Introduction to Basic Legal Citation - access-to-law home

COMMUNITY FOR CREATIVE NON-VIOLENCE ET AL. v. REID
No. 88-293
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
490 U.S. 730; 109 S. Ct. 2166; 104 L. Ed. 2d 811; 1989 U.S. LEXIS 2727; 57 U.S.L.W.
4607; 10 U.S.P.Q.2D (BNA) 1985; Copy. L. Rep. (CCH) P26,425; 16 Media L. Rep. 1769
March 29, 1989, Argued
June 5, 1989, Decided
PRIOR HISTORY: CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT.
DISPOSITION: 270 U. S. App. D. C. 26, 846 F. 2d 1485, affirmed.
In standard "legal citation," the reference to this opinion becomes simply:
Cmty. for Creative Nonviolence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989).
With economy this identifies the document and allows another lawyer to retrieve the decision
from a wide range of print and electronic sources. The "identifier" of "490 U.S. 730" suffices
for a reader who has access to West's Supreme Court Reporter published by Thomson Reuters
or to the Lawyers' Edition, Second Series published in print and online by LexisNexis or to
Westlaw or to the myriad other online and disc-based sources of Supreme Court decisions. It
also tells the reader that this is a 1989 decision of the United States Supreme Court (and not,
say, a fifty year old opinion of a U.S. District Court).
The task of "legal citation" in short is to provide sufficient information to the reader of a brief
or memorandum to aid a decision about which authorities to check as well as in what order to
consult them and to permit efficient and precise retrieval – all of that, without consuming any
more space or creating any more distraction than is absolutely necessary.
§ 1-300. Types of Citation Principles
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The detailed principles of citation can be conceived of as falling into four categories:
Full Address Principles: Principles that specify completeness of the address or
identification of a cited document or document portion in terms that will allow the reader to
retrieve it.
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