State and District of Columbia Official Source Directory

California rule 1.200 permits parties to use either the California Style Manual or The Bluebook in court filings, with one style used consistently throughout the document. Indigo’s California-style illustration therefore describes a local convention, not the only permitted choice. Record the selected system before editing a mixed-format document. California rule 1.200.

Permission to cite is a separate question. Rule 8.1115(a) generally bars unpublished California Court of Appeal and superior court appellate-division opinions in other actions; subdivision (b) provides specified exceptions. For published Court of Appeal opinions under Supreme Court review, subdivision (e) addresses their effect and requires noting the grant of review and later Supreme Court action. Its default treatment during review is potentially persuasive only, but Supreme Court orders can change that effect. Read the operative orders and comments before characterizing the opinion. Publication, review status, and the chosen punctuation system belong in different fields of your source record. California rule 8.1115.

Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.800 supplies a uniform citation system for legal documents. The checked compilation is dated October 1, 2026; its amendment list includes a September 1, 2026 change to rule 9.800. For state appellate decisions, inspect the rule’s hierarchy: Southern Reporter, then Florida Law Weekly, then a slip opinion, with permitted database additions. Identify the District Court of Appeal in the court parenthetical. The current rule’s slip-opinion examples use full four-digit years in Florida appellate case numbers. Copy the applicable current designation rather than preserving an obsolete abbreviated number from an old form. Florida Rule 9.800, pp. 219–227.

Indigo T3’s statement that Florida has five appellate districts is outdated: the official judiciary includes a Sixth District Court of Appeal. A citation editor must preserve the actual deciding court, including the sixth district where applicable. Sixth District Court of Appeal.

Rule 9.800’s 1977 committee note says these standard forms were not made mandatory. Keep that qualification visible when describing the rule; an editor should not turn every model into an absolute filing prohibition. Start a future update from the Supreme Court’s rules page, which points to the Bar’s court-rule compilations, then compare the edition date and later amendment orders. Florida Supreme Court rules directory.

Illinois Supreme Court Rule 6 distinguishes decisions filed before July 1, 2011 from decisions carrying the court’s public-domain citation. Published pre-transition decisions ordinarily use the official Illinois reporter; regional and Illinois Decisions parallels are optional. Decisions filed on or after the transition, and earlier decisions subsequently assigned a public-domain citation, use that identifier with paragraph pinpoints. An optional parallel does not replace the assigned identifier. Preserve letters or suffixes that distinguish later dispositions or orders. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 6.

The Chapter 7 model, People v. Clark, 2016 IL 118845, ¶ 1, illustrates the division of work: 2016 IL 118845 identifies the decision and ¶ 1 identifies the passage. The existing verified example is used only for metadata and location here. Do not replace 118845 with a reporter page, treat ¶ 1 as part of the identifier, or drop a suffix while shortening a different opinion’s citation. Indigo’s transition note remains useful, but the live rule supplies the operative branches.

Effective December 14, 2022, Maryland’s former Court of Appeals became the Supreme Court of Maryland, and the former Court of Special Appeals became the Appellate Court of Maryland. The judiciary states that this name change does not alter the precedential value of earlier opinions. Indigo T3 retains the earlier names. Update a present-day description of the court while preserving accurate historical information about the decision being cited. Maryland appellate opinions page.

The judiciary’s unreported-opinions guidance, citing Maryland Rule 1-104, distinguishes persuasive use from precedent. An unreported opinion issued on or after July 1, 2023 may be cited for persuasive value only when no reported authority adequately addresses the issue; an unreported per curiam opinion may not be cited for precedential or persuasive authority. This bounded profile reports that published guidance and does not catalogue every separate doctrine-specific use under the full rule. Maryland unreported-opinions guidance.

A reliable worksheet therefore needs both a decision date and an opinion classification. The date the PDF was downloaded cannot satisfy a rule keyed to the date the opinion was issued. A searchable unreported decision is not automatically usable in a filed argument.

The official Law Reports Style Manual displayed during this check is the 2022 edition with identified 2024 electronic updates. Its local forms differ visibly from the general practitioner baseline: reporter forms such as NY3d and AD3d omit periods, and the year appears in brackets. In running text, the case name is followed by parenthesized citation information; a citation appearing wholly within parentheses uses a comma between the case name and reporter. The manual also identifies official-report citation requirements in CPLR 5529(e) and Court of Appeals rule 500.1(g). New York Law Reports Style Manual, frontmatter and §§ 1.1–1.2.

A practical edit starts by deciding whether the case name participates in the sentence. Moving a citation into or out of prose requires checking punctuation around that name, not merely deleting a period from the reporter abbreviation. Indigo T3 correctly flags local differences; use the current manual and the receiving court’s rules to finish the document. This profile checks those particular conventions, not every section of the manual.

Ohio’s third-edition Writing Manual took effect June 17, 2024. The Supreme Court’s page describes its own use and recommends the manual to other courts and practitioners; do not convert that recommendation into a claim that every Ohio filing is governed identically. Ohio Writing Manual page.

For an Ohio case with a WebCite, the third edition uses the case name and WebCite, with paragraph pinpoints. It omits the former parallel reporters. A court-of-appeals citation adds the district; the absence of a court parenthetical identifies the Supreme Court. For older decisions without a WebCite, the manual uses the official reporter when available. Its short-form rules examine whether the identifying volume or WebCite appeared within two paragraphs, and its paragraph short forms use at before ¶. Those are local instructions, not universal corrections to this handbook’s general forms. Ohio Writing Manual, pp. 3, 5–14, 54–55.

Indigo T3 cites the 2013 second edition and shows three parallel identifiers. If a copied citation contains that older combination, identify the receiving document’s governing style before carrying it forward. Retain the source record’s full metadata even when the submitted citation becomes shorter.

The current Rules of Appellate Procedure address both the Supreme Court of Appeals and the Intermediate Court of Appeals. Indigo T3’s description of the latter as pending in June 2022 is historical. For documents governed by these appellate rules, rule 38(d) requires a full parallel citation to an opinion of either court. A regional-reporter entry in a general table is insufficient by itself for that requirement. West Virginia Rules of Appellate Procedure, rules 1 and 38(d).

Rule 21(e) permits citation of memorandum decisions in state courts and administrative tribunals if the citation clearly identifies the memorandum-decision status. These decisions are posted online but are not published in the West Virginia Reports. Do not manufacture an official-reporter parallel for a memorandum decision. Start by classifying the document, then apply its source-specific form. Rules 21(f) and 22 also require attention to finality and the mandate; availability online does not by itself settle the decision’s procedural status. West Virginia Rules of Appellate Procedure, rules 21–22.