On this page
Updated . Example details checked against Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, decided May 17, 1954.
The APA format
Pattern
Name v. Name, Volume Reporter Page (Court Year). URL
- Legal format: APA uses the Bluebook form for legal references, not its own author-date pattern (APA 7, 11.1).
- Supreme Court cases need no court in the parentheses, since U.S. already says which court: 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
- Lower courts name the court with the year: (2d Cir. 2016) for the Second Circuit.
- URL is optional; add one to a free source such as Justia or the court’s own site if it helps readers.
A real example
Reference entry
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
In-text citation
(Brown v. Board of Education, 1954)
When details are missing
- A Supreme Court case too new for a page number: leave blanks for the page as legal style does, with the volume when it is known: 590 U.S. ___ (2020).
- More than one year in your sources: cite each decision separately; the year is the year of the decision.
The rules for a missing author, date or page in every style are in no author, date or page.
Common mistakes
- Italicizing the case name in the reference. Italic in the text, roman in the reference list.
- The full reporter name. APA uses the legal abbreviation: U.S., F.3d, S. Ct.
- Starting with an author. Cases have none; the case name leads.
Or let Format do it.
Choose Court case and fill in the case name, volume, reporter, first page, court and year. Format writes the References entry and the in-text citation in APA 7, exactly as shown above, and builds the References page when you export to Word or PDF. MLA and APA are free.
Questions
Where does a court case go in the reference list?
In alphabetical order by the first word of the case name, with the other entries.
Do I need a page in the text?
For a quotation, add the page: (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, p. 495).
More citation guides
The same source in other styles
Similar sources in APA
Every source kind is on the APA page, and every style is on How to cite.