitted from the parenthetical — just the year. Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460 (1965), not (U.S. 1965) or (SCOTUS 1965).
- Wrong section symbol. The Bluebook uses §, not "Sec." or "Section." For ranges, double the symbol: §§ 1331–1332.
- Forgetting the date parenthetical for statutes. Every statute citation needs the year of the code edition — even currently-in-force law. For most federal statutes that means(2018) for U.S.C.
- Pinpoint without first page. Pinpoints follow the first page, separated by a comma: Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460, 472 (1965). You can't cite just to the pinpoint.
- Using Id. when a different source is in between. Id. only refers to the immediately preceding source. If footnote 5 cites Hanna, footnote 6 cites Erie, and footnote 7 wants to refer back to Hanna, you cannot use Id. — you need Hanna, supra note 5 or the short-form case citation.
Citation examples by source type
The tool above generates each of these — these are quick references:
- Case (SCOTUS): Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460 (1965).
- Case (federal circuit): United States v. Hayes, 555 F.3d 235 (4th Cir. 2009).
- Federal statute: 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (2018).
- State statute: Cal. Civ. Code § 1542 (West 2018).
- Regulation: 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200 (2024).
- Law review article: John H. Ely, The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade, 82 Yale L.J. 920 (1973).
- Book: Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law 247 (5th ed. 2017).
- Constitution: U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1.
- Court rule: Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).
Pair this with case briefs
Citing cases is just one half of the case-law workflow. The other half is reading and understanding the case itself. Case Cub's free case brief library covers 150+ of the most-assigned 1L cases — full structured briefs with facts, procedural posture, holding, rationale, dissents, and key terms. If you're using this generator to format your citations, the briefs are right there to make sure you're actually citing the right case.
Bigger picture: Case Cub is built for the 1L exam grind — interactive case briefs across 20,000+ cases, issue spotters built around your own syllabus, smart flashcards, and outline generators. Try it free.