To cite a Supreme Court case in Bluebook form, give the case name, the volume number, the reporter abbreviation “U.S.,” the first page of the opinion, and the year in parentheses: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). That is the standard citation used in briefs, legal memoranda, and law review articles in the United States. If you are writing for a course outside law school, you will most likely use APA or MLA instead, both of which build on the same underlying information but format it differently.
The Five Parts of a Bluebook Citation
Every full citation to a Supreme Court decision contains the same five elements in the same order:
- Case name, with the parties separated by “v.” and followed by a comma. The case name is italicized (or underlined) in briefs and other court filings.
- Volume number of the reporter.
- Reporter abbreviation. For the Supreme Court, cite to the official reporter, the United States Reports, abbreviated “U.S.”
- Starting page of the opinion in that volume.
- Year of decision, in parentheses.
No punctuation separates the volume, the reporter, and the page number, and a period closes the citation.1Georgetown University Library Guide. How to Properly Cite a Supreme Court Case
Two unofficial reporters also publish Supreme Court opinions: the Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) and the Lawyers’ Edition (L. Ed. or L. Ed. 2d). Cite to the United States Reports whenever the opinion appears there. Use an unofficial reporter only when the opinion has not yet been published in U.S. Reports, and do not include parallel citations to both.2Cornell Law School. Judicial Opinions
Adding a Pinpoint Page
A full citation tells the reader where the opinion begins. A pinpoint citation, or pincite, tells them where a specific proposition appears. If you are quoting language or making a specific claim about what the Court said, include a pinpoint.
Place the pinpoint page after the starting page, separated by a comma: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 490 (1954). For a range, use a hyphen and drop repetitious digits: 483, 490-93. For non-consecutive pages, separate them with commas: 483, 490, 495.3Tarlton Law Library at Tarlton Law Library. Pages, Paragraphs, and Pincites To cite a footnote, give the page where the footnote appears, followed by “n.” and the footnote number with no space in between: 483, 490 n.4.4Monmouth University. Citing Cases
Later References to the Same Case
Once you have given a full citation, the Bluebook offers two shorter options for subsequent references.
Short Form
A short form uses the case name (or a recognizable shortened version), the volume, the reporter, and a page reference preceded by “at.” After Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), a later reference reads Brown, 347 U.S. at 490. The shortened case name stays italicized.5Georgetown University Library Guide. Short Forms for Cases
Pick the party name that will be most recognizable. Avoid using “United States” or a common government agency name when the other party’s name is more distinctive. Miranda is more useful than Arizona.
Id.
If your current citation refers to the same case as the immediately preceding citation, and that preceding citation was to only one source, use id. instead of the short form. For the same page, id. alone suffices. For a different page in the same case, use id. at 495. Capitalize the “I” only when it starts a citation sentence.
The id. chain breaks the moment any other authority appears in between. After that, go back to the short form. Never use “supra” to point back to a case. The Bluebook prohibits “supra” for cases, statutes, and constitutions; short form and id. are the only options.6The Bluebook Online. Supra and Hereinafter
Citing a Dissent or Concurrence
When the language you are citing comes from a dissent or concurrence rather than the majority, add a parenthetical after the year with the justice’s last name, the abbreviated title, and the type of opinion: City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 31, 50 (2000) (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting). Use “J.” for an associate justice and “C.J.” for the Chief Justice.7Cornell Law School. How to Cite Judicial Opinions
The same pattern applies to concurrences: (Kagan, J., concurring). For an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, spell that out: (Sotomayor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). These parentheticals follow the date parenthetical rather than replacing it.
Recent Decisions Not Yet in U.S. Reports
Supreme Court opinions can take years to appear in the bound volumes of the United States Reports. For a decision issued too recently to have a U.S. Reports volume, cite the slip opinion using the docket number and the phrase “slip op.”: Case Name, No. 23-456, slip op. at 12 (U.S. June 15, 2025). Include “U.S.” in the court parenthetical, because there is no reporter abbreviation to convey which court decided the case.7Cornell Law School. How to Cite Judicial Opinions
If the opinion has been published in the Supreme Court Reporter but not yet in U.S. Reports, you can cite S. Ct. as a temporary measure and update the citation once the U.S. Reports volume is assigned. For opinions available only through a database, cite the database identifier: Case Name, No. 23-456, 2025 WL 1234567, at *5 (U.S. June 15, 2025).
Abbreviating Party Names
The Bluebook requires you to abbreviate certain common words in an institutional party’s name. “Corporation” becomes “Corp.,” “Association” becomes “Ass’n,” “Incorporated” becomes “Inc.,” and “Company” becomes “Co.” The word “and” becomes an ampersand.8Cornell Law School. Words Abbreviated in Case Names
Standalone citations and case names embedded in your text follow slightly different rules. In a citation sentence that stands on its own, all of the standard abbreviations apply. In the flow of your prose, only a smaller set of words (marked with asterisks in the Bluebook’s abbreviation table) get abbreviated, and even those are spelled out when they begin a party’s name. So a running-text reference reads “National Association of Manufacturers,” while the corresponding standalone citation uses “Nat’l Ass’n of Mfrs.”
Drop “The” when it appears as the first word of a party name, so Horn v. The New York Times Co. becomes Horn v. New York Times Co. Descriptive terms that follow a named party, such as “trustee,” “executor,” or “administrator,” get omitted entirely.9Cornell Law School. Words Omitted in Case Names
Italics: Brief vs. Law Review
Case names look different depending on where the citation appears.
In court documents, briefs, and legal memoranda (what the Bluebook calls practice documents), case names in citations are italicized or underlined. Pick one and stay consistent. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) is the correct form.
In law review footnotes, full case-name citations use ordinary roman type: no italics, no underlining. Short forms, however, are italicized. So the full citation to Brown appears in roman, while a later Brown, 347 U.S. at 490 is italicized.10Georgetown Law. Differences in Citation in Scholarly and Practice-Based Writing If you are a student writing a seminar paper, ask which convention your professor expects. Many professors want practice-document format for student papers even though law reviews use the scholarly form.
APA and MLA Format
If you are writing outside law school entirely, use APA or MLA rather than the Bluebook.
APA
APA largely defers to the Bluebook for legal references, so the reference list entry looks familiar: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), with the case name italicized. For in-text citations, italicize the case name and include the year: (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954). After the first reference, you can shorten it to (Brown, 1954).11Purdue University. Legal References
MLA
MLA treats a Supreme Court case like any other source, using its container system. The “author” is the government entity, “United States, Supreme Court.” The case name is the title and gets italicized. A works-cited entry reads:
United States, Supreme Court. Brown v. Board of Education. United States Reports, vol. 347, 17 May 1954, pp. 483-97. Library of Congress, tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep347/usrep347483/usrep347483.pdf.
If you accessed the opinion through a website like Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, that site becomes the second container in place of the Library of Congress.12MLA Style Center. Documenting Legal Works in MLA Style
Finding the Volume and Page Numbers
The Supreme Court maintains a free Case Citation Finder on its website that provides the recommended citation for every signed opinion published in the United States Reports.13Supreme Court of the United States. Case Citation Finder Google Scholar shows the citation at the top of the opinion when you search a case name. Westlaw and Lexis display the official citation prominently on the case page.
For very recent decisions that have not yet been assigned a U.S. Reports volume, check the Opinions page at supremecourt.gov, which publishes slip opinions the day they are issued. The slip opinion includes the docket number you will need until the official volume is assigned.