# Case citation

Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, but generally contain the same key information.
A legal citation is a "reference to a legal precedent or authority, such as a case, statute, or treatise, that either substantiates or contradicts a given position." Where cases are published on paper, the citation usually contains the following information:
* Court that issued the decision
* Report title
* Volume number
* Page, section, or paragraph number
* Publication year
In some report series, for example in England, Australia and some in Canada, volumes are not numbered independently of the year: thus the year and volume number (usually no greater than 4) are required to identify which book of the series has the case reported within its covers. In such citations, it is usual in these jurisdictions to apply square brackets "[year]" to the publication year (which may not be the year that the case was decided: for example, a case decided in December 2001 may have been reported in 2002).
The Internet brought with it the opportunity for courts to publish their decisions on websites and most published court decisions now appear in that way. They can be found through many national and other websites, such as WorldLII and AfricanLII, that are operated by members of the Free Access to Law Movement.
The resulting flood of non-paginated information has led to numbering of paragraphs and the adoption of a medium-neutral citation system. This usually contains the following information:
* Year of decision
* Abbreviated title of the court
* Decision number (not the court file number)
Rather than utilizing page numbers for pinpoint references, which would depend upon particular printers and browsers, pinpoint quotations refer to paragraph numbers.

## Pronunciation of case titles

In common law countries with an adversarial system of justice, the names of the opposing parties are separated in the case title by the abbreviation v (usually written as v in Commonwealth countries and usually as v. in the U.S.) of the Latin word versus, which means against. When case titles are read out loud, the v can be pronounced, depending on the context, as and, against, versus, or vee.

### Commonwealth pronunciation

Most Commonwealth countries follow English legal style:
* Civil cases are pronounced with and. For example, Smith v Jones would be pronounced "Smith and Jones".
* Criminal cases are pronounced with against. For example, R v Smith would be pronounced "the Crown against Smith". The Latin words Rex, Regina, and versus are all rendered into English.
* In Australia and the United Kingdom, versus and vee are arguably incorrect.
* In Scotland, both civil and criminal cases are pronounced using "against" in the place of "v".

### American pronunciation

In the United States, there is no consensus on the pronunciation of the abbreviation v. This has led to much confusion about the pronunciation and spelling of court cases:
* Versus is most commonly used, leading some newspapers to use the common abbreviation vs. in place of the legal abbreviation v.
* Against is a matter of personal style. For example, Warren E. Burger and John Paul Stevens preferred to announce cases at the Supreme Court with against.
* And is used by some law professors, but other law professors regard it as an affectation.
* Pronouncing the letter vee (/viː/) is used almost exclusively for Roe v. Wade, probably due to its widespread invocation in American culture. This pronunciation—which is discouraged within the legal profession—is otherwise rare among the general public, even when referring to other well-known cases like Brown v. Board of Education.
During oral arguments in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the participants demonstrated the lack of consensus on the pronunciation of "v.", using different pronunciations. Solicitor General Ken Starr even managed to use all three of the most common American pronunciations interchangeably:
   This is the process of analysis that is quite familiar to the Court, very lengthily laid out by Justice Harlan in his dissent in Poe versus Ullman, and then adumbrated in his concurring opinion in Griswold against Connecticut. ... Well, I think that that is the necessary consequence of Roe vee Wade.

## Australia

Legal citation in Australia generally mirrors the methods of citation used in England. A widely used guide to Australian legal citation is the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, commonly known as AGLC, published jointly by the Melbourne University Law Review and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.
The standard case citation format in Australia is:
| Style of cause | (year of decision) | [year of report] | volume | report | (series) | page |
| Mabo v Queensland (No 2) | (1992) | | 175 | CLR | | 1. |
As in Canada, there has been divergence among citation styles. There exist commercial citation guides published by Butterworths and other legal publishing companies, academic citation styles and court citation styles. Each court in Australia may cite the same case slightly differently. There is presently a movement in convergence to the comprehensive academic citation style of the Australian Guide to Legal Citation published jointly by the Melbourne University Law Review and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.

### Reports

| Abbreviation | Report | Years |
| AAR | Administrative Appeals Reports | – |
| ALJR | Australian Law Journal Reports | – |
| ALR | Australian Law Reports | 1983 – |
| CLR | Commonwealth Law Reports | 1903 – |
| FLC | Family Law Cases | – |
| FLR | Federal Law Reports | – |
| NSWLR | New South Wales Law Reports | – |
| Qd R | Queensland Reports | – |
| SASR | South Australian State Reports | – |
| VR | Victorian Reports | – |
| WAR | Western Australian Reports | 1899– |

### Neutral citation

Australian courts and tribunals have now adopted a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case in a law report. Most cases are now published on AustLII using neutral citations.
The standard format looks like this:
| Year of decision | Court identifier | Ordinal number |
| [2005] | HCA | 1 |
So the above-mentioned Mabo case would then be cited like this: Mabo v Queensland (No 2) [1992] HCA 23.
There is a unique court identifier code for most courts. The court and tribunal identifiers include:
| Court Identifier | Court |
| HCA | High Court of Australia |
| FCA | Federal Court of Australia |
| FCAFC | Federal Court of Australia – Full Court (appeals bench) |
| FamCA | Family Court of Australia |
| FCCA | Federal Circuit Court of Australia (formerly Federal Magistrates Court of Australia) |
| FMCA | Federal Magistrates Court of Australia |
| FMCAfam | Federal Magistrates Court of Australia, family law decisions |
| AAT | Administrative Appeals Tribunal (federal) |
| NSWSC | Supreme Court of New South Wales |
| NSWCA | New South Wales Court of Appeal |
| NSWCCA | New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal |
| NSWDC | District Court of New South Wales |
| WASC | Supreme Court of Western Australia |
| VSC | Supreme Court of Victoria |
| VCC | County Court of Victoria |
| VMC | Magistrates' Court of Victoria |
| ACTSC | Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory |
| ACTMC | Magistrates Court of the Australian Capital Territory |