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MLA
Guide: Legal Documents
If you're going to be citing a lot of law
cases or other legal documents, The MLA Handbook suggests that you
consult A Uniform System of Citation (Cambridge: Harvard Law Rev.
Assn.). The following guidelines should suffice for most academic papers,
although pre-law students should probably get their hands on the Harvard book.
Don't set off titles of laws or acts with
underlines, italics, or quote marks in text or Works Cited, but you may
abbreviate titles, with the works cited by sections and the years added if
relevant.
Works Cited
21 US Code. Sec. 1401a. 1988.
US Const. Art. 1, sec.1.
The citation of an act requires the act's
name, its Public Law number, the date it was enacted, and its Statutes at
Large cataloging number.
Works Cited
Driving a Professor Crazy Act of 1996. Publ.
L. 100-418. 14 Nov. 1996. Stat. 99.6.
In your text, the names of cases (unlike those of
laws) are underlined (or italicized), but they're still not underlined in your
Works Cited page. In citing a case, use the following format:
Pepin v. Medieval Scholars Soc. of America.
176 USPQ 677. CT
Super. Ct. 1996.
(This case would refer the reader to a case
decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court and described in the United States
Patent Quarterly, page 677 of volume 176.) Although abbreviation is the
norm in such citations, make sure there is enough information for your user to
find your resource. For listing of similar cases with the same first name,
etc., list items in chronological order.
For parenthetical citation, use the case name
or title that you've used to create the Works Cited page. If there is more
than one listing of similar acts or cases, use the date as well.
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