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

§ 2-000. HOW TO CITE ...
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§ 2-100. How to Cite Electronic Sources
While the principal citation reference works still treat the citation of electronically accessed
sources as though they were exceptional cases, increasingly online sources, disc and e-book
publications constitute not only print alternatives, but preferred distribution channels. This is
true for judicial opinions, statutes, regulations, journal articles, and government reports of
many kinds. Not only are many legal materials now available in paired print and electronic
editions put out by a single publisher, but sources have proliferated. Today, it is far less likely
than it was only a few years ago that the person writing a legal document and that document's
readers will be working from exactly the same sources in the same format.
This shift makes it important that, wherever possible, a citation furnish sufficient information
about the cited material to enable a reader to pursue the reference without regard to format or
immediate source. With the most frequently cited materials – cases, constitutions, statutes,
regulations, and recent journal articles – this is typically not a challenge since most legal
information distributors, whether commercial, public, or nonprofit, endeavor to furnish all the
data necessary for source- and medium-independent citation.
So long as you are able to furnish all the citation information called for by § 2-200, there is no
need to indicate whether you relied on any one of numerous online sources, an e-book or a
disc instead of one of the several print editions for the text of a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Similarly, your citations to provisions of the U.S. Code or a comparable compilation of state
statutes need not indicate whether you accessed them in print or from an electronic source,
nor need you indicate that you accessed an article in a widely distributed law journal on
LexisNexis, Westlaw or some other Internet site.
Citations making specific reference to an electronic source are necessary only when the cited
material is not widely available from multiple sources and when identifying the electronic
source is likely significantly to aid readers' access to it.
The relevant citation principles follow; section 3-100 provides basic examples.
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