Other legislative documents such as testimony, hearings, bills that are not statutes and related documents may also be cited. Your reference list templates (below) may contain a URL if it is available, but the URL is optional. The quotations in the text follow the same patterns as court decisions and cases. If the name of the law is not available, some authors only add the legal quotation in parentheses of the text – for example (18 U.S.C. § 2258) – but exclude the source from the reference list. The APA prefers to identify the name of the law and include an entry in the reference list whenever possible. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. (2000, August). A review of the National Park Service`s environmental management system: Based on the principles of the Environmental Management Code. (EPA-3000-R-00-006). Excerpt from www.epa.gov/ compliance/resources/publications/incentives/ems/emsnps.pdf The laws and statutes of each state are cited in a format similar to federal laws where possible.
“U.S.C.” is replaced by an abbreviation for the code of that state, and the titles and sections are represented in the same way. However, some status codes use article or chapter numbers instead of or in addition to section numbers, or do not use headings. Reference List Format 1 (name of the law only with citation of the American Code): The 6th edition of the American Psychological Association Publication Manual (2010) describes the style of citation of legal documents in the Appendix to Chapter 7 (pp. 216 – 224). For court decisions, laws, codes and other legal publications, the APA uses the formats described in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. Below are format suggestions for common types of legal publications (California and federal sources). Cite a law at its location in the United States Code. Alternatively, you can cite the Statute in its original publication in the Statutes in general and not in the Code. This usually happens when the status is an allocation of funds, has been repealed, or its content is scattered across different parts of the code. If an official name of the law is not available (for example, there is only one citation from the United States Code), some authors include only the legal citation in the text, for example, 18 U.S.C. § 2258, and exclude it from the reference list. To cite federal laws (also commonly referred to as laws or statutes) in the APA style, enter the name of the law, “U.S.C.
(short for United States Code), the title and section of the code in which the law appears, the year and, possibly, the URL. Most legal documents are cited in the Bluebook style, the standard citation style used in all disciplines (see The Bluebook Style in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 2015). APA refers to the Bluebook style for legal documents and uses these templates and templates in bibliographies. This resource lists some of the most common legal references that APA users may need in their work, but it is not exhaustive. Please note that legal conventions outside the United States may differ. Quote (in law, this means the volume and page in journalists or books, in which case decisions are published) writingcenter.waldenu.edu/886.htm legacy.lib.westfield.ma.edu/legalapa.htm These documents include rules, regulations, decrees and opinions. Their in-text citation templates follow typical APA templates: (first item of the reference list entry, year) without italics. However, if the law is divided into different sections of the Code or is not included in the Code at all, add the public law number in addition to the information about the source where you accessed the law, for example: The APA-style blog states that the case name for the citation in the text is in italics. The quotations in the text are formatted in the same way as the above court decisions (name of law, year). Years can be confusing, as laws are often passed in a different year than the year in which they are published; You should always use the year in which the law was published in the compilation you are reviewing.
Quotations in parentheses and narrative quotations in the text are formatted as with any other source (first element of the reference list entry, year), although, unlike other sources, court decisions and cases use italics for the title in the citation in the text. For example (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954). No, inserting a URL is optional in APA-style reference entries for legal sources (e.g., court proceedings, laws). It may be useful to do this to help the reader retrieve the source, but it is not necessary because the other information contained should be enough to find it. A citation in text for public laws, legal codes, statutes, ordinances, and cases is (name year), for example (New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 2001) Format 2 – Invoice/Chapter: (mainly used when a new law updates multiple sections of the code instead of one) You do not need to create a citation for entire federal or state constitutions. Just refer to them by name in the text. When citing specific articles and edits, create reference list entries and in-text citations as usual. The U.S.
Constitution should be attached in reference lists and square brackets to U.S. Const. be abbreviated. Use legal abbreviations for state constitutions, such as In. Const. for the Constitution of Indiana. In the story, spell these place names: United States, United States, Indiana. Follow the numbering pattern of the Constitution (Roman for articles and amendments of the United States Constitution and for articles of the State Constitution, but Arabic for State Amendments).
A law may also have a public number. This is not used in the citation, except in special cases: if the law is not (yet) included in the United States Code or if it is spread over non-consecutive parts of the Code. Name of the law, source of the volume § section number (year). Griswold v. Connecticut is a 1965 U.S. Supreme Court opinion published in volume 381 of the United States Reports and begins at page 479.