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

§ 2-310. Constitution Citations [BB|ALWD]
– U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 2.
– U.S. Const. amend. XIII, § 2.
– N.Y. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2.
§ 2-310(a) Examples
Principle: A citation to a provision of either the federal or a state constitution consists of two
elements:
Element (a) - The name of the constitution
(The name consists of the abbreviation of the jurisdiction – e.g., U.S. for United States,
N.Y. for New York (§ 4-500) – and "Const.")
– U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 2.
– U.S. Const. amend. XIII, § 2.
– N.Y. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2.
§ 2-310(b) Examples
Element (b) - The cited part
(Parts often include articles (abbreviated "art."), amendments (abbreviated "amend.") and
clauses (abbreviated "cl."), in addition to sections (§).)
No punctuation separates the name of the constitution from the first part identifier; commas
separate successive subparts. Nothing is italicized or underlined.
§ 2-310(c) Examples
– U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 2.
– U.S. Const. amend. XVIII, § 2 (repealed 1933).
– N.Y. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2.
Element (c) - The date
No date is required unless the citation is to a provision or version of the constitution no
longer in effect.
§ 2-320. Statute Citations – Most Common Form [BB|ALWD]
Statutory provisions are, whenever possible, cited to compilations. For any single U.S.
jurisdiction, there is usually a single compilation scheme, ordering sections into topically
clustered units, even though there may be multiple versions of the code or compilation, print
and electronic, public and commercial. Until the recent proliferation of electronic sources,
citation norms favored citation to one particular print compilation for each jurisdiction. Most
citation manuals still appear to do so, but practice is rapidly adjusting to the reality that
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