Build a citation you can explain

The opening problem

You have read a judicial opinion and want to tell a reader where a particular conclusion appears. The browser shows a case name, several citation numbers, and a PDF page counter. Which numbers belong in the citation? Begin with one verified authority and one narrow proposition. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court concluded that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. The relevant conclusion appears on page 495 of the United States Reports, although the opinion begins on page 483.

What you will learn

Identify a case as a judicial source; distinguish the opinion's first page from the page supporting your sentence; assemble a full citation; determine whether the reporter identifies the court; and check both the source's identity and the support for your proposition. You can do these tasks using the supplied source information without a paid database.

A citation connects a sentence to a source

A legal citation is a set of instructions for finding an authority and a representation about why it appears in your document. Its numbers do different jobs. Some identify the source; others locate the passage. Formatting those numbers correctly does not establish that the passage supports what you wrote. Keep those two questions separate from your first attempt.

Our model sentence is deliberately narrow: The Supreme Court concluded that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954). The sentence reports a conclusion of the 1954 opinion. It does not attempt to summarize every part of equal-protection law, every remedy, or subsequent litigation. The citation needs to support the sentence actually on the page.

The full citation begins with the case name. The name is italicized; the comma after it is roman. The word Board is abbreviated to Bd. and Education to Educ. in this citation sentence. The rule for names used as part of ordinary prose is more restrained, as Chapter 5 explains. Here the citation stands apart from the sentence it supports, so the more extensive citation-name abbreviations apply.

The number 347 identifies the reporter volume. U.S. is the abbreviation for United States Reports. The number 483 is the first page of this decision in that volume. Together, 347 U.S. 483 identifies the reported decision. The next number, 495, is the pinpoint. It tells the reader where to find the conclusion supporting the preceding sentence. The year 1954 identifies the year of the decision, not the year you downloaded it.

There is no additional court abbreviation in the parenthetical. United States Reports unambiguously identifies the Supreme Court of the United States. A reporter that contains decisions from several courts will require more information. A citation ending (9th Cir. 2013), for example, would identify a federal court of appeals and the decision year. A federal appellate reporter does not by itself identify which circuit decided a case.

The annotated model

Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).

The exact judicial sentence supplied for this lesson is: “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” It appears within the Court's conclusion about segregation in public education. That context matters. A citation to the sentence does not justify changing its subject to every form of separate facility in every setting.

Work from the source outward

Start a source card before formatting. Record the full title as you found it, deciding court, decision date, reporter citation, first page, precise supporting location, and a stable access link. Copy the needed passage with enough surrounding text to understand its subject and limitations. Record separately the sentence you intend to support. You now have information against which to check your citation rather than a citation assembled from memory.

Next choose the source form. A judicial opinion is normally cited as a case even when you read it online. Finding Brown on a website does not make the website itself the legal authority. The site's delivery method can be useful in research notes, but the opinion's stable reporter citation supplies the identification in this model.

Build the citation from the source card. Apply name abbreviations, insert reporter information, add the pinpoint, and finish the court/year parenthetical. Then reopen the source using the citation you built. If the citation points to a different decision or cannot lead you to the passage, the formatting work has failed a practical test. Finally compare the passage with your sentence word by word. Pay attention to subjects, conditions, exceptions, and strength of language.

This routine also guards against copying a publisher's headnote. A headnote may summarize the decision, but it is a different text from the court's opinion. Locate the court's own passage before treating language as the court's words. The model quotation here comes from the opinion, not a commercial editorial summary.

Two worked decisions

Suppose your notes contain 347 U.S. 495 because you wrote down only the page of the important sentence. That combination points to page 495 as though it were the beginning of a case. Repair it by restoring the first page: 347 U.S. 483, 495. The first number finds the opinion; the second finds your passage. Both are needed for this full citation.

Suppose instead that you copied the PDF viewer's page 13. That may be the thirteenth image in a file, including a cover or syllabus. It is not automatically reporter page 13. Use the printed or preserved reporter pagination. An electronic copy can contain star-pagination markers such as *495; those indicate the original reporter page. The asterisk's role depends on the source format. It does not mean every citation to an online opinion needs a star-page pinpoint.

Mistakes to catch early

Do not italicize the entire citation. Italicize the case name while leaving reporter numbers, reporter abbreviation, pinpoint, and year roman. Do not add U.S. Supreme Court to the year parenthetical when U.S. already identifies that court. Do not cite page 483 for a proposition you checked only at 495. Do not let a citation to one famous sentence stand for a claim about an entire area of law. A narrow supported sentence is more useful than a broad confident one with an impressive case name attached.

Reference summary

A conventional reported-case full citation supplies the name, volume, reporter, first page, pinpoint when supporting a particular passage, and necessary court/year information. A first page identifies; a pinpoint locates. The deciding court may be omitted only when the citation otherwise identifies it unambiguously. The retrieval date belongs in your research record, not in place of the decision year. A source match, a passage check, and a current-validity investigation are different checks.

Worked editing session: build a source card

A source card connects a proposed sentence with the passage supporting it. Fill it while the opinion is open. The completed card below keeps the two addresses—decision and passage—separate.

Now change just one field: replace the proposed sentence with “A present-day school is liable to this applicant.” The citation's characters could remain flawless, but the card no longer closes the gap between source and claim. You would need the applicable legal elements, the present facts, and authority connecting them. This is a research problem exposed by the proposed sentence, not by a misspelled case name.

Next change the location field from reporter page 495 to “PDF page 13.” You have created a different problem. Even if the quotation is faithful, the final citation cannot tell readers where to find it in United States Reports. Recover the reporter marker from the actual copy. If that copy supplies no reliable reporter pagination, use another reliable copy or a supported citation form for the source you have; do not convert the viewer counter by guesswork.

These two alterations give you a practical self-test. Cover the citation and explain why the passage supports the sentence. Then cover the sentence and use the citation to find the passage. Passing one test does not make up for failing the other.

When a citation needs two checks at the same place

A pinpoint can legitimately repeat the first page. If the proposition appears on the page where a reported decision begins, the reported-case convention retains both functions: first page, then the same number as pinpoint. Do not remove the repeated number merely because a proofreading tool calls it a duplicate. Conversely, a citation discussing a decision as a whole may have no particular passage to pinpoint. Decide what the sentence uses before treating every citation lacking a second page number as defective.

Fictional training example — not legal authority. An invented decision begins at page 100 of volume 12 of Fictional Reporter, and its opening paragraph contains the precise procedural ruling being described. Its reporter portion is 12 Fiction Rep. 100, 100. Page 100 first identifies the opinion and then locates the ruling. If the explanatory parenthetical instead describes reasoning at page 104, the reporter portion becomes 12 Fiction Rep. 100, 104. The first page stays fixed; the relevant passage changes.

Check a pinpoint against every claim attached to it. A sentence may accurately describe a result on one page while its explanatory parenthetical describes reasoning on another. Supply the needed locations, divide the citation, or revise the parenthetical. One checked number cannot silently verify an additional statement located elsewhere. When an argument spans pages, inspect the entire necessary span; a range is a representation about the material on those pages, not a way to hide uncertainty about its location.

Choose the opinion before choosing its words

A downloaded decision may package several texts together: a syllabus, the court's opinion, separate opinions, and publication notes. Read the labels at their boundaries. An accurate quotation from the syllabus remains a quotation from that text; it does not become a quotation from the majority by sharing a PDF with it. Likewise, a dissent can accurately reproduce a party's argument without making that argument the court's conclusion.

Add an opinion field to the source card when the document contains multiple voices. Record majority, concurrence, dissent, or another supplied designation and the author's name when relevant and actually given. If the disputed proposition appears only in a separate opinion, keep that fact in the sentence or citation. The publication address can identify the right case while still leading to the wrong speaker. Chapter 8 develops this distinction for case characterization and history.

Source laboratory: when the summary changes the rule

A summary can fail even when it appears in the same bound volume as the opinion. In United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., the government relied on a headnote from an earlier decision to support its reading of the law. The Court explained that the headnote was the reporter's work and misinterpreted the earlier decision's scope. 200 U.S. 321, 336-37 (1906). At page 337 the Court also acknowledged that statutes in some states prescribed a different arrangement. Preserve that qualification: the example concerns the headnote before this Court, not a verified rule about every court's summaries.

Follow the five decisions. Identify: the authority is the Court's opinion, while the disputed language is a reporter's headnote for an earlier case. Define the claim: the Court rejected reliance on that headnote as a statement of its decision. Locate: page 336 introduces the reliance and page 337 supplies the correction. Construct: United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 336-37 (1906) (rejecting a headnote's characterization of an earlier decision). Test: does the sentence describe the Court's response, or has it silently converted the headnote into judicial language?

That difference changes the next research action. If your sentence reports what the reporter wrote, identify the summary as such. If it reports what the court decided, read the opinion's own reasoning and disposition. A summary is useful as a route to a passage; its convenient wording does not establish the passage's boundaries. This historical example makes the source-card opinion field practical: record who supplied the words before you decide which words to borrow.

Takeaway

Build from the source and the sentence together. Keep the first page and the supporting page distinct, then test whether a reader can find the passage and whether that passage says what you claim.

Chapter source note

Conventions adapted from Indigo 2.0 R2, R5, R11, and R12. Real authority: EX-001. Opinion and pinpoint support checked October 7, 2026, America/Chicago. No commercial citator or comprehensive subsequent-treatment check was performed.

Additional source: United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 336-37 (1906), majority discussion read with surrounding pages 334-40 through CourtListener; RA-EX-001. Historical attribution example.