Automatic Bluebook® Citations to Cases
Using Abbreviations and Shortcuts
Citrus can help you use abbreviations and shortcuts to enter case citations more quickly and accurately. To see how, follow the steps in the rest of this example to create a sample brief.
Use your mouse or cursor to highlight all of the text in the sample brief in the preceding example and delete it to start with an empty document. Type the first sentence again:
The Court held that the speech could not be considered a true threat.
Now press F2 and enter the citation, but this time enter just the reporter citation from the U.S. reporter:
394 US 705, 708.
When you press F2 to tell Citrus that you are done entering the citation, Citrus automatically expands the reporter citation to a full case citation in Bluebook format including parties, correct reporter citation, year, and per curiam as shown below. (Citrus can do this only for U.S. Supreme Court cases.)
Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969) (per curiam).
In general, Citrus does not require you to enter periods, so Citrus correctly recognizes the reference to "US" rather than "U.S." in the citation above. Correct spacing and capitalization are also generally not required, so you could also have entered this into your sample brief:
394us708
That will also produce this citation:
Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969) (per curiam).
Remember that Citrus recognizes Watts v. United States by its reporter citation, 394 U.S. 705, because Watts is a Supreme Court case. Citrus will not recognize other cases solely by their reporter citations.
A Note on Using Abbreviations and Shortcuts to Avoid Errors
Having Citrus generate the full case citation for Supreme Court cases can often save you from citation mistakes in your legal memoranda. For example, if you use Westlaw to pull up the classic Pennoyer v. Neff case by its citation, you will see a reference to the October 1877 term. You will see the same date in the print edition of the U.S. reporter.
However, citing that case as "Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1877)" is wrong. The case citation rules require that you cite to the date of decision. The reference in the reporter to 1877 is a reference to the term of the court, which started at the end of 1877 and ran through the beginning of 1878. To find the date of decision, which is January 21, 1878, you have to look in the Supreme Court Reports or in a special list of decision dates on the U.S. Supreme Court web site.
The easiest way to cite Supreme Court cases is to simply use the U.S. Reports reporter references and let Citrus figure it out for you. For Pennoyer, that citation is 95 U.S. 714. Enter F2 95 us 714 F2 and then Citrus will automatically generate the correct citation:
Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1878).
Citrus will even correct some errors in the official sources. For example, the official U.S. Supreme Court web site incorrectly lists Standard Oil Co. of Indiana v. United States as being reported at 283 U.S. 162. If you use enter a citation to "283 us 162" into your legal memorandum, Citrus will recognize that as a common error and generate the correct citation into your memo:
Standard Oil Co. of Ind. v. United States, 283 U.S. 163 (1931).
At present, Citrus will only retrieve case data about cases from the U.S. reporter. However, Citrus will still format and manage citations from other sources for which you supply case data. Try the following sentence and legal citation:
Courts are far more resistant to criminalizing public political speech than speech in private communications. See, e.g., Melugin v Hames 38 f3d 1478,1484(9thcir, 1994).
If you did not press F2 while entering the citation then highlight "See, e.g., Melugin v Hames 38 f3d 1478,1484(9thcir, 1994)." and press F2. Citrus will automatically generate the following Bluebook citation in its place:
See, e.g., Melugin v. Hames, 38 F.3d 1478, 1484 (9th Cir. 1994).
Follow this link to review how Citrus generates case citations into your legal briefs and legal memoranda in Bluebook format, or follow this link to review how Citrus continues to manage case citations as you edit the sample legal brief. You will also see how to use Citrus to manage citations in legal memoradanda that were not created with Citrus.
