Guides: PSCI 4810: International Law: Citations

On this page, you will find information about the citation methods used for this course.

APSA citation style is used in Political Science, to cite academic journals, books, and websites. For questions related to APSA, please contact brea.henson@unt.edu.

BlueBook is the style used for citing legal and government documents. BlueBook can be difficult so there are many help guides and pages below. If you still have BlueBook questions, please contact govinfo@unt.edu.

The APSA (American Political Science Association) Manual remains the standard style guide in the Political Science discipline upon which students, faculty members, and well-established scholars authoring manuscripts, as well as editors, copyeditors, and proofreaders, can rely. APSA style, in most instances, follows guidelines outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (CMS). Throughout this companion website, CMS citation numbers are included in parentheses, when appropriate, to refer readers to specific sections of CMS’s 17th edition.

Citing Legal Materials/Legal Style Manuals

Lawyers and scholars of the law have developed their own methods of citing legal materials in such documents as court briefs and law journals. Some other general style manuals have also developed specific rules for citing legal materials.

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation
The style most commonly used by lawyers and legal scholars.
Introduction to Basic Legal Citation, by Peter Martin of Cornell Law School, is an online beginner's guide to legal citation based on The Bluebook.
ALWD Guide to Legal Citation
This refinement of The Bluebook published by the Association of Legal Writing Directors is more consistent and logical, and includes many more examples. Because it is designed to be a teaching tool and not just a reference work, The ALWD Citation Manual has fuller and clearer explanations, with sidebars that offer advice or call attention to common errors. The ALWD Web site has information about the manual, including an FAQ, a list of schools and publishers that have adopted it, and instructional materials for teachers.
Universal Citation Guide
Bluebook-style citations currently require the author to refer to page numbers from the paper publications of a specific vendor, such as West. This system complicates matters when the author wishes to cite the same document (or the reader wishes to consult the same document) as it appears in a different format (e.g., online) or as it has been issued by a different vendor (e.g., LexisNexis). This guide sets out a blueprint for courts that wish to design citation schemes for their own decisions that are not keyed to print format or to any specific publisher’s products, and also includes universal citation formats for statutes and administrative rules. The Citation Format page on the AALL Web site explains public domain citation and provides jurisdiction-specific recommendations for its use.
The University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation
Popularly referred to as the Maroonbook, this is an attempt to simplify the often obsessively detailed and often arcane rules of The Bluebook. It sets forth very general guidelines and encourages writers to use common sense in applying them to specific situations. The Maroonbook has been around since 1989, but has never quite caught on with lawyers or scholars. Although the Chicago Manual and Turabian list it as a suitable alternative to The Bluebook, virtually no one actually uses it who is not affiliated with the University of Chicago or writing for one of the journals mentioned above.
Citing References from LexisNexis® Academic
Sample MLA, APA, and Bluebook citations are provided for selected document types found in LexisNexis® Academic.
How to cite electronic, print and microfiche congressional publications
Basic guidelines and sample citations for sources in the ProQuest Congressional database. It is not clear what style is being used for the examples, and for any source or format other than ProQuest Congressional (including other online and electronic formats), the user is merely referred to The Complete Guide to Citing Government Information Resources.

University Libraries

PSCI 4810: International Law

Outreach & Instruction Librarian | Political Science Librarian

Citing Legal Materials/Legal Style Manuals

PSCI 4810: International Law

Citing Legal Materials/Legal Style Manuals

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